Open Houses: Beneficial?

A question we often hear when selling someone's home is whether or not open houses work. This depends on your definition of "working". Simply having a Real Estate agent put your home for sale on the Multiple Listing Service, and doing one open house more then likely will not get the home sold. Open houses should be done strategically, advertised properly (and well in advance), and in combination with other forms of advertising. The chance you will sell your home off an open house is about 1 out of 100, yet they are a great way to generate interest, and a great way to gather feedback (especially if it is a new listing to the market). On a good weekend we can expect an average of 3 to 4 groups through (sometimes its 10-20!). That is like having 3 to 4 showings in a day (could be much more!). We may not sell the home to one of those groups, yet they provide essential feedback about price & often suggest opinions on how we can make the home show better. Each listing should have a minimum of 2 open houses the first month it is on the market. Having a 12 to 1 open house the first week the property is for sale, helps set up for a better 2nd open house by getting the neighbors and "lookers" through.  Also having an open house following a price reduction is a great idea as it is then reaching a whole new group of buyer. Also, real estate is all about connections, you never know who might come through the open house, and in many cases the home didn't work for that group but they had a friend looking they suggested it to. Having open houses also helps boost the internet advertising on your listing as often homes that are open include banners, are moved up the "list" of similar homes, displayed in widgets etc. They also provide for great social media interaction. Bottom line it is all about your expectation of the open house. If you go in to it expecting to sell it at the open house chances are you are going to be let down. If you go in to it expecting to get traffic through and feedback to help you sell it to other buyers you will be satisfied and ultimately it will help your agent get the home sold.