Open Houses are one of the old­est ways to mar­ket a home. Is an open house still a use­ful mar­ket­ing tool in the age of the inter­net? It all depends on what you expect from it. I’ve held open houses on the past two week­ends, one in the Seward Park neigh­bor­hood of Seat­tle and the other in Sam­mamish. I write this with open houses on my mind.

The suc­cess of your opne house depends on sev­eral fac­tors, including:

• mar­ket­ing
• loca­tion
• pric­ing
• tim­ing
• the seller
• the agent
• the weather and other events.

Mar­ket­ing

Don’t just rely on the neigh­bors and local gawk­ers. Get the word out ahead of time. In print and on line. Your agent has two audi­ences: other agents and the gen­eral pub­lic. Other agents get the word through inter-office email and the Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice where they can find open houses by date and loca­tion. The pub­lic gets the word via the inter­net at real estate por­tals like Zil­low and Tru­lia, the agent’s and/or broker’s web­site, and through spe­cially timed ads on craigslist; in print the pub­lic is informed through ads in the local papers and the notice at the local mar­ket. Putting stick­ers on the list­ing fly­ers ahead of time and adding an “Open House” rider with date to the lawn sign helps but reaches fewer peo­ple. Inter­net mar­ket­ing has an unbeat­able edge: map­ping and directions.

Loca­tion

How easy will it be to find your home? Often, that depends how easy it will be to give direc­tions. Regional and local Seat­tle area sign ordi­nances have become stricter and there’s been some con­tro­versy as this blog post in the Seat­tle Times points out.  It’s eas­ier to direct peo­ple to a home in a sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood in, let’s say  Red­mond or Wood­inville than to a condo in the Bell­town neigh­bor­hood of Seat­tle. The harder it is to help find­ing a home with sig­nage the more impor­tant is the pre-open-house mar­ket­ing, espe­cially maps and direc­tions. Thank­fully, open house seek­ers guided by GPS devices are becom­ing more common.

Pric­ing

The pric­ing fac­tor is closely tied to loca­tion. Very expen­sive homes don’t lend them­selves to open houses and the neigh­bors in exclu­sive neigh­bor­hoods may not want the atten­tion of strangers. An aggres­sively priced and well pro­moted home may attract a large crowd. There are risks involved in hold­ing an open house. You do not want to have two or three par­ties show up at the same time and traps about your house unsu­per­vised. To han­dle that kind of traf­fic your agent will need to have addi­tional personnel.

Days on Market

Tim­ing can be every­thing. The ear­lier after first listed the bet­ter but not too soon. Your agent should have stirred the pot and know the online traf­fic stats to gage inter­est and tim­ing. I try to list on a Wednes­day or Thurs­day and wait until the sec­ond week­end to hold an open house. Another tim­ing fac­tor for hav­ing an open house (or a sec­ond one) is after a change in the list­ing, such as a price drop or when the own­ers have moved out, when the clut­ter is gone and the home can be staged advantageously.

The Seller

You and your agent have to work as a team. Your agent should con­sult you first as to the date of the open house. You may have din­ner guest on the evening of the day. You or a fam­ily mem­ber may be sick or have a birth­day. Then there’s the prepa­ra­tion. Some things only you can do; like clean­ing out the lit­ter box or telling your teenage son to tidy up his mess. Also, put all pre­scrip­tion med­i­cine safely away. Leave noth­ing dan­ger­ous in plain sight, such as that set of Vic­tori­nox knifes. Any­thing really small and valu­able should not be within easy grasp. Call your agent about 15 min­utes after the end of the open house to make sure the coast is clear for your return. Ide­ally, you want your agent to stay until you come back to dis­cuss what’s hap­pened. A fresh mem­ory sup­ported by good notes will help eval­u­ate the event.

