Why You Need a Buyer Questionnaire

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2016

Buyer questionnaires may help you pinpoint the clients who are ready to make a move sooner rather than later. What's more, you'll also be able to glean insights to assess the individual needs of each buyer as you hunt through listings to help them find a perfect match.

Read more: 4 Buyers You Want to Run Away From

It's important to be strategic with your buyer questionnaires. In a recent article at RISMedia, Mike Brown, CEO of ScoreApprove, offered some of the following tips in crafting one:

• Make it short: You’ll annoy buyers by making your questionnaire too time consuming to fill out. For example, instead of asking for contact information like a street address, two or three phone numbers, employment address, etc., Brown suggests just asking for the e-mail address.
• Omit too detailed of questions: Skip details like job location, current living conditions, lease expiration date, and convenient times to view a house. “Those may be nice to know, but they feel invasive, and make the cost of asking far outweigh the benefit,” Brown writes. Instead, the most important details for many buyers is the lot and house size, front and back yard, choice of neighborhood, price range, and down payment.
• Use close-ended questions: “Stick with concrete questions that direct buyers to fill out the specific information you want,” Brown says. “Open-ended questions are intimidating, and often lead to ambiguous answers.” So replace questions like “what size house are you looking for?” with “how many bedrooms and bathrooms are you looking for?”
• Offer up a short introduction: Explain why you’re doing the questionnaire and why it’s a benefit to them. Inform them that their answers will help you be more effective in finding the right home for them.

Source: “5 Common Mistakes Agents Make with Their Buyer Questionnaires,” RISMedia (May 16, 2016)