10 – 15 years ago, when I started looking into my first home purchase, you could head out on any given Saturday or Sunday afternoon and find open houses on almost every street where there were homes for sale. As years went by and I decided to join the real estate industry I noticed that fewer and fewer open houses were occuring. Sure, in big subdivisions (Nottman Estates) you would have one or more show homes with a realtor there but the other parts of the towns were becoming void of Open Houses.

There are many reasons that realtors do not host open houses anymore, but the number one reason is that the numbers do not lie. NAR (National Association of Realtors) released their yearly home buyers and sellers survey and the results for open houses were staggering. LESS THAN 1% OF REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS OCCURED AS A RESULT OF AN OPEN HOUSE. Now, there are other reasons (security risks, taking up the homeowners valuable time, etc…) but I know I would prefer to spend my time and effort on other forms of Innovative Marketing Techniques that have proven to work much better than 1% of the time.

So the next time your selling your home and interviewing agents, make sure that you let them know that less than 1% of homes sell because of an open house if they use open houses as part of their sales pitch. Ask them to be creative and innovative, or have them call me and I will give them some advice… or feel free to list with me!

MLS Market Snapshot