Let’s say you’re a residential real estate professional with seven listings and are extremely busy. So busy that you’re considering outsourcing the showing scheduling process so you can focus on all the things you want to do to market your listings.
With all that on your plate, you may feel like you don’t have time even to research the various appointment center services available, so you may go with what someone else in your office uses. That can be a winning strategy–a referral from someone you know.
You’ll still need to educate yourself on pricing plans, levels of service, hours of service, reports, seller interaction, etc., but all in all you’re ready to get started.
Life of the listing
One common program vendors offer is called ‘life of the listing,’ meaning the showing service will schedule showing appointments on that listing until you sell it. That might sound good in comparison with a program whose terms indicate the service is for one year. But in reality, ‘life of the listing’ is really just a play on words. In today’s market, with the average number of days on market hovering around 4 months, you wouldn’t be likely to carry a listing very long.
Pay as you go
Another program is to pay for the service month by month until your listing sells. In reality, this is equivalent to a ‘life of the listing’ plan. And, in many cases, if you do happen to have a listing on the market for more than a year, you’ll pay the same with both programs. Also, most programs will allow your total inventory of listings to fluctuate (add two new listings, sell three, etc.), so your price will depend on your listing count on each monthly billing cycle.
Compare apples to apples
When you evaluate different pricing plans, different vendors and what level of service you’ll receive (Is feedback included? How late are they open? Can you confirm appointments via text? Do they brand confirmation emails with your photo & your company logo?), be sure to think about the pricing and make time to do a proper comparison. Pay for exactly what you need to sell your listings quickly and efficiently.
For more information regarding appointment center vendors, click here.
