Real Estate Ray's Blog

You’ve cleaned the house, put away all of your personal items, lit candles, baked cookies and you’re ready for your open house! You can see it now…lots and lots of people taking their shoes off at the door, smelling those fresh baked cookies, walking through your home, pointing out all the things they love and can’t live without, falling so deeply in love with your home that they’ll write a full price offer! That’s the plan, anyway.

Your agent shows up 15 minutes before the open house begins, turns on all the lights, puts some music on the radio, makes sure there are plenty of information sheets ready for the visitors…and waits…and waits…and waits. Soon, it’s just about time for the open house to be over and nobody has stopped by. Wait…there’s someone walking up the driveway…this could be the ONE! Nope, just a nosey neighbor.

Are open houses an effective way of marketing a home? Probably not. If you have a poorly attended open house, is it your agent’s fault? Probably not. Here’s the truth:

Today’s home shoppers have more information available to them now than ever before. They have pictures, virtual tours, room dimensions, maps and calculators. A lot of home shoppers have toured your home virtually…while you’ve been sleeping or while you were at work. They’ve either eliminated it because the information on the web site didn’t grab them or they didn’t like the pictures they had to look at.

No amount of advertising in the world could coax them into the open house if they’ve made up their minds by looking at it on the web and dismissed it.

So…what’s the secret to getting them inside your 4-walls? There are a number of must-do’s…here are just a few:

• Hire a Realtor that knows how to write a description of your home that grabs your potential buyer’s attention and keeps it. The words you use to describe your home are critical to your success!
• Hire a Realtor that knows how to market your home on the web. Not just one web site. Your agent must know how to reach the buyers using a large combination of proven sites and know how to manage them.
• Hire a Realtor that takes good pictures or hires a professional photographer to take good pictures. This is where quality really does matter. We’ve all seen the picture of a room that’s blurry, pointed to high toward the ceiling or too low toward the floor. Ask your agent to preview the pictures before they go out to the entire world to make sure the quality is what you’re looking for.
• Hire a Realtor that offers a Virtual Tour! People want to see the entire house, not just a still photo!

Open houses are sketchy at best. Most of the time they’re held on the weekend when people have other things to do. Don’t panic if your open house doesn’t meet your expectations. Remember, it only takes one person to say “I love this house!”

If you’d like to learn more about how my team generates traffic, interest and offers on homes we list and sell, call me anytime at 605-728-9997 or e-mail me at ray@hjnteam.com