How some agents waste your time and theirs with Open Houses

by Jay Myers on September 10, 2009

Now if that headline got your attention let me start by saying I am a fan of the open house / broker’s open when done properly. My issue is how a lot of real estate agents go about preparing for an open house. It it is a common belief among sellers and many real estate agents that a open house is really just another way for the agent holding it open to get new buyer prospects or customers more than an opportunity to actually sell the house they are sitting open. It does not have to be this way.

The other day I thought of this analogy while watching an agent scuttle around to find another licensed agent to sit their open house 2 days before it was scheduled. It reminded me of my childhood and starting a lemonade stand.

From an early age my younger brother Brad and I always had a entrepreneurial attitude; we always knew we wanted to work for ourselves. We sold GRIT newspapers in the neighborhood and later decided to write our own “newspaper” and sold it door to door. It was more a newsletter looking back, but we were 10 and 8 years old. We would type it up on a typewriter, pay the 3 cents a page to photocopy it and then hit the streets selling them for 25 cents a copy. We tried the mowing grass thing and pulling weeds from the cracks of sidewalks, but everyone else did that we wanted something with ingenuity. Yes, we would also open numerous lemonade stands, but even we learned at a young age in order to be profitable some preparation was involved.

On a side note Can anyone remember the last time a kid has came to your door trying to sell a product they made on their own? Unfortunately, it is usually from their school forcing encouraging them to sell for some benefit the young salesperson does not even comprehend, or know what the funds are for. Furthermore, definitively nothing for less than a dollar.

But now let’s get to why I am comparing a Open House to throwing up a lemonade stand. Brad and I had to learn from our mistakes, we learned we could not talk about putting up our lemonade stand on Friday night and expect to cover all the bases to be profitable on Saturday afternoon. There is more to opening a worthwhile lemonade stand than throwing up a card table and a sign, just like there is more to a successful open house than opening the door and throwing up a couple open house signs.

More often than I care to admit I see agents do nothing more than to stick up 3 – 6 directional open house signs in the neighborhood — usually the same day, sometimes tie some balloons to them, buy a dozen cookies go and sit the house. I admit I have even done this, but the the year was 2005 and you could throw a rock in the air and it would land within 2 feet of a qualified buyer. These are also the agents who usually have to report back to their sellers and are in the office whining the following Monday that no one showed up.

In today’s market we have both advantages and disadvantages.

The obvious disadvantage I will mention is we do not have as many qualified buyers scouring¹ the neighborhoods of Lewisville, Highland Village and Flower Mound to just come upon their dream home. Don’t get me wrong sellers in Denton County need not fear there are buyers out there. But the primary job of a REALTOR is to bring qualified buyers and sellers together.

I believe the primary advantage is just as obvious. Call it what you want; technology, the internet, social networking, they all deliver what is needed:

Direct contact to those interested in buying
Typically been Pre-Qualified
Are motivated to Buy now if they are searching for open houses

Signs are great, trust me I need them in some of these subdivisions. But if that is all an agent is using to sell your house are they doing their primary job. In today’s marketplace we have so many tools available, and sadly are not taken advantage of, I am confident is guesstimating 70% of REALTORS do not use these for publicizing or marketing their open houses:

In each one of those top 3 nationally recognized real estate websites there is a place for agents to go enter open house dates for FREE. I know a lot of agents aren’t using these because I also have the mobile apps installed on my iPhone and when I am out driving around and run across one of these signs I can go check right then. How many prospective buyers might be using these apps, or searched before leaving the house? I even worked at a smaller brokerage before Keller Williams Realty, and they had an office manager who was capable of going in and entering these open house dates on the offices listings in the local MLS. I inquired why they didn’t, the reply was they don’t see it as beneficial. WHAT?!?! Even if entering the dates only brought 1 prospect and closed sale for that brokerage that they wouldn’t have had without, isn’t that beneficial?

Wrapping up: A final tool that I still believe in, I still use, and I get results from especially on open houses is direct mail. Here is where planning for a open house more than a couple of days before it is necessary. If a client wants a open house and time does not permit for the bulk mail-out then I print my flyers and walk the neighborhood inviting them to attend. I always, for my first open house on a property, send 100-150 postcards to the neighborhood. Yes I do this to also generate new listing leads, but it does generate foot traffic to the open house. If I can get even 3 – 4 people to come through the door who may know someone, a relative, a co-worker who wants to live in that neighborhood or subdivision it was worth the $75 I spent in sending those postcards. I will be honest out of the 50 or so open houses I have had where I did this only 1 sale of that particular house has been the result. Was it worth it to me? Absolutely! Worth it to the seller? Listed and closed in 3 weeks and didn’t have to work around anymore showings — You betcha!