Do Open Houses Work - Yes or No?

You only need to look around on any given weekend to see dozens of open house signs to know they do, otherwise "the open house" would have died ages ago.

An Open House is just one of the marketing tricks in the Home SellerPak "Marketing Bag". It may bring that one buyer and it may not. The objective of 'marketing' your home is to attract as many buyers as possible to your home so you can find the right one. For many, an open house proves invaluable for attracting the right buyer.

Real Estate Agents have mixed views on Open Houses. Some do them and some don't. In an a recent article it claimed 54% of real estate agents did open houses and claimed they brought buyers. What is interesting, is most of these agents consider themselves "Buyers Agents". The other 46% of agents did not do open houses. Interesting again most of these agents claimed to be "Listing Agents". They cited wasting their weekends as the main reason for not doing open houses. Even the President of one of the Florida Real Estate boards questioned weather by not doing open houses was the agent working in the best interest of the seller as he said statistics prove open houses bring buyers and reduce the number of days a house is on the market.

If you have ever had your home listed with a Real Estate agent you may well know how much work and effort and prodding it is to get your agent to hold an open house for you, especially if you have gone with a big name Listing Agent. An agent with 10-15 listings can't be everywhere every weekend so they end up being no where, so no open house for you. If you push hard enough they may allow an associate or another Buyers Agent in their office to hold the open house to satisfy you. With Home SellerPak you can have open houses all you want. Post them on our website with dates and times, put your Open House lawn sign up, put your directional signs up on major arterial roads around you to drive traffic, print of your features sheets from the Home SellerPak website and wait for buyers to show up. It's no big deal for you to show your house, you are at home anyway.

So is it worth the time and effort to hold an open house? We believe so. Do at least 2 weekends and if you are not getting the right feedback then stop doing them, but it could be the third weekend where that perfect buyer comes along.

The excuses real Estate agents use not to do open houses for their clients include:

It attracts thieves who are casing your property to rob you. Criminal studies have clearly shown homes that have had open houses have no higher rate of robbery than homes never having an open house. There is no substance to this one at all. Just look at the people who attend open houses. They are pretty much couples towing kids along looking for their next home.

You only get nosey neighbors. Yes you will get the nosy neighbors, but that's ok because they may have friends or neighbors that want to move into the neighborhood. Two years ago my next door neighbor sold his house to the guy 8 houses up from an open house because he loved the finished basement. On the down side even though the guy was only 8 houses up, he still paid 6% commission. He should have sold with Home SellerPak.

If an agent gives you a reason or has ever given you a reason for not holding an open house, please email us at info@sellerpak.com and tell us what it is. Let us look into the reason and we will tell you if it holds water in your area or not.