Dear Mr. and Mrs. Seller:

I am so happy your cousin John is an electrician and put in your new light fixture last year that you went all the way to Chicago to purchase. My, that really is a very nice color of peach that you painted the walls in the little powder room on the main floor. The brown carpet over the hardwood floors is a nice touch. Oh, yes, your husband is very handy for putting up the shelving in the garage. The dog door is just the right size for your little Fido. And how nice that you and the neighbors got together for the annual yard sale last weekend.

But may I be quite honest with you, Mr. and Mrs. Seller? You are charming and interesting, and I’m sure you and my Buyers would get along quite well at a neighborhood event. But in over two decades of showing people property or helping to sell homes, never once have I sold a home to a prospective Buyer when the homeowner was present during the first showing.

The Buyer will find out about the low utility bills if and when they make an offer. But your presence at your house, following us around to point out all the charming details, is a buzz kill to any potential offer they may have thought to make.

Here’s the deal . . . people buy on emotion and justify with logic. The ’emotion’ almost always kicks in at the front door. With you being here, it makes us feel like we’re intruding on the home you’ve worked so hard to make charming, and our emotion never gets to kick in because we’re hearing about your emotion. All of these pictures of your children on the wall that you continue to point out makes us feel like they’ll be here at any moment and that we are uninvited guests. So please, Mr. and Mrs. Seller . . . G E T   O U T!

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