That is an interesting idea.  That would work great for small neighborhoods too.  There is an area I am looking at moving to, and a month or so ago, there were 3 or 4 open houses coincidentially on the same day that made it very convenient.  There were also several FSBOs that had open houses that day too.  But the traffic in each house was much higher than I have seen when going through other open houses. 

It would be interesting to see if you get a lot of cooperation with that, or if the competition is too short sighted to see the advantages of that.

 Great Idea... "Community Open Houses"

I've done that successfully with agents in other firms for both public open houses and agent tours too. I've seen as many as 12 agents collaborate on running a full page ad in the local paper to promote the open house, too. Usually the spirit of cooperation is great and everyone wants to do whatever they can to get buyer traffic through the homes.

Heather

I have done this with other listings that are near mine. It works great. It's funny how I started doing this. I would look on the MLS to see who was holding open houses and Realtor tours near one of my listings and then hold mine open on the same day and time. Some agents got mad, but the smart ones knew what a good Idea it was. To date, we have held up to 7 simultaneous open houses. The street was packed with cars and prospective buyers. 2 homes received offers by that Monday.

I think it is a great idea...you would have more people looking and less expense for agents

I really can't take credit for the idea except to make others aware of it.  I think it would work great and the community would probably really appreciate the effort to put it all together like this Realtor is trying to do. 

Hi Tammy - good to see you here at AR!  Wow, you've really gotten busy!!

I had another agent call me when I was just starting RE and I did an open house the same time as his.  I've also done this a couple of times since (call other agents).  We need all the foot traffic we can get here and competition is a healthy thing.   

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the comment. I'm really excited about Active Rain.  It's been fun! Love the fact that I can give my opinions and someone actually listens!

About the open houses.... foot traffic is what it is all about and working together I always think is a good thing!  Hope business is going well for you and it was great meeting you.

Hi Tammy,

A group of realtors with the Saginaw board did this last year with mixed results. The people I spoke with about it thought part of the reason it wasn't as successful was that the advertising was weak. There were others who thought it went fantastic!

As an originator I would love to get involved with a project like this and remain on call for Realtor's throughout the "community open houses" to answer questions, provide financing scenerios, and prequal people on site. I would be happy to share in advertising expenses.