A buyer and their Realtor® pull into the driveway. Before they’ve even parked, a curtain moves.
They walk up to the door, and it opens before they knock. Not the seller’s agent — the seller. Standing right there. Smiling. Ready to give the tour themselves.
Buyers don’t want a tour guide. They want ten quiet minutes.
The whole point of a showing is imagination. A buyer needs to stand in the kitchen and picture their own coffee maker on the counter. That doesn’t happen with someone hovering three feet away, narrating.
“We redid the cabinets in 2019.” “This window gets great light in the morning.” “You’ll love the neighbors.” Every comment is well-meant. Every comment also breaks the spell.
Following is worse than talking.
A seller who trails buyers room to room isn’t showing a home. They’re supervising one. Buyers start moving faster, talking less, opening fewer closets. Nobody lingers in a room they feel watched in.
There’s another reason to let the agent run the show.
An agent already knows the buyer’s wish list — the must-haves, the deal-breakers, the “if only it had” list from every other house they’ve toured. That’s the tour a seller can’t give. A seller can point out a countertop. An agent can connect that same countertop to the exact thing the buyer said they wanted three houses ago. That’s not narration. That’s matchmaking.
The window thing gives it away.
Buyers notice when a seller is peeking through blinds before they’ve even reached the door. It doesn’t read as pride of ownership. It reads as nerves — and buyers start wondering what they’re nervous about.
This is why we ask sellers to be absent during a showing.
Not because we don’t trust them. Because we’ve seen what happens when they stay. The buyer leaves, and later, in the car, someone asks what they thought of the house. And all they remember is the seller.
Not the kitchen. Not the light in the living room. Not the closet space they’d been hoping for. Just — that one where the seller followed us around.
A house has to compete for space in a buyer’s memory. It shouldn’t have to compete with its own owner.
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