Thanks to my colleague Susy Kostynuk for her post...on Realty Kitchen... Thought I would share it with my AR friends. Thank you Susy for this great post!
A lot of the old-school methods of selling real estate in Mississauga are starting to go by the proverbial wayside. Bench advertising, although good for branding, does nothing to sell a home. Newspaper advertising still gets you a lot of dead leads, but the good ones are getting fewer and farther between. Even the more-recent method of keeping a database of agent email addresses and then sending each and every one of them a "Just Listed" EXCLUSIVE email... even this ploy has seen much better days.
(Heck, it was legendary Mississauga Realtor Gordon Daly who ADVISED me to do this, and then HE was the first one to UNSUSCRIBE me!)
"The MLS gives us everything we want!" agents defend.
So then what about the Open House, eh? The Open House has been the King of Home-selling Tactics ever since the invention of the welcome mat. Long loved (hated) for its unique blend of Serious Buyers, Passers-By and Nosy (read: contemptuous) Neighbours, the Open House has historically been a profitable diving board for sellers jumping head-first into the deep waters of the real estate market. But with the exponential advancement of the Internet and the de-socialization of human interaction, is the Open House still King?
You bet your assessment it is.
First, let me address my fellow agents: IF YOU ARE NOT HOLDING OPEN HOUSES AT EACH AND EVERY OPPORTUNITY, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE JUST STARTING OUT, THEN YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN SUCCEEDING.
The benefits of the Open House are almost innumerable for the agent. First let's broach the people coming in... The Serious Buyers - well, this helps you and your client without saying, but the real value for the agent lies in the Passers-By and the Nosy Neighbours.
The Passers-By will likely have no agent............ Ding ding ding ding!!
The Nosy Neighbours? Well, half of them are nosy, for sure. But the other half are comparing homes to see what their home might be worth............ Ding ding ding ding!!
Is there a math here that I have to calculate?
Okay, okay. Forget about the people coming in... let's talk about client perception. What is YOUR client thinking about you? Is YOUR client thinking that you are working hard enough for them? Is YOUR client going to recommend you to their cousins?
Open Houses are ACTION. They are TANGIBLE. They are PART OF THE PLAN. It matters little how effective they are. The point is, you are earning your keep - or, giving the perception you are, at least.
How effective are they, anyway? Some statistics show that open-house buyers account for 2-4% of eventual deal-makers. Hoo-boy! That's not a whole heck of a lot of handshakes, is it? No, it is not. But there may be an argument for the abstract influence of those two-to-four-percent. It is not far-fetched to imagine the impact of the fact that there has been (or will be) open houses on the potential offerer. If a person-with-designs-on-your-client's-home knows that other people have seen the house, they may indeed transfer their warm-and-fuzzy feelings about the house to somebody else, and spur themselves into action. (Naturally, this would only be effective in the first couple of weeks of the listing.)
So let me now address the sellers - the homeowners: IF YOUR AGENT IS NOT HOLDING OPEN HOUSES FOR YOU AT EACH AND EVERY OPPORTUNITY, THEN PERHAPS YOU MADE THE WRONG DECISION ABOUT YOUR AGENT.
Why? You ask... I just finished telling you about that heinous two-to-four percent figure - so what gives?
Well, you probably won't sell your home through an Open House - this is undeniably true. BUT (and this is a huge BUT)... if your agent cannot convince you that an Open House is absolutely essential to the eventual good-sale of your property, then tell your Cousin Louie that you may have hired a dud.
First of all, ANY method of improving your odds is imperative to you - even if it IS only a low percentage. In your eyes, the agent is making a virtual MINT off of you (they aren't, really, but that's another blog), so why aren't they working themselves to the bone to sell your property??
Secondly, and much more importantly, if your agent isn't taking advantage of the inherent benefits to herself for holding an Open House, then that agent is either A) Lazy, B) Stupid, or C) Too Busy For You. And I'm fairly sure that you signed up for D) None of the Above.
Open Houses are a clear opportunity for Agent Success, and if your agent doesn't want to work hard at every opportunity for success, then your agent just isn't working hard enough for YOU.
So yeah... Real Estate Has Changed. But the importance of Open Houses has not.
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