Jack Stapleton's Daily Blog

Your New Home Search

Arguably, the best part of Real Estate is driving around and seeing all the different homes on the market. Many Agents will start with the Home Search to get the clients emotions sizzling with excitement. I believe in a more logical and less emotional approach. I believe one of the intrinsic values in using a well trained and experienced Realtor® is their ability to walk you safely through the entire buying process. In my opinion, this starts with an orientation and lender prequalification. Once you are my Client through buyer representation agreement, and only after we have completed the 45 minute buyer orientation, does the home search begin.

I have a very solid business system that enables me to find just the right home for each unique buyer. I start by creating a profile for each client in my client gateway product. The client gateway is an automated listing delivery system directly tied into the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Once I enter all of your information and criteria’s in the gateway, I configure it to deliver an email to you once per day. The first email will include everything currently on the market that matches your criteria’s that we covered during the orientation. Your initial email will be your largest subset of data to look through. Each subsequent email will send only new listings entered, and price changes, since the last email sent.

The emails are sent to you as a hyperlink in your email. When you click on these hyperlinks you will see that you have the ability to flag each listing as a definite interest, delete, or a good possibility. Once you have flagged all of the emails that have been sent to you, we set an appointment for the nearest weekend. You should continue to look though the daily emails and continue to flag the listings. The day before our appointment to preview, I log into the client gateway, and print all of the listings that you have flagged as a “maybe” or as a “definite”. I call each listing to set an appointment to preview.

Once I print out all of the MLS listings, I compile them into a showing packet in order of the most logical driving route. I print the MLS listing on the front, and print full color photos on the reverse. As a cover page, I create an excel spreadsheet and list each property, in order of showing, and have you rank the most important parts of each home A, B, C, and then give the home and overall rating of an A, B, C. Once we have previewed every listing, we then drive back to each home that was graded an A. This helps narrow out the unwanted properties, and then allows you to compare only the A properties.

If the client is not happy with any of these properties, we expand the search area, increase the listing price, and do the process again. This process has survived the test of time. It is a very organized and methodical system that has yet to be surpassed by a better system.