After posting the article below about the toilet shaped house I was reading about open houses and how they seem to be becoming more and more obsolete as a marketing tool for selling homes. Could it be that this kind of marketing is “going down the drain” toward obscurity?
It was interesting to me to read the statistics that this REALTOR(R) Magazine Online story had listed including; 80 % of home buyers began their search for a home on the Internet, only 42% of home buyers actually attended an open house.
Does this mean, with less than half of buyers attending open houses, that an open house is a bad thing? No, not really. Does my answer to that mean they are a good thing? Well, no, not really. Nationally the average is that only 1% of all homes on the market are sold via an open house.
So, why would someone (agent or seller) do it? The REALTOR(R) story highlights several reasons why an agent might hold a house open. If an agent is doing it because the client demands it because they think “it’s the right way to do it” then I’d say it’s being done for the wrong reasons. You don’t hold an open house just to placate a client. Some agents do it for marketing their own services. A trend right now in the industry is for large teams (one main person with several sub-agents) to have a group of buyer’s agents available that hold a listing agent’s houses open. Then they work to try and get names of neighbors to prospect for future listings and they also begin trying to warm up those attendees that are actually interested in buying a home but who don’t yet have an agent. Lots of people in the industry know that the majority of the public will work with the first agent they talk to so it’s in the buyer’s agent’s interest to glad-hand as many people as possible.
Team Reba works with clients to discuss the merits of an open house and not all situations are ripe for doing it. If you have a well priced home that is in good condition and that is expected to sell within the first 3 weeks of going on market you may not want to do an open house. Chances are the house will sell without the need to do one. If a client is living in the house at the time it’s on market then not having an open house will spare them having to be out of the house yet one more time.
We also discuss whether or not there might be security risks. Since the majority of people who come to an open house are neighbors or are people just curious about the market or a particular house from the street, why would you open it up to these folks who clearly are not qualified buyers for the house? Basically, you’re inviting a bunch of strangers in without anyone being able to verify who they are (most attendees want to remain anonymous) and if only 1 agent is holding the house open – who is watching the valuables?
Valuables is a broad term; it can mean treasures gathered over the years from travels (I had items like this stolen from a friend/I wasn’t the agent), medications in your bathroom cabinet, cash on your dresser (even coin jars), or other more financially tangible items such as electronics (laptops), or similar.
We typically recommend them when there is a particularly unusual or difficult property – such as a house on a busy road, an estate sale where we want extra exposure before reviewing offers, or a house with an odd layout or other unusual feature that might require spending time talking to prospective buyers and their agents about issues.
If you’ve got a comment or question about my position on the subject feel free to post here and I’ll respond. I’m always open to suggestions and feedback!
