Real Estate Blog - Virtual Open House

Home : Groups : Unique Marketing Contest

Virtual Open House

Okay - here is my idea. What do you think of a "Virtual Open House". I have heard many Agents and Sellers complain that open houses are not effective. Most of the time you get lookylose rather than interested buyers. Following are my ideas on how to implement a "Virtual Open House"

First setup a listing page or listing flyer that advertises the open house. The listing page should initially have basic information about the property and focus on advertising the open house. Something like "Visit us here at www.123StreetNameOpenHouse.com on Saturday for our virtual open house". We will have many photos, floor plan, virtual tour and video so you can view details about the property. We will also have live online chat and call sessions so you can ask the Realtor questions.
The Agent can advertise the open house in newspapers and everywhere else they normally do but advertise it as "Virtual Open House on Saturday the 15^th from 11:00am to 2:00pm. Join us as http://www.123streetnameopenhouse.com/"
Come Saturday at 11:00am the listing page would be opened up to the full virtual open house pages. It would allow the visitor to view the video of the home, virtual tour, images, floor plan, city data, etc. It would also include a live chat and/or click-to-call feature so the buyers could connect with the Realtor in real time. The buyer can also submit his/her information to request a live showing.

Not sure it would work but may be another alternative to weekend open houses that return little results and inconvenience the sellers. If you think this is a good idea, I would be willing to put together my idea of a "Virtual Open House" listing page.

Posted by Real Estate Advertising - Misty Lackie on 03/11/2008 04:40 PM

Comments (20)

20 Comments on Virtual Open House

MAR

2008

Actually, I think this is a pretty brilliant idea. It would be particularly appealing for remote properties and winter open houses.

I think combining the Virtual with the Actual would be pretty powerful... and time efficient. (I love Open House, especially here in sunny SoCal. Throw in a view and I'll stay from 11-dark... :)

Probably wouldn't feel the same way if there was real weather involved... Great idea!

Misty,

I think this is a great idea! I live in an area full of "techie's" and I think they may go for something like this. Let me know how it turns out if you try it. Good luck!

MAR

2008

Thanks Natalie, Sandra, Elizabeth for your feedback. I would like to put a virtual open house together as a trial. I can create one for a test property but it would be much nicer to create one for an actual property that is currently on the market. Do any of you have a listing on the market that you would like to try this with? If so, please contact me. There will be no cost for you. I will simply use your listing in the virtual open house I create and when its completed it will be yours to use.

MAR

2008

Misty,

Brilliant Idea! This makes good sense for my cold winter months in Green Bay Wisconsin. I could also see people utilizing this year round.

Let us know what you come up with or maybe an example i'd love to see it!

Thanks Greg. Do you have a listing I can create a sample for? I would love to create a sample for a real listing so if you have one let me know.

MAR

2008

Hey, this is kind of a neat idea. Beats the heck out of sitting around for two hours and sure will make things safer. I am wondering, well, maybe you can get them to sign in to win a free gift or something. Are we going to be serving virtual refreshments? :)

Lindsay - great idea about the sign in to win a prize.

I am still trying to find a Realtor who has a real life listing they would like to try this out on. Are you interested? I would rather do this with a real listing over a test listing.

MAR

2008

Misty I would love to do this....seriously, and I have a real live listing :) Tell me what you need and I would try this. I liked the idea of the chat at that time....but if we took phone calls then we couldn't be on the chat.....:)

Great Kathy! Please email me using the ActiveRain contact form and I will connect with you after the weekend to gather more details about your listing.

Misty- I just sent you a mail....I am very curious as to how this will work......but the concept is certainly a novel one.

MAR

2008

I like this idea and it would be great to have such a thing in my arsenal. I will be forward to hearing how such a idea could actually be implemented. Certainly no reason why it couldn't maybe using Go to meeting and us it ito host a Virtual Open House. There maybe a better format out there and it certainly would be a fun thing to try.

As I tell everyone , : Get out of judgment and into curiosity-you learn more this way"

Misty, congrats on winning the contest, great idea! I will be in contact with you for your prize this week.

Duane

Thanks William - yes I can see some great possibilities with this. I am excited to see what kind of response Kathy gets from it.

Thanks Duane! I can't take all the credit. It was just a basic idea that Kathy allowed us to elaborate on. She was a great player in all of this and I am hoping she receives a good response.

APR

2008

Misty- Congratulations appear to be in order :) So Congratulations.....and I like that from your initial idea to now, we have gone a step further and are including a Lender......this can be a really good thing. Out of curiosity how long did it take to set the whole thing up on your site?

Thanks Kathy! A lot of the technology we used for it was already built into ClassifiedFlyerAds.com. It was a matter of customizing some of the pages and adding other features such as the live chat to make it more like a virtual open. The process took about 4 hours but much of that was doing research on what was available to us (such as chat). It would probably take much less a 2nd time around now that we have experience putting all the pieces in place. Ideally if this works out, we would like to develop a more automated solution that would allow Realtors to create these on their own. Programming that automated, self-serve system is an entire different story (project) but if others see the benefit in this and it brings results then we would absolutely be up for the challenge. :)

Congrats. BTW i Love the innovative idea you posted. Great idea!

APR

2008

Congratulations. This is a wonderful idea. I am sure you have great success with it.

APR

2008

Misty,

Congratulations on coming up with such a great marketing idea! I am sure this would attract many interested buyers and would leave them wanting more! Great job!

AUG

2008

This is an interesting idea. I do not know how the technical aspects would work though I'm sure they could be figured out.

This blog does not allow anonymous comments