Strategic Open House
What is a strategic open house? Most agents put an open house in the MLS and put up a few yard signs. They often wait until the day before the open house to put it in the MLS. The end result is usually poor attendance and little or no results.
We do things differently.
- We put the open house in the MLS a week or more in advance. We mail out color postcards to 200 renters in the area. The renters in the area usually want to purchase a home close by to remain in the same school district. They will receive our postcard in advance so they can plan to attend your open house.
- We put up a canopy in your front yard or driveway to register open house guests. One of our team members registers in each guest and stages them so that no more than one group at a time is allowed into your home.
- The agent showing your home to the guests will have plenty of time to show them all of the fine features and upgrades in your home. We will get instant feedback during their tour. This is important because most agents just let everyone in at the same time. The guests are not supervised, and the agent rarely gets feedback because they are doing the open house alone or sending a new agent in to do it. This can be a security risk. Not getting this critical feedback could prevent a possible sale and cost you thousands of dollars.
We also invite your neighbors to the open house.
- Potential buyers are more likely to put in an offer and bid your home up in price if they see people lined up outside of your home to see it. We do the open house on Saturday.
We put an offer deadline for a few days after the open house.
- This allows all the buyers to finalize their pre-approval letters with their lender if they are financing the purchase of their new home. We do not allow escalation clauses. An escalation clause allows a purchaser to bid a certain amount over the highest offer up to a predetermined limit that they set.
- We have found that allowing buyers to use an escalation clause can cost you tens of thousands of dollars. It could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the upper price ranges. When a buyer cannot use an escalation clause, they will bid a higher price on your home. There is always at least one buyer who has lost several homes recently who is eager to do whatever it takes to purchase your home.
By doing these strategic open houses we are able to get a price much higher than your ordinary agent.
- We are also usually able to have the buyer remove the financing contingency, appraisal contingency, and even the home inspection contingency. In some cases, we were able to negotiate a free 60 day rent back for our seller clients. This can give you extra time to move out of your current home.
- We can also eliminate a lockbox if you just want to have showings during the open house event. We believe that no other agent provides this type of strategic open house. It will certainly add to your bottom line.
- Some agents believe that an open house will not attract real buyers. This is not true. We attract numerous ready, willing, and able buyers at all of our open house events. Most of the buyers who attend our strategic open house events tell us that their agent was too busy to show them the home. Without our open house event, this could lead to a lower sale price, or the potential loss of a sale due to a high number of home buyers not being able to see your home.