What are these open houses, exactly? Open houses have been an important step in the sale of residential real estate to expose more people to a home for sale. People can come in, take a look, move to the next house if they don’t like it, or seal the deal if they do. As it aims to attract a big number of people, open houses are normally held on weekends because most people are off from work on weekends. It is not simply just making a home available for viewing but it also involves home staging, online marketing, and some advertising strategies too.
Real estate agents are the ones who make sure this process is fully maximized and that everything is set. It’s a lot of work, definitely, as they usually spend around 12 hours or more working on each open house event. Some of the tasks they perform involve online marketing, printing, and providing the necessary information to attendees. Real estate agents themselves may sometimes put out signs to draw drive-by traffic and they would usually list the homes in the real estate sections of newspapers too. However, their most important role is to host the actual event.
Although it has always been a part of the residential real estate sales, the need for open houses has decreased throughout the years. Why? Well, everything is automated now. Technology has enabled people to watch movies and slide shows and view photographs of homes online. Internet listings and other online real estate information is making things easier for everyone. There is basically no need to attend open houses anymore if you know how to use the internet or yet alone, a computer. In fact, it has been a trend that open houses are becoming more of an option, rather than a requirement for selling a home. More and more home buyers are shopping online. I’m guessing there’ll be an available app for real estate soon, yes?
However convenient the Internet tools are, seeing is still believing and some people would remain to choose to attend these open houses, so the tradition continues. I myself would choose to do so – the experience itself of walking through the halls and “trying on” the house is a big deciding factor (that’s just me though). A broker open house, however, is one where real estate agents invite other agents to bring their clients to tour the house. This type of open house carries the advantage of inviting people who are more of the serious buyers group. As many sellers now prefer to open their doors to serious buyers only, a broker open house should definitely be considered.
So, open houses are definitely not your usual advertising strategy to sell a home. Real estate agents claim that it is a lot of work but recent technological advancements have made the process more easier. The actual experience itself will still be incomplete though. These are some considerations you need to think about carefully since this is your new home we’re talking about. It’s not something that you can give back and replace so easily, right?
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