Hands On The Heartland
Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

I’m confident that twenty years from now some real estate agents will still be convincing Kansas City home sellers that open houses are essential. I had an agent recently say “I love doing open houses and almost always pick up future buyers off them”. But how is that serving the seller I asked her. The agent said, “What do you mean, I just sold one of my listings a couple of months ago off an open house.”  I was tempted to pull out the BS card and ask for proof but that would just have been antagonistic. Instead, I took the softer route of informing her that national statistics show LESS than 2% of homes in 2008 sold as result of an open house. I congratulated her on bucking trend and I should really be thankful that there are agents out there who promote open houses as a valuable selling tool. Yes, it forces me to spend time showing sellers the problems with open houses, but  it ultimately keeps me working with sellers who understand they are unsafe and a terrible allocation of marketing resources.

Open Houses Can Attract Scary People

Other than the less than 2% hope and a prayer, the only reasons for an agent to to do an open house are the potential of picking up future buyers for another home and/or to appease a home seller by giving the appearance that something is being done to market a home. Spending 1/7th of my week planning, advertising, marketing and sitting on an open house for a less 2% chance of success is clearly a poor business decision. Worse, there’s the HUGE risk that Joe Serial Killer decides to make a visit – and take me out or stake out the home to harm someone later. Seriously, the agent has no clue who their open house invitations may bring out to a home.  I assure you, there’s NO way I’d ever let my wife or mom sit on an open house and no man I know is a match for a gun. There’s also the risk of having Joe Steal The Shirt Off Your Back visit the open house. When two groups of tire kickers visit an open house at the same time, there’s NO way an agent can keep control of the situation. There WILL be people in different rooms at the same time and if that’s not theft waiting to happen I don’t know what is. If you don’t believe me, ask any local Kansas City home builder how long it takes decorations to start disappearing from their model homes. It could happen almost as easily at an open house.

Simply put, sellers need me spending my valuable resources (time and money) on marketing techniques that put their homes in front of legitimate home buyers – if you’ve read this blog for a while, you know those techniques revolve around my online presence and internet marketing. Still, despite all the points I’ve made, I’m a realist and understand that open houses aren’t going away any time soon. Why? Because there’s a generation of sellers who grew up believing in open houses. They really believe they sell homes and no facts I put in front of them will make them believe otherwise. For that reason, there’s a place in my heart for real estate agents who continue to tell sellers how valuable open houses are. This  leaves those agents working with those sellers, while I’m working with home sellers who understand  that we’re not selling homes like it’s 1975, 1985, 1995 or even 2005 for that matter.

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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