Technology just keeps improving to help us make our home sellers’ lives easier. My broker, Real Living HER, already uses Centralized Showing Service (CSS) to make it convenient for the buyers’ agent to set up showings on our listings. (I highlight all the benefits of this service at the end of this article.)
CSS has now just added one more great tool we can purchase for our sellers. It’s called “Showing Beacon“. Although it resembles the blue Supra lockbox that hangs on the outside doorknob of homes for sale, this one is put INSIDE the home.
Here’s how the Showing Beacon works.
Showing agents usually set up showings in a 1-hour block of time which indicates they will arrive some time during that hour. They may arrive at the beginning or the end of the 1-hour period.
The sellers must leave the home during that 1-hour block of time. Sometimes this means loading the kids and the dog in the mini-van and going to a nearby park to wait for the time to pass. If the showing agent arrives at the beginning of the hour, and leaves quickly, the seller with kids and dog in tow, are spending hassle time away from the home that is unnecessary.
With the Showing Beacon in place in the home, the buyers’ agent can press the red button when they leave. The red button sends (via bluetooth) a signal to CSS’s system which then calls the seller’s cell phone to alert them that the showing is over. How great is that!
Listing agents will need to purchase the Showing Beacon ($25 ea) then pay $10 to have a given listing set up in the CSS system. That’s a small price to pay for making our seller’s lives so much simpler – especially the young families with kids and pets and nap time interruptions.
Why sellers benefit from using an agent who uses CSS
- CSS is a company that employs people to answer phones, set up showings, and maintains a web site for listing agents to monitor the showings, send automatic feedback forms to the buyer’s agent, and provides a page just for sellers to track the activity on their home.
- CSS answers the phones during hours that many small real estate offices aren’t even open, like weekends & evenings. This ensures that the seller won’t miss a showing of their home due to the buyer’s agent being unable to contact the listing agent or their office when they want to set up a last minute showing.
- As a listing agent, I can customize showings to best suit the seller’s needs as well as how & when they receive all the info available to them.
- I can add a photo of the home so the buyer’s agent is reminded which home they are showing and which home they are providing feedback to in the easy-to-answer online form.
- SELLER SAFETY: Perhaps the most important benefit is assurance that the person requesting to show your home is actually a licensed agent, not an impostor. The data base that CSS uses is updated to reflect only those agents who are members “in-good-standing” of the Columbus Board of Realtors.
Since I already use CSS for my listings, I’m planning to purchase some of the Showing Beacons to make life easier for my sellers. I think they’re a great idea!
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