Open Houses

I want to touch on a topic many sellers and agents are afraid to talk about; Open Houses.

Open houses are often a much demanded aspect of an agents arsenal by sellers and a much hated chore by agents.

The fact is open houses for the most part do not work in our current time and market place. 89% of buyers begin their home search online and can do so in their own underwear without leaving their own house. Open houses are old technology from the early days of real estate. Times have changed and folks, they simply do not work. Back when people actually read the newspaper and had no idea what a computer was let alone the Internet, open houses were a great selling tool. Now days the newspapers themselves have admitted that readership is down, classifieds are dwindling and everything is moving to the Internet.

Studies have shown that less than 1% of homes actually sell in an open house. I'm willing to bet that most of those were new construction homes which I used to sell. I still feel that for new construction those open houses are a must as people need to see and feel their options and begin the tedious process of building their new home. For existing homes the need is just not there.

Why do open houses still occur?

The reasons they still occur are simple, sellers are not educated in the open house process and the factual data that we as agents see. This data is readily available to us as agents and it is our job to educate our clients. the other reason is there are some agents who are "Old School" and do it just to please their sellers urging desire to have an open house. Again, if the agent were to sit down and educate their sellers this could be avoided. Some agents do them when they are "rookies" in hopes of snagging a potential buyer as a client. But if nobody shows up it is all a waste of time for both the sellers and the agent.

Folks why spent around $100-150 to advertise an open house for one weekend when you could be plastering it all over the Internet for far less than that price for 30+ days. Marketing has changed, times have changed and the times are dictating that we need to stop this nonsense called, "open houses."

So when it's time to list your house a better question to ask the potential agent is not, "How many open houses are you going to do?", but rather, "Do you provide a virtual tour and heavy Internet marketing?"