We live in a world of constant distraction with our senses being bombarded with information most of our waking hours. As our smart phones have grown in capability so has the level of access by others to our available attention. So not only do we have to contend with our physical interactions with others on a daily basis, we also need to allow for constant electronic interactions such as texts, emails, phone calls etc.

The net result of this is that we are distracted and/or trying to multi task most of the time. We are rarely genuinely present. The human brain can only pay attention to one task or object at a time, although it can flick from one to another rapidly and this is why we feel we can multi task.

This constant distraction and war for our attention is a problem for real estate agents and their ability to influence buyers to form an emotional attachment to a property that they are selling. Buyers are often just not fully attentive even though they think they are.

The product of this is that they don’t see detail at the first inspection and they take everything initially on face value. In other words, they are not present enough in the moment to think things through at the first impression. That comes later if they get to the stage of having a second inspection.

That is why it is so important that when you are selling a property that all your “big visuals” are as good as they can be. This is because this is the only thing that a buyer really sees at the first inspection. If that is not right, they will not emotionally attach to your property. To work out what your big visuals are, just take pictures of both the outside and inside of your property. Then look at the elements in those pictures that take up the most space. You will find it is walls (paint them), floors (clean or replace carpet), windows (clean them) and gardens (you know what to do).

I always laugh when an agent says to a vendor “oh they will see through that” or “you might paint it the wrong colour”. They think that they are saving the vendor money, but the opposite is true. They are actually doing the vendor a grave disservice that will limit competition for the property and cost significant money in the form of a reduced selling price. It’s quite simple, if you as a vendor pay attention to your big visuals, buyers will too.