First off, I limit how many we see.  If you're tired, I guarantee you that at 20 the buyers can't remember one from the other.  I try to keep it to no more than 5-7 homes and I explain to the buyers why.  If I need to, I lead them through a thought exercise around clothes or food shopping.

As far as keeping a record of what we see, I have a copy of the Broker MLS sheets and I make some notes on them.  I also give the public copy to the buyers.  As we go through, I play optometrist and we compare each house to the one before.  Winner plays against the next house until we get down to the final house where we write an offer.

I echo Ryan Huggins - Thousand Oaks, CA. However, I may not limit it to 5-7 homes.  I provide the MLS printout and a clipboard. They make notes and then we discuss when we get back to the car away from possible recording devices. 

Back when I did multipul showings, which was common living in a military base community, I would give each client (husband and wife) a legal pad and would ask them to write the address of each home we looked at on it and make a list of pluses and minuses. After showing I said okay, now back up by the address put NO or Maybe and then we would go off to the next address. It worked very well KAREN SANCHEZ .

If there were new home communities, they may not all have been on the mls, Between the mls sheets that I could get and brochures for the new home communities, I would have notes to fuel a discussion of possible choices by the seller.

And I agree that the buyers would have no clue after seeing 20 homes.

20 new home communities is a lot. If you see the onsite agent you're often there longer than a normal showing. I've shown a lot of homes in a day in the past. Now I've gotten good at narrowing it down. However, when people come to town and need to choose something in a short amount of time it is more difficult. I try to do pre-wok to eliminate as many as possible and start with the best.

I keep notes and the mls sheets.  I am trying to g paperless but it is not working well.  I keep track of showings of my listings with my google calendar, recording the showing agent and address.  This lets me follow up with text and emails  

I did something similar to what Bob "RealMan" Timm did. Our area isn't particularly large so it wasn't so much communities as individual houses and areas. We would eliminate houses as we went if we saw something more appealing. 

I print out a detailed showing tour for my buyers and me and take detailed notes after each showing on my copy and provide my buyers with a property assessment sheet for each property on the tour to review with them afterwards. Any home that is an immediate no, gets a big X mark across that sheet. 

I am not a fan of showing so many houses to a buyer in such a short amount of time or even longer time for that matter.  First off, I have always asked a lot of questions upfront before we even get close to looking at homes as to what they want, dream off, etc etc and what it reality in the market at the time.  I narrow it down to maybe 6 TOP homes that meet the majority of their buyers wants and needs.  Rarely has that not worked - unless of course we got out bid during a feeding freenzy market.  I could givea lot more details to my process but I don't want to write a blog post on it in Q & A!

Email myself the listings and then let them log in on an iPad and make notes on each listing for pluses and minuses.  We also eliminate ones that are out and out nos.  At the end of the day I email them the listings with their notes.  I also have a copy of their notes.  

The experience you describe cannot be purchased...only lived KAREN SANCHEZ As to how to do anything? The answers are there, awaiting the    do-ers

In CRE we have a 'Tour Package' which lists the properties in order of showing on list and map, comparison with others on the list, etc. 

Can be done on Excel spreadsheet but I like mine better (SAMPLE) 


This package we covered a couple hundred miles, so the map was really important. With 20 homes, I'd ask could you not have whittled down the number of homes for the first set of shows? Or did you have to see them all that day/weekend? It's hard for ANYONE to keep them all straight in such a short time! If you had no choice, I'd say use a spreadsheet and space out the entries so notes can be taken.

I have done relo for 20+ years, and one time years ago a couple called and had over 100 homes to see.  We widdled it down to 60.   I had copies for me and them.   Once it wasn't on the list, we crumpled it, and threw on the floor in the back seat.  Kept track of the top 3.  3.5 days, 60+ houses.  I was exhausted, but they bought and did the inspection prior to leaving town.

pdf pro and email with notes by buyers.  works great.  If they have an iPad I email to them, if they don't I email to myself, let them use mine and email it do them at the end of the day.

I take copious notes on each property

It's a challenge... Maybe start culling as you go along to wind up with a few special choices that might be revisited to refresh everyone's memories. 

I'm old-school.  I use a paper list, and keep track of them in my i-phone.  That's plenty for me.

The buyer makes their choice and I decided what to show based on their needs and wants. 3 homes and review, edit the needs and wants and begin again. 3 more. 

Your calendar and showing time will both help you to keep track of where you went and where you are going.

I keep a copy of the registration from each of the showings and communities we looked at.  I make a note of the level of interest on it too.

I have a sheet of paper with all the addresses on it and have them rate each house.

Funny that I saw this today, after explaining to new buyers today how we were going to manage all of our showings today! 

I take great notes. We name the houses - The Blue House, The Cinderella House, etc. It's a fun way to remember them. As well, we agree that we keep the top 3 so, we rank them 1-10...actually THEY do 100% of the ranking!

At the end of the day, we share our notes and put all but, the top 3 to the side. You never know when the top 3 may go before they're ready to Offer and we may revisit #4-10. We still have the notes from those showings. 

As well, the notes from the rejects are of incredible value to our search; they help me when I select new listings that I send them. 

Today's "Farmhouse" was a 9.5 and a 10 (the wife gave it the 10! So, I'm fairly certain we're going to be offering in the a.m. 😉