You have your Berks County home for sale. The phone rings and you are notified that someone wants to see it. The showing request is for tomorrow at 2:00pm. It is a bit inconvenient but you do not want to lose the opportunity. You approve the showing, adjust your schedule and proceed to prepare the home for the event.

You work hard and everything is right. You leave the house so the prospective buyers and their agent can freely preview and discuss it.

You wait an hour and return home. Upon your arrival you see that the showing is still ongoing. It creates some inconvenience but you are excited. If they are still there it must be going well. You park and wait. Finally they leave and you go home.

Other than a full price (or better) agreement, you want FEEDBACK!

The day ends and there is no feedback from the home showing. The next day you decide to call your real estate agent who has nothing to report. No feedback yet. The day ends and now you are less optimistic and more incensed. The next day you call your agent and ask what is going on. They were there over an hour and NO FEEDBACK YET!

Your real estate agent tells you that they contacted the buyer agent and have not received a call back. They also emailed the agent every day since the showing to no avail. Now optimism changes to anger. You inconvenienced yourself, readied the home and expected something in return. If not an agreement, feedback.

Some Berks County home sellers get angry at their real estate agent for not tracking down the feedback. Anger can also be directed at the showing agent and/or buyers that they never met. How discourteous…Someone has dropped the ball!

The question is, has someone dropped the ball? Is it discourteous not to receive feedback? Let’s explore the question more closely…

Years before there was buyer agency, seller sub-agency reigned supreme. This meant that the agent showing the buyer a home actually was doing so on behalf of the seller (seller sub-agent). The seller’s real estate agent contacted the sub-agent and asked them for insight into what the buyer’s thoughts were relative to the home…aka FEEDBACK.

For obvious reasons, seller sub-agency is almost non-existent today. When a Berks County real estate agent shows a buyer your home they are doing so in representation of that buyer unless otherwise stated.

So…Should the buyer’s agent actually be sharing the buyer’s thoughts with the seller and/or seller’s agent? While giving home showing feedback is the courteous thing to do it may not always be the right thing to do.

The prospective home sale starts when the buyer sees the home in an ad or on the internet. They obviously have interest and request a showing. The showing then takes place and the buyer really likes the home. As a home buyer would you want your real estate agent calling or emailing the sellers agent and telling them you love the home and will do anything to own it? Might this compromise your negotiation of the property?

The sale does not start for the seller until the agreement hits the table. In the opening example the psychological and emotional expectations can run high. The seller’s agent may get feedback that says the buyer loved the home and it is a 10, priced right and they are ready to write an agreement. The agreement shows up and it is $25,000 less than asking price. Think there will be some questioning the rationale of the offer after receiving such inflated feedback?

Many times feedback is offered that is not even worth the time it took for the agent to send it. How about this…”they liked another house better”. Does that help?

I often give feedback on homes I show. I first ask the buyer I represent if that is ok with them. I try to give some pearls of wisdom to the seller’s agent to help them with future opportunities. This is done out of courtesy and not necessity.