What makes a successful OPEN HOUSE?

Simon:

Don't cut and paste your response to other blogs-make an original reply please. 

Say, if you are happy with not doing open houses, then simply don't do them.  They work for some realtors and some buyers prefer them.  Who are you to judge other people by how they prefer to market? 

"Ethics Knocking"?  Please..... I think you are over-reacting.

The person sitting in the open house is there to showcase and sell that property.  If the people walking through aren't interested in that house then what, you should tell them "oh, no, sorry you don't want this house so I won't talk to you about other homes?"  Please.......So, if you market in a seniors newsletter and some grandson reads it and calls you, should you then tell them "no, I was only marketing to the seniors"?  is that it?  Tell you what, don't bother responding.  You obviously have your opinion and are entitled to it. 

You do what you do best in your market, what works for you and don't be so quick to frown upon people that are using their personal time on weekends-away from their families to work for a living.

"Sure occasionally someone might sell a home through an open house"

Enough said, that is the reason why realtors work open houses and why some sellers appreciate the time one puts into holding one for them-because it might sell because of it.

Some people spend their afternoons driving around looking at homes-I've done it before.  Some just to be snoopy, others because they want to find a house to buy, some because they might want to buy a house.

As I said before, stats show its only about a 5% success rate (I tell home owners that).  I think a lot of the open house success has to do with the preparation and marketing for the open house-as well as luck,  timing, and location.

To work an open house solely to collect leads isn't putting your client first.  Your first effort should be to work for the home owner in selling that home but, you should also be constantly networking your services.

You make a lot of negative assumptions-The main reason a realtor is there should be to sell the house period-we've agreed to that.

Should a seller have to be told about trying to capture names?  I think one should capture names at an open house always and if that person isn't wanting to buy that particular home, then they should be helped with whatever else they want.  I think most sellers would agree to the fact that a realtor is there on probably a weekend, on commission, and they need activity to succeed.  I think they understand the sales aspect of the business.  I've seen realtors in houses that aren't there to do either-like it's just an obligation so I agree with part of what you have said but, I don't think you need to be so hard on the whole industry.  For the most part, there are some good-souled realtors out there trying to do what they can to help their clients and trying to make an honest living.

I didn't cut and paste anything?  I wrote a response to your other blog article and decided-as I mentioned in that response that I would probably use that as a topic. 

The drama queen reference was the fact that he had to use all caps and bold "HELLO... ETHICS KNOCKING".  I thought his whole post seemed to be an attack on realtors for believing that an open house can work for them and their sellers.  If you don't agree with a post, you can post your opinion or just don't read it but I don't feel its necessary to be "mean" about it-and his posting seemed to be just that.  He also left almost word for word the same response on my blog above. 

I didn't attack him?  I said "don't be a drama queen". Oh, correction, I said "could you be anymore of a drama queen".  In my opinion, I thought his post was over the top-an overreaction (i.e. being a drama queen) as you just stated about mine.  My apologies I didn't mean to offend anyone.  This is a great place for brainstorming, education, and reading about trials and tribulations of others and I dislike negativity.

BTW, I just saw one of my earlier responses was in bold-I don't know why that happened I guess I didn't pay enough attention when responding.

Drama queen is a slang term-not in the context you are alluding to.  You have taken it way out of context so I apologize for using the term and I will gladly remove it.  Again my apologies.  My reference was simply to what I considered to be over-reacting to a blog subject.  Not everyone that does open houses is there to collect leads first and sell the house second.  I think we shouldn't use generalizations about people period.  I thought it was a mean response-to both blog articles.

Hey, you and Dan are both from Florida and I'm stuck in WI/MN (weather in the teens).   Do either of you need a pool boy?  :-)

At least you and Dan didn't say you were Dolphins fans (although I was there to see them beat New England I think it was 2 years ago!).

You are the one who just made the last reference to cutting and pasting-although I'm not sure why I wasn't really able to follow it?-just pointing that out I guess......nevermind.

Anyway, point is-and I can see this from the responses from others (both for and against) that, for some people-and areas, open houses work, for others they don't. 

Just because someone doesn't believe in something doesn't mean it's wrong for everyone-and not everyone has the same agenda so I don't think people should be reprimanded on a blog for talking about what they find is an effective tool for them!  If you don't like them, don't do them.

Just my opinion.