Beginning Realtors often think that a great drone shot or a video tour, or a write up in the New York Times are what will keep the seller happy, but none of that works if you don't know your basic Realtor skills.

                            Locking up

You would think that locking up a house would be simple, we've all been doing that for years, but for a Realtor, locking up new listing can be an order of magnitude more difficult. You wouldn't believe the number of different locks and security systems we have in Greenwich. Some use keys, often a funky key, of a type that you haven't seen before. Keys, however, can be just the beginning. Just because you found the keyhole in the door, doesn't mean that you can lock the door.

                                         Modern Doors

Often you have to do a jiu-jitsu move on the on the door handle, by pulling it up, while two spikes shoot out of the top and bottom of the door, but only if they line up precisely with two reinforced holes above and below the doors. That doesn't sound too hard, you just close the door firmly and do the proper wrist flick on the door handle. The problem is when the buyer wants you to open a doors that the owners haven't opened in a decade. Trying to get the spikes and holes lined up can mean excavating years of dead bugs and leaves in the door jamb.

                                         Old Doors

It's not just 21st century technology that causes problem. Our colonial builders loved to put a little swinging cover on the large keyholes of that period, so that snow didn't get in and freeze the lock. The problem for Realtors is that we never have two free hands when we go in and out of a house. We have brochures, listing sheets, and cell phones with keybox opening apps.

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What you have to do with these covered keyholes is to push the cover sideways and insert the key, but as soon as you do this the cover falls back and prevents you from turning the key. So now you have to set all your stuff down in the snow and the rain while you hold the cover with one hand and turn the key with the other, but even that may not be enough as may have to turn the key multiple revolutions to get the bolt to open or close and you can spend quite sometime locking and partially unlocking the door, till you hit on the right combination.

                                         Garage Doors

Owners often don't have a spare garage door opener and understandably are reluctant to give them out if they do. What can easily happen is after the new agent has locked up their big listing, they walk back to their car parked in the driveway and see that one of the garage doors is not closed. Now the agent has a decision to make, does he walk all the way around the house, unlock the door, disable the alarm, go down to the basement and push the garage door opener from the inside and that reverse that set of steps to exit OR does the agent do the run and hop.  

Many garage doors are pretty anemic when it comes to closing speed so going inside the garage and pushing the garage door button and running for it like some border collie in a flyball competition is the easier and quicker way, but you need to be a good runner and a jumper.  You have to jump, because all garage doors are required to have an electric eye across the bottom, that reverses the door if someone blocks the light beam. This means that you have to run towards the descending garage door and then at the last second jump over the invisible beam, while not jumping high enough to hit the descending door.

Now clearly, this is a dangerous thing to do, and I would never do this, but I've heard of younger, spryer agents trying this.

              Turning out the lights

Like locking up, you would think turning out the lights would be easy, but it's not. Often, we will find that our clients have been nice enough to set up the house for the showing by turning on all the lights. At the end of our showing, it's our job to find all the light switches and turn off the lights.

                            Lamps

Lamps are still mainly analog devices with clearly visible switches. Of course, you can get the five-bulb lamps with the rotating switches that turn on the lights in all sorts of combinations, but only turn them all off in one easy to miss position. You also have the lamps with the invisible touch switches that are the same color as the lamp itself so you have to do kind of a lamp massage to find this hidden spot that will turn off the lamp.

                            Wall switches

The term "wall" switch can be a misnomer. These switches are often hidden inside cabinets, behind books in a bookcase or down near the floor. My favorite one was some beautiful under-counter lighting where the electrician hid the on/off switch behind cabinet doors underneath the sink. There was even a decoy switch that turned on the garbage disposal. The actual switch was a foot further back in the dark.

The other wall switch nemesis is the family of 4, 6, 8 or even 10 switches at the front door as you leave. None of these switches will be labeled unless you have someone that really loves their Dymo labeler. Half of these switches control exterior lights. So, you now get to play gopher, popping in and out of the front door checking to see if you've turned on one the exterior lights. With 8 switches you have only a 1 in 256 chance of getting all the lights off by random chance.

                            Smart houses

The good thing about smart houses is that owner usually can't figure it out or explain it in any details, so often he'll say just leave everything as is. Hopefully, there is an all-on / all-off button. With that, an agent can arrive at a 6-bedroom house, 5 minutes before the showing begins and turn on all the lights on 4 different levels with 1 touch. At the end of the showing, you hit the all-off button and you are done, except for all of the lamps and the secret closet lights.

These later are billed as a convenience, but only if you are the type of person that puts everything away every time you leave the house. These switches are a pressure button that are in the door frame and turn off the closet light when the door is closed. The problem is that once you close the closet door the poor Realtor can't see that the light is off, so you look for a non-existent wall switch. These pressure switches are diabolically designed so that when you open the door a crack the light comes back on, which from the outside looks like it never went off.  You then have to explore the frame for that brass ball just barely above the surface

              Alarm systems

Alarm systems often come with simple four-digit codes; the problem is the other part of the process. On some alarms you hit a special key first, enter the code and hit the same key again, some you only hit the key at the end, on other systems you only need to enter the key. Do it wrong several times and you may have problems. Luckily, the police department is very familiar with this situation, so the situation rarely gets confrontational.  I always carry my GAR card in my wallet, so I'm not mistaken for one of our better dressed burglars.

              Baby monitors and cameras

With some of today's baby monitors you could actually film a Hollywood movie. We are talking 1080p with Dolby sound, autofocus and tracking. If you are the buyer or their agent it's downright creepy to show such a house, particularly, if you find out about the cameras after you've been in the house for a while. Owners can tune in from anywhere in the world or just go to videotape later. Buyers agents will warn their clients if they know there are cameras present. Who want's to tick off a seller with a comment about the ugly ancestral pictures, if you want to buy the house. Agents also get good practice in spotting the teddy bear that is out of place or the air freshener with  the flashing red light.

              Stoves

I once was on a marketing panel with a bunch of different professions. The marketing psychologist was fascinating. She said that people decide emotionally with their limbic system and then justify that decision with their higher brain. She said that smells, good and bad, go right to the limbic system. As a result, in pre-Covid days, I would bake cookies or provide hot apple cider with cinnamon to give the house a homey smell.

The problem is that stoves have gotten high-tech. You don't just turn a knob, often there are no knobs. Try finding the control panel on one of those black glass cooktops. It's kind of like a Ouija board, you never know what's going to pop up. Convection ovens are another issue. Coconut pecan cookies that cook perfectly in 16 minutes in a regular oven become hockey pucks in a convection oven in the same time.

So, if new agents can master all this household equipment, they can get down to real business of selling the house without ticking off the owner, at least most of the time.

Mark Pruner has recently joined his brother, Russ, at Compass real estate at 200 Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich CT. He can be reached at his new email address mark.pruner@compass.com or by phone at 203-969-7900.