Undoubtedly.
The Sibbach Team has sold five homes so far this year from open houses; three from buyers that walked-in the house without a realtor and two that came with their realtors. There is something about seeing other people in a house that creates excitement. The National Association of REALTORS® agrees. Their most recent survey of home buyers attribute 10% of sales to open houses.
Why some people think open houses don’t work
Real estate marketing tactics have different levels of execution. Moderate actions generate moderate results. When we started doing open houses we would put out 3-4 open houses signs and schedule the open house through the ARMLS a day or two beforehand (ok sometimes the day of). We would get moderate traffic averaging 5-7 groups through the home. Then we were schooled by some of the best in the business. Now our strategy is a little different.
How we drive more traffic through our open houses
Today’s open house strategy has been super-charged compared to last year. For starters we now require a minimum of 10 signs. We use a combination of left/right directionals and up arrows. The up arrows really let us stretch our range of pulling local drivers. Because of this increase sign count, we quickly learned we need to create an open house sign map for every listing and higher weekend help to put out the signs.
Advanced notice on the internet has also increased the visitor count. When we give ARMLS at least a week of notice for the open house, the listing has time to get syndicated to Zillow, Trulia, REALTOR.com, Redfin and the like. Not to mention the open house section on Sibbach.com that currently brings in an average of 225 local visitors a month.
Here at the Sibbach Team, we over-analyze marketing tactics to make sure we’re giving our clients the best possible chance to sell at a high price. We continue to tweak and modify tactics as we get feedback from “the market”. We know that the more people that see a house the higher the final sales price. Do open houses help sell homes? Absolutely. Let us help you get top dollar for your investment.
