If your home is on the market right now, you should be able to answer one simple question: what happened this week? Not a vague "things are quiet," but specifics: how many showings, what the feedback said, what new comparable sales closed, and what we are doing about it. Your Realtor's job while your home is listed is not done when the sign goes up. It is done when the deal closes, and you should be able to see the work every week. Here is the communication rhythm I believe every seller deserves, and what to do if you are not getting it.
The Weekly Minimum
Every week your home is listed, you should hear five things without having to ask for them. First, the showings: how many, who came through, and what type of buyer they were. Second, the feedback from those showings, the real comments, not a sanitized version. Third, market movement: what comparable homes sold for, what new listings came out near you, and whether anything about your launch position has changed. Fourth, marketing activity: what was delivered, what went live, what was tried. And fifth, the plan: what happens next week and what, if anything, you need to do.
That list is not a luxury, it is the difference between a listing you are participating in and a listing that is happening to you. When I take on a listing, the seller knows these five points arrive on a schedule, written down, every single week until closing. I explain the full process on my selling guide page.
Feedback From Every Single Showing
Buyer-agent feedback is not perfect, and it is still the most useful information a seller can get. It tells you what the market actually sees when it walks through your door: whether the price chatter is consistent, whether the kitchen is the reason people linger, whether the basement is the reason they leave. Your Realtor should pass that along honestly and then explain what, if anything, to do about it. A showing that produced no offer is not a failure, it is a data point, but only if you actually hear about it.
When showings happen but offers never arrive, the feedback usually explains why, and it is almost always one of the causes I walk through in my article on showings with no offers: the price, the condition, the presentation or the way the process was handled. Silence about feedback means the listing is not being worked, or the hard conversations are being avoided, and you need to know which one it is.
When the News Is Not Great
The weeks when a listing cools are exactly when communication matters most, and they are also when it most often goes quiet. A good Realtor brings you the problem before you have to ask: showings slowing, buyers waiting, the comparable sales moving past your price. And they never bring a problem without a plan. If the diagnosis is pricing, we look at the evidence together the way I describe in my pricing article. If it is condition or presentation, we address that. If it is marketing reach, we fix the marketing.
The sellers who get into trouble are the ones whose Realtor goes quiet in week four and week seven, when there is nothing good to report. A professional does not hide in those weeks. A professional uses them.
Marketing You Should See, Not Guess About
Being listed is not the same as being marketed, and the distinction shows up in the weekly report. You should be able to see the photography, the floor plan, the video, the placements across the major sites, and the targeted reach in your neighbourhood, because your Realtor decided that was the plan, not because the system did it automatically. If your agent cannot tell you what the marketing plan is, you almost certainly do not have one. I wrote a full breakdown of what a real marketing plan includes in this article on what marketing actually looks like.
What Silence Means
Let me be direct: if you have not heard from your Realtor in more than a week while your home is listed, that is a red flag, not professionalism. Busy agents are not exempt, because busy is exactly why they hire teams and systems. A home that sits quietly is usually a home whose story is not being told, and silence from the listing side is how sellers discover it too late. I have sold more homes in East Gwillimbury than any other Realtor over the past 10 years, and I can tell you the listings that succeed are the ones where the seller knows exactly what is happening, every week, with no surprises at the end.
The Service You Should Expect
You are paying for a result and for the work that produces it, and the work is visible. If your current listing is not being communicated to you, ask for the weekly update before you do anything drastic. And if the answer is that there is no update because there is no activity, that is information too, and it deserves a real conversation about price, condition or marketing rather than another quiet week.
If you would like to see what a properly communicated listing feels like, give me a call. I will tell you exactly what you should be hearing from your agent, look at your listing with fresh eyes, and give you a straight answer about what is working and what is not. Even if you never end up working with me, you will leave that conversation knowing what good looks like.
Thanks, Lee :)