For those who know me, I am not a huge fan of Open Houses.
Statistically, they rarely sell the house that you're sitting, but sellers really like us to do them because it's one of the few real estate tools they're familiar with so they like to see us use them.
So my recent listing (a 3br condo), even though we had lots of activity, my seller wanted me to schedule a Sunday open house, and I happily accommodated them. We went live on Monday and very quickly had lots of showings including several second-showings, so I was fairly certain that we'd be under contract before the Open House. Sunday morning that proved true... I found two offers in my email, and we quickly came to agreement.
We decided that it was too late to cancel the open house, and the winning buyer wanted to bring some family members through the open house anyway, so we decided to carry through with the open house (I did ask her to be circumspect at the open house, so as to not 'rub it in the noses of any other visitors'.)
Well... our open house was swamped. We had over 25 groups of visitors (maybe a total of about 75-100 people total in a brief 2-hour period). It was non-stop people, I never even got a chance to 
sit down.
If we hadn't been under contract prior to the Open House, we sure would have been afterward. I could have sold that unit two more times that yesterday. There were a whole bunch of disappointed people yesterday.
Comments(8)