Buyers rarely tell you why they passed on your home. Here's how to read the showings, the second visits, and the offers that never came.
Your home is getting showings, the feedback coming back is pleasant, and nobody has written an offer. If that’s where you are right now, the information you’ve been waiting for is already sitting in front of you. After 23 years of selling homes here, I’ve learned that Portland buyers are incredibly polite, and it costs sellers thousands of dollars.
Polite buyers rarely say why. Buyers don’t want to hurt your feelings. They’ll compliment your home, thank the agent, and smile as they leave, and then they won’t write an offer. What goes unsaid is that the kitchen is too small, the house backs to a busy road, the floor plan doesn’t work, or it’s overpriced. Instead of telling you any of that, they move on to the next house, and sometimes the listing agent never hears a thing.
Portland buyers think differently. I’m from Detroit, I lived in Boston, and I love New York. In those places, the price is a suggestion. You write an offer that works for the buyer, and if it works for the seller too, great. That isn’t how people think in Portland. I know I’m generalizing, and I’m basing it on what I’ve watched buyers and sellers actually do here. Buyers here don’t want to hurt a seller’s feelings, and they don’t want to hurt their own by getting rejected, so they do nothing.
Silence is data. No feedback is feedback. If you’re getting plenty of showings and no offers, or you’re not getting many showings at all, that tells us an adjustment needs to happen. It’s why it matters so much to price the home properly from the start. Without showings and without offers, you’re sitting in a vacuum with nothing to act on and no way to know what to change.
Compliments are not offers. One of the biggest traps sellers fall into is chasing compliments. The thinking goes that everyone loved the house and nobody said anything negative. Maybe everyone did love it, and maybe nobody said anything negative, but buyers speak with offers, not words.
Behavior tells you the truth. Listen to the behavior, not the words. The feedback that matters is whether agents are scheduling showings, whether buyers stay a while inside, and whether anyone comes back for a second showing or writes an offer. That’s the market talking.
The market sets the price. It isn’t the buyer’s fault, and it isn’t the seller’s fault. The market price is what a buyer will pay, and a seller will take. My job isn’t only to hear what buyers say, but to interpret what their actions are telling us so we can get your home sold. Portland is brutally honest that way, even when the buyers walking through are perfectly polite.
Reading the signals gets homes sold. If you’d like to sell your home in this market, or if you’re one of those polite buyers who wants an offer accepted, give me a shout. Call or text me at 503.522.0090, email me at sarita@asksarita.com, or visit blog.asksarita.com. I’m here for you with any real estate question you have, big or small.