The Agent

You’ve prob­a­bly expe­ri­enced this. You go to an open house and the agent show­ing the home is not the list­ing agent. You ask ques­tions and the agent can’t answer the one of great­est impor­tance to you. The indus­try wis­dom is that this other agent will be inter­ested in find­ing the buyer among the open house vis­i­tors and rep­re­sent that buyer in the trans­ac­tion. At the least, the “house sit­ting” agent, often a more junior agent, gets the oppor­tu­nity to meet some poten­tial clients and hand out busi­ness cards. How­ever, in my opin­ion there is nobody bet­ter equipped to hold your open house than your list­ing agent.. Your list­ing agent knows you and your home the best. Your list­ing agent rep­re­sents you and your inter­ests the best. Your open house should not be the seen chiefly as an occa­sion for client prospect­ing -.not by your list­ing agent and cer­tainly not by another agent.

The Weather and Other Events

Sunny or at least dry days are usu­ally bet­ter. Rain and snow keeps peo­ple away, and if they come any­way their mood can be as cark as the skies and the mud they drag in even darker. (Keep those booties handy.) You can, within rea­son, take the weather into account but don’t let it dic­tate your event. Speak­ing of events, this is were you and your agent should check the cal­en­dar ahead of time. Don’t try to com­pete with the local home com­ing week­end, the World Series or Super­bowl. Also, if your home is in an urban neigh­bor­hood and park­ing is at a pre­mium don’t sched­ule your open house at the same day as the annual culi­nary event held by Greek Ortho­dox church around the cor­ner. On the other hand, a spe­cial sign announc­ing your open house on the fol­low­ing week­end may get more atten­tion than usual.

What Makes an Open House Special?

It is the only oppor­tu­nity for any­body to see a broker-listed prop­erty at their con­ve­nience on their own. It gives your list­ing agent and you a chance for unique feed­back. A skilled list­ing agent will be able to read a visitor’s silent reac­tions. Finally, the visitor’s ques­tions should be viewed as oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve the list­ing, which means improv­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of your home in print and, most impor­tantly, on the internet.

Open houses are great learn­ing opportunities.

Two days ago I received an email that said:
I think you have a very infor­ma­tive and inter­ac­tive Web­site with plenty of pic­tures. What I think is miss­ing are the sam­ple floor plans. Some­one like me would want to see the pic­tures (which you have) then look at the floor plans. Just a friendly com­ment.

I wish I had those floor plans.
In fact, I wish there would be floor plans not just for con­dos but for all homes. The only floor plans for the resale of homes I’ve seen were the architect’s plans for a custom-built home and another set for a planned remodel. In the resale of con­dos the doc­u­men­ta­tion that comes with the Resale Cer­tifi­cate may include floor plans but the qual­ity of the repro­duc­tion often leaves much to be desired. So do the floor plans cre­ated by apprais­ers which are meant to estab­lish only basic dimen­sions and lack detail.

Floor plans are com­mon when they are a nec­es­sary part of mar­ket­ing. When the new condo com­plex exists only on paper or is still under con­struc­tion, the “show­room” sales office dis­plays 3d-models and the brochures include floor plans. So do the web­sites such as the one for the Gallery in Seattle’s Bell­town neigh­bor­hood where one of my clients pur­chased a one-bedroom unit. (I’ve started a file with new condo and home brochures to have the floor plans for re-sales down the road.)

Man­u­als for appli­ances and cars but not for homes
If I remem­ber cor­rectly, in Ger­many, were I grew up, the pur­chase of a home included all plans with every addi­tion and alter­ation. In any case, this is how it should be. It would make every­thing eas­ier: inspec­tions, appraisals, say noth­ing of plan­ning a move and decid­ing what piece of fur­ni­ture should go where.

This isn’t ask­ing too much. When I sold a 1984 Mazda the new and fourth owner received the car with a detailed man­ual and a com­plete record of all repairs. When I was look­ing to buy a similar-vintage stereo sys­tem on craigslist the owner offered a com­plete man­ual in pdf for­mat. In fact, there are sev­eral web­sites ded­i­cated to prod­uct man­u­als dat­ing back sev­eral decades.

Plans on a Stick
Con­sid­er­ing that homes cost much more than most cars and a mul­ti­ple of any appli­ance it’s amaz­ing how lit­tle about them is doc­u­mented. In the age of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions it isn’t ask­ing too much for the builders of new con­dos and homes to hand each new owner the keys on a key ring that includes a USB stick with all floor plans and specifications.