Do open houses sell homes?
Today I’m talking about do open houses sell homes? If you have thought about selling your home I am sure at some point you have googled do open houses sell homes.
You want to know, does it help? Is it worth my efforts? First let’s talk about statistics. According to the National Association of Realtors, only 7% of homes are sold by open houses and the yard sign combined. What that means is that someone driving past your home sees the yard sign, calls it and they want to take a look at it, and they actually will schedule an appointment and they actually purchase your home by looking at that yard sign. That is a combined effort of the open house.
Thirty percent of buyers find their property by a real estate agent. So they are working with a Realtor who sends them properties from the Multiple Listing Service, and it was not one that they found by searching themselves on Zillow realtor.com redfin, all of those
Websites. Why is it that they potentially could miss a property by looking at those websites?
Well there are a lot of properties on those websites and the information is outdated, incorrect. So, because that information is outdated or incorrect a lot of times buyers will…one, get frustrated because every property that’s coming up says, contingent,contingent, contingent, sold, sold, not on the market. So they’re seeing things that aren’t on the market, sold. You certainly can eliminate that in your search.
But, a lot of times buyers don’t eliminate that and they end up getting frustrated because they think what they’re seeing is actually accurate.
Now you may be asking, do you run open houses on your listings? I actually do. Do I think that that’s going to be the end-all be-all and I’m gonna put all my effort and energy into that open house? Absolutely not. Am I going to do them? Am I going to put effort into them? I am! Because my job is to get your home sold. Do I think that that’s going to sell your house and that’s going to be it? Most likely not. However,
If there is a 1% chance I’m going to take it, a 1% chance.
My efforts will go first into other marketing such as marketing it on the internet first and putting the majority of my effort into that because that is where the majority of buyers are as we can see.
50% honestly seems very low to me. I do still think that it is a little bit higher because the first thing that you think of when you’re going to buy a home is you get on the internet. That’s where you go. Now if we’re exhausting all of our efforts on our online marketing..certainly, it can’t hurt to do an open house.
Now. What are some things that can happen? Why do we have an open house? What buyers come through your open house?
Majority of buyers that are coming through your home are not not pre-approved. Now occasionally, you will get a few buyers that come through that have an agent and their agent was busy and they wanted to take a look at the house. So those are great. But that’s the less than 1% that might be coming through your home. So all that work to prepare your home for this open house. You have to realize that you may be preparing your home for buyers who are not one qualified to purchase your home.
Another thing that you can get when you are doing an open house is feedback from other buyers. Now this can be a positive or it can be a negative. So whenever I do an open house I like to give feedback sheets to all the buyers who walk through your home to find out what they think of your home. Some feedback can be beneficial and positive for you to be able to make changes in the house. However, hopefully we’ve worked together before the home went on the market and we have staged the home properly that these things won’t make a difference and if they are complaining about something it may be something that it’s just not worth making a change for.
However, you’re also going to get buyers who are telling you that your home is priced too high. Well those buyers don’t have Realtor representation. So are they being informed what the homes are going for in that area? And with the items that are in the home, have they seen a comparative market analysis on that subdivision? Most likely not. So they’re just going by , you know my home has this, so this should be worth this.
You know, they are not seeing the hard facts to go on and that can make a huge difference. I hear it all the time from sellers… They get very discouraged when every buyer that walks to the house says your home is price too high. So bottom line do open houses sell homes..
Absolutely not! Is It worth having it? That’s up to you. I as a Realtor I work for you… And I am more than willing to do whatever it takes to get the home sold and if you feel that the energy is worth it, then I am more than happy to do it. But again, you have to know the positives and negatives about doing the open house and decide for yourself whether it is worth the risk of wasting your time and energy, opening up your home to unqualified buyers. If you’re interested in selling your home, please give me a call at 708.268.0462. I hope this information was helpful for you. Until next week….. 🙂