Why Open Houses are as Popular as Leaded Gasoline

As soon as a house is listed, sellers wonder “when is the first open house?”

Before we get into all the reasons why open houses are not the key to selling your home, let me share with you a statistic I came across:

On average less than 1% of all homes are sold by an open house.

Why are buyers not visiting open houses like they did in the past?

1. The internet. With expanded technology, high resolution digital photos, virtual tours and the like, buyers are able to see more on line than they ever could before.
2. Life, busy life. In our modern society many household have both adults working during the week. This leaves the weekend to run errands, do the shopping, attend and participate in sporting events, and all those kid activities like birthday parties. Buyers have such limited time that they want to schedule all their viewings at one time. Popping into one or two homes on Saturday, maybe one on Sunday and then maybe going out with their agent on Tuesday is just too much time. They want to do it all at once and go quickly.

So if potential buyers are not coming to look at the open house, who is? Well, not many people really. Traffic count at open houses has been decreasing steadily over the last few years. The majority of foot traffic in an open house are nosy neighbors, bored Sunday travelers, those looking for decorating ideas and people who are not serious about buying a home. Serious buyers are looking when the homes come on the market; they are not waiting for the weekend.

Why do some agents still do open houses? There are two reasons, same two reasons they have always had.

1. Because sellers want them and out of fear of losing the listing, they do them.
2. To pick up new buyers as clients.

What about the print ads which go with open houses?


1. Print ads are declining in popularity and soon will be as popular as leaded gasoline. Newspapers all over the country are closing their doors. Why? The internet (AGAIN). News is delivered to our Smart Phones, email, and web browsers in real time. Waiting until the next day to read the paper is just not done.
2. With declining readership, those ads are not read like they once were.

So, if open houses aren’t the thing, then what?

Instead of asking your real estate agent to hold your home open on Sunday, instead ask them to spend a few hours marketing your home online. If they don't know how or what else to do besides putting it on the MLS, you have a problem. It's probably time to interview a new agent. Internet marketing is number one in today's real estate market. Open houses were number one in yesterday's real estate market.