Is Open House an Effective Way to Sell Your Phoenix Home?

Recently, I’ve found a number of real estate agents across the country talking about the effectiveness of using open house to market a property for sale. General consensus among both the authors and folks responding to the articles is that most real estate agents today are NOT sitting houses open, particularly those agents that focus on internet marketing.

There are a number of reasons why other agents aren’t doing them, and since I am generally in that camp, I’ll thought I’d talk a little about why.

1. Open Houses rarely sell the house that is being sat open. This is the #1 reason I rarely sit my listings open. In 2005, sitting a house open would yield very favorable result. Just 3 years later, open house rarely leads to a sale, or as was the case in 2005, multiple offers to choose from. I wrote about the dramatic change in the effectiveness of open house in different market conditions last December, and if anything, the ineffectiveness of the typical open house is more glaring than ever.
2. Open Houses don’t result in meeting an interested buyer. The #2 reason an agent might choose to sit a house open, is to meet people that are not working with a REALTOR today, but are considering making a home purchase. If the agent can’t sell the home that is open to the prospective buyer, perhaps they can work together to find another home to buy. Essentially, the open house is used as a prospecting tool, prospecting for new clients.
3. Neighbors don’t visit open houses. One thing I used to like about sitting a house open, was using them as an opportunity to meet the neighbors, particularly if this home was located in a community that I sent direct mail to. If I could put a few faces with a names in my database, I was thrilled. The trouble is, neighbors today aren’t stopping by any more, and likewise, I think the neighbors enjoyed meeting me as well. Honestly, I rather miss those days…
4. Open Houses are inconvenient for a seller living in the home. To have an effective open house, the home owner needs to vacate for several hours. Most likely that’s on the weekend, in the afternoon, when almost all of us would prefer to be at home, relaxing by the pool, cooking on the bbq, or watching a game. What do home owners do for 4 or 5 hours, while the agent sits the house open, especially if you have young children?

Most important in the reasons is definitely the #1 reason, that it’s extremely rare right now, for an open house to result in selling the home that is being sat open in the current market. The odds of the perfect buyer strolling into an open house and declaring this is the home of their dreams, particularly given the abundance of choice in the market, is quite frankly rare, which is why it’s extremely rare to sell a home as a result of an open house.

HOWEVER. My office has had some pretty reasonable success with advertising open houses for our short sale listings in the Arizona Republic. We run the very simple 3-4 line ads with our cell phone, the price, rough area of the home, and that it is a short sale. Apparently, if you advertise a short sale, buyers instantly assume it’s a great deal and want to come see it. We have not sold one of our short sale listings via open house, but we have definitely had a far better response rate than any other type of marketing we’ve done, aside from the MLS, and so we are continuing to market open houses for short sale listings.

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