Ken Jacobs

Open houses are anything but a waste of time for many reasons that benefit both the real estate agent and the seller. Not all houses are good for open houses. The home should show well, especially compared to similar homes in the neighborhod. It should have sufficient upgrading and be professionally staged to show at it's best. To dismiss the idea of any open houses up front, though, is doing a serious disservice to sellers, and taking away an excellent marketing opportunity for the agent. While it's true that I can count on one hand the number of times in 10 years in this business that a buyer has walked in and said "I'd like to buy this house today", a number of other very important things happen at open houses quite frequently: 1.) A buyer comes through whose agent doesn't work weekends or hasn't shown them the house as the agent is too busy. The buyers come through alone, leave and call their agent to write an offer immediately. That has happened to me frequently. Now maybe the agent would have gotten around to it, but why would I want to wait for someone else to kick-start my sale? 2.) Many, many "tire-kickers" as I've seen them called here go to open houses with no intention to buy a home, but then see something that drives their interest and the next thing you know, they're on the phone to their husband, wife, mother, or whoever, and then to their agent to help them figure out how to make it happen. (This just happenned to me this week, as a buyer's agent, so I'm thankful to the agent that held that property open last weekend!) By the way, this is also the way I bought MY current house, as my wife visited an open house and called me - YOU'VE GOT TO SEE THIS", she said. We weren't thinking of moving, and she wasn't planning on visiting an open house that day. Next thing you know, I'm on the phone with my mortgage broker and writing my own offer! 3.) It's an excellent marketing opportunity for the agent to showcase their staging and marketing skills, especially if this is a neighborhood you frequently sell property in. It also allows future sellers to see the importance of preparing a property to sell by upgrading the condition and staging. That makes that conversation a lot easier down the road, when they've seen the difference it made to other properties in their own neighborhood. 4.) Many buyers use the internet to start looking before they pick an agent, and use open houses as one method of "interviewing" an agent to use. If you're not picking up any of those leads, then you should adjust your interaction, as you simply aren't attracting buyers to you. I love going up against agents that don't do open houses in listing presentations, as I can tell all the actual stories of situations like those described above. I can see the light go on for sellers when I discuss this, and they relate to their own visits to open houses in the past.