More open houses, more offers, that's the pitch. But there's a real safety tradeoff most sellers never hear about and a strategy that gets the same results without it.
This is a loaded question and if you know me personally, you know I'm not a big fan of open houses.
Mainly because they're a safety risk. That's really what it boils down to.
But let's talk it through, because I got this question again this week from a seller whose agent was pushing hard for a full slate of open houses.
The logic behind that push is simple. The more people who walk through your home, the more offers you'll get, and the more your home will sell for.
That's actually a true statistic. So if your agent told you that, they weren't wrong. The question is whether open houses are the best way to get that exposure.
Two ways to run an open house
There are really two approaches and one is a lot more effective than the other.
The lazy way is what most agents default to. It's Wednesday, so you put out ten signs, sit there for three hours on Saturday, update the MLS to say the home is open, and see what happens.
I wouldn't do that. It's a waste of time because you have no control over the outcome and you have no idea who's walking through your door.
That lack of control is the real issue. If you're the only agent there and it gets busy, you don't know who these people are.
They haven't been vetted, they don't have a relationship with you, and you have no idea what their intentions are. That's a genuine safety concern, especially for female agents.
It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Before any open house, you should be removing prescription medication, locking up valuables, and making sure everything in the home is secured.
There's a lot of prep involved that most sellers don't think about.
The upside nobody talks about
Here's the thing about real estate. People always have a plan for when they're going to buy, and that plan is almost never correct.
There's a famous quote attributed to General Patton about the Normandy invasion. The plan failed, but without the plan, the invasion would have failed. Open houses work a lot like that.
I can't tell you how many times someone walks into an open house and says, "I have an agent, don't talk to me, I'm just looking, I live in the neighborhood, we're not buying." Very standoffish.
An hour later, they're asking if the seller would take a cash offer and what the closing timeline looks like. In the back of your head you're thinking, an hour ago you didn't even want me to talk to you.
Roughly 70% of real estate purchases don't follow "the plan." A home pops up, someone gets pregnant, there's a job relocation, something unplanned happens, and suddenly people are writing offers on homes that weren't even on their radar three weeks earlier.
Open houses are one of the few ways to catch that kind of buyer, the one who wasn't actively searching but falls in love the moment they walk through the door.
Realistically, how often does that happen? Not every open house, but not never either. I'd estimate roughly one out of every 75 open houses produces that kind of surprise buyer.
So is it worth it?
Honestly, it comes down to a judgment call.
Are you comfortable with people coming through your home who don't have an agent, haven't been vetted, and aren't pre-qualified?
You'll also get a fair number of neighbors who just want to see the inside of the house down the street, which agents don't mind since it's a chance to meet future clients, but it's worth knowing that's part of the mix.
Your home isn't going to fail to sell just because you skip the open house, and it's not guaranteed to sell because you held one. But more exposure generally does mean more opportunities for a contract.
What I do instead
We run a lot of paid media. Instagram, Facebook, Google, YouTube, display and pay-per-click advertising.
A good chunk of the people who end up watching content like this found it through an ad we ran. That's intentional.
Rather than leaving buyer exposure up to chance, I'd rather know who the buyer is likely to be, whether they're local, and whether I can reach them directly with targeted ads.
If we do hold an open house, we do it deliberately. We run Facebook and Instagram ads announcing it in advance, we add an incentive to show up (a gift card, food, something small), and we run a guest registration so we can capture what people are looking for.
That data goes straight into our CRM, and here's the part most sellers don't realize. When you hire us to sell your home, you're not just getting the exposure from the ads we run on your listing. You're getting the benefit of every ad we've run for every other listing, too.
Buyers who weren't ready, or the house wasn't quite right, or the price point or neighborhood didn't match, are still sitting in our CRM.
Once we sign a new listing agreement, those are the first people we reach out to. There's a real chance the buyer for your next home is already in our system because of a previous ad campaign.
Occasionally an open house explodes and 150 people show up. It happens, though less often than it used to.
I can generate that kind of exposure more reliably with a targeted ad campaign, and it comes with three advantages. We can manage it from the office, it moves faster, and you don't have to worry about the safety concerns of strangers walking through your home.
You also don't have to give up your weekends sitting around waiting for the doorbell.
Bottom line
This isn't a one-size-fits-all policy. Some homes do exceptionally well with open houses.
For others, it's a waste of time unless it's very deliberately planned and marketed.
If you're thinking about selling and want a read on whether an open house makes sense for your specific home, reach out and I'm happy to walk through it with you.
