Open Houses: To Hold or Not To Hold

It depends on price point and neighborhood, but in general, the customer who buys will come in by appointment during the week, so open houses are as often as not a marketing technique for the broker.

So in addition to open house availability, you want your broker to make sure that they have mid-week availability.

Beyond that, it is sometimes helpful to "cluster" open houses -- if there are two other listings in your neighborhood in your price range, you want to schedule so that a customer can easily hit all three.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

Speaking for myself (and I was a looking to buy but currently waiting) I mostly looked at OHs on Sundays. Living out of town makes it nearly impossible for me to do otherwise. But I don't think many others are in my situation. FWIW

I'll add, if you price things correctly, there shouldn't be a need for more than a few OHs.

Since light was a big issue for me, once daylight savings was over so were after work showings when I was looking. I think that open houses are a good way to bring in "look overs" but serious buyers will usually come back for a second showing by appointment.

Our brokers (except for one) have suggested that weekly open houses look desperate. They suggested every other week or even only twice a month because most serious buyers will come by appointment. One also suggested weekday open houses to get those who go out of town on weekends.

When I became serious about buying, I stopped going to open houses and went by appointment only. I've never gone to a weekday open house but I am around on weekends.

"Our brokers (except for one) have suggested that weekly open houses look desperate. They suggested every other week or even only twice a month because most serious buyers will come by appointment."

Lo888, this is my broker's logic, and I think I agree. We're selling a pre-war one bed on UES. Since I'm also a buyer / sideliner, I've been trying to think about my own behavior. I do occasionally go to weekend open houses so that I can compare condition among apartments, get a better sense of who lives in a building, and to know what kind of other units exist at a particular address. But when I am serious about a listing I always have my broker arrange a private showing. As sellers, I think we'll go with two open houses per month and see how it goes.

Ali, good point about clustering. We will definitely do this.

kas242 - good luck. Showing is no fun! I hadn't realised how disruptive it is.

You're telling me. I had the photos taken yesterday, so I took out everything that was visually disruptive. The good news is that the apt. looked better than it ever has, but now I have to put all of the necessities back in place. I can't exactly get rid of the dog bed and his food bowls until the apartment sells, but I'm doing my best to stash absolutely anything that doesn't need to be used right now. I think it's going to be constant juggling of stuff for a while.

I think you must do open houses every Sunday for at least the first 2-3 months. You just never know who may stop by and find just what they were looking for. After say the first 8 I would skip a Sunday and also skip any holiday weekends. Look desperate? That is silly IMHO, perhaps your broker knows things are slow and doesn't want to spend every Sunday showing? After months I will reduce the time to 1-1.5 hours but NEVER stop holding an open house or skipping Sundays..that's crazy talk!

In 17 years I have never heard doing consistent open houses makes you look desperate. Bad strategy. Persistence wins, the more people who have ready access to your property the better your chances of a sale. Anyone with an Internet connection will know how long your property has been on the market, that is relevant.