It's an age-old question, especially here in the Rain, and I hate to even bring it up, because this topic typically stirs some pretty heated debate, and anyone who reads my blog much knows that I'm a proponent of Open Houses.
In a sense, Open Houses are what got me started in the business. A few years back, I was hired as the community manager of a couple of hot neighborhoods in Edmond, working for one of the largest builders in the state of Oklahoma. During that time, I learned many things, one of them being how to effectively hold a successful open house. I learned how to draw the people in, how to capture their interest, and how to get them to buy. While OHs on an existing house are a different animal from new homes, many of the same principles apply. For that reason, I've always had great success with my OHs.
These days though, I find myself not doing them very often. I usually have my buyer specialists, or another agent, hold my listings open. However, admittedly, the agent is the one that benefits most of the time, not the home seller. Now let me squash the big objection I know I'm going to get right now. The answer is YES, I do have the discussion with my clients that OHs are not likely to get them a buyer for them home, and will most likely just give the agent the opportunity to pick up clients that will buy other homes. Once I've had that discussion though, some sellers still insist on having their home held open.
So, although I do see value in SOMEopen houses, I still have to question their effectiveness at times, which brings me to the story which inspired this post. About 6 weeks ago, I got a call from another agent, who has a home listed in the Cedar Pointe addition. Cedar Pointe is one of my main areas, in which I sell about 3 to 4 homes each quarter. At the time of her call, I had one active listing in Cedar Pointe, and she was calling to see if I'd be interested in doing a community-wide open house event. At the time, there were about 15 homes listed in CP, and it sounded like a good idea if it was marketed correctly to bring out the buyer traffic. However, the weekend she wanted to do this event was not a weekend that I was available, and neither was my buyer specialist, so I declined the offer.
3 Sundays ago (January 13th), about 12 of the 15 agents held their listings open to the public and had a pretty good turn-out from what I've heard from my neighbors and the participating agents. As a result of that huge open house event, one house sold... MINE. So, two questions naturally pop into my mind:
- Did I benefit from NOT holding my home open?
- How effective was that huge (and expensive) event?
Give me your thoughts....
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