Selling a House With Kids in It: How Showings Actually Work

The reason a lot of families do not list is not price. It is the picture in their head of six weeks of strangers walking through the house while the kids are trying to eat dinner.

That picture is mostly wrong, and where it is right, there are ways to make it shorter. Here is what showings actually look like, and how I run them for a family.

A buyer’s agent requests a time. You get notice, usually the same day or the day before, and you can say no to any particular slot. You leave, the agent brings the buyer through with a lockbox, they are inside for fifteen to thirty minutes, and they leave. Afterward the agent gets feedback, and you hear it from me.

You are not there. You do not meet the buyer. Nobody knocks unannounced. The dog is with you or in the car or at a neighbor’s. That is the whole event.

Here is the part that changes the math for a family.

When your house goes live, every buyer with a saved search in your range sees it in the same hour. The buyers who have been waiting for something like yours book showings right away. That is why the first two weeks on the market are the busiest you will ever have, and why I put all of the marketing into that window instead of trickling it in. The photos, the 3D walkthrough, the paid ads, the syndication, the open house: all running inside the first week, so the buyers who are ready see it when it is new.

For you, that means the disruption is front-loaded on purpose. A hard couple of weeks, then it slows down. It is much easier to survive a sprint you can see the end of than a slow drip that goes on all spring.

You can set showing windows. Not “any time,” and not “only Sundays from two to four” either, because buyers who cannot get in go look at the other house. Something like weekday afternoons and evenings after a set time, plus weekends, with a two-hour notice minimum. Nap time blocked. Dinner blocked if you want it. I will tell you if a window is too tight to work.

You can also ask for one open house instead of many. One well-run open house in the first weekend does more than four scattered ones, and it is one afternoon out of the house instead of four.

The families who do this well have a system, and it is not deep cleaning every day. It is a fifteen-minute reset before each showing.

One laundry basket per kid. Everything on the floor goes in the basket, and the basket goes in the car. Dishes in the dishwasher, counters wiped, beds pulled up, blinds open, lights on, trash out, toilet lids down. The dog rides along with you, and its bed and bowls go in the car until you're back. Done.

Before listing, the real work is boxing up half of what is in the closets and the toy bins, because you are moving anyway. An emptier house resets in fifteen minutes. A full one does not.

The walkthrough does something specific for a family: it lets buyers tour the house from their couch first, so the ones who come in person are the ones who already like it. Fewer curiosity showings, more serious ones. It is one of the reasons it is on every listing I take, not an add-on.

Have three places. A park for good weather. The library or a friend’s house for bad. And a drive that takes exactly as long as a showing, because sometimes that is all you need. Keep a bag by the door with snacks, chargers and the dog leash.

Tell them the truth in a sentence. Someone wants to look at the house because we are moving. Give the older ones a job, like the basket, and give the younger ones the treat that comes after. Kids handle a plan better than they handle a mystery.

Once you are under contract, the showings stop. There is an inspection, an appraisal, maybe a final walkthrough, each one scheduled and each one short. The hard part is the first two weeks. Everything after that is calendar work.

Call 702-881-6562 or email JArendt658@gmail.com. Tell me how many kids, what the schedule looks like, and what you are worried about.

I will tell you what the showing windows would look like for your family, how I would front-load the marketing so the busy stretch is short, and what the house needs before day one. If the honest answer is to wait a few months, I will tell you that too.

John Arendt, Realtor, has sold homes across the Las Vegas valley for 20 years, in Henderson, Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Anthem, Boulder City and North Las Vegas.