Open Houses Are a Necessary Evil

Open Houses Are a Necessary Evil

“Open houses are a necessary evil.” This was a comment I heard from a fellow real estate agent not long ago, and to be honest, I couldn’t disagree more. Here are some thoughts I have on open houses, having hosted quite a few of them here in Champaign-Urbana...

1.It’s very, very rare that a home will sell from an open house. The odds are probably 1 in 100 if not worse. If you’ve priced your home right, have and keep it in fabulous showing condition, give it great internet exposure, and make it easily-accessible to qualified buyers, then your Champaign-Urbana home should sell. Whether or not you have an open house is irrelevant, in my opinion.

2. If I were selling my own home, I would not have an open house. While I believe that they are few, there are people out there with bad intentions. And I don’t want these people touring my home. I would much prefer that the people entering my home have been pre-screened by a Realtor.

3. At the many open houses I’ve done in the past, I observed two main types of visitors: #1 The lookie loo. This might be a curious neighbor, a random passer-by, or (my personal favorite) the homeowner who is perfectly content with his/her own home and freely admits that he/she spends most of their Sunday afternoons looking at homes simply “because it’s fun.” These people are not buying anything. And #2, The serious buyer who is working with an agent and would have seen the home anyway. Had you not been holding the open house, the buyer simply would have scheduled an appointment to see the home some other time.

4. Some things are out of your control. You may give up 2+ hours on a Sunday afternoon for an open house only to have no one show up because it was pouring rain. Even when the weather’s nice, there’s always a chance that no one will stop by. It happens. And when it does, it's a huge disappointment.

I believe open houses were probably quite necessary “back in the day” before internet marketing existed. Today information is widely available online making open houses a far less practical and less efficient method of “getting the word out” about the home.

Will I do an open house if a seller requests one? Sometimes; however, I give a pricing incentive for sellers who choose NOT to have one. Given how much time it takes to prep for and hold an open house, I think that’s fair to everyone.

No, I don’t think open houses are a necessary evil. And I even think it's okay to choose not to do them. Times have changed and our tactics should, too.