If you think today was just Thursday, you don’t know about the Broker Tour! While the practice varies from one community to another, in the Shoreline area, Broker tours are usually on Thursdays. In Madison, it is generally the first and third Thursdays of each month, while neighboring Guilford opts for the second and fourth. Some areas use the “caravan” approach: agents drive from one house to another in a preset order. Others use an “open house” strategy, where houses that are open that week are all held open for the same period of perhaps 2 hours. My preference as an agent is the caravan, which means I can still see most of the other houses when I have a listing on the tour, but, either way, the tour is a great way to gain exposure for listings — we say in Real Estate that we have to sell a house 3 times: to the real estate community (through broker tour, among other ways), to the buyer, and, ever more important these days, to the lender. If your house is on the market and your agent hasn’t scheduled it to be seen on the tour in your area, ask about it.
