Open House Ideas

What do I have Available for the Visitors?

Here are a few open house ideas when you sell house by owner.

We'll first look at some ideas of what should be available for the people that view your house.

I've also added a few optional open house tips that you may consider.

The Should Have Ideas List

• Feature sheets
• A copy of the Certified Appraisal on the kitchen/dining table price highlighted
• Plot plan Example Here, or real property report Example Here, if you have one available showing property lines. (These are called different names depending where you live)
• Copies of utility bills. If people are interested they will probably ask the costs and it's nice to have actual statements to show
• Colored photos of your property during different seasons. This is especially helpful if you live in the colder climates and you can show how lovely the gardens look in summer.

Important Open House Ideas Side Note

When you sell house by owner, always keep your photos on printed ads, web-sites, and features sheets, in season.

There is nothing worse than running an ad in the newspaper, or on a website, with a photo of your property showing 3 feet of snow on the ground in the middle of summer!

Makes me shudder just thinking about it! I've seen this done far to often, and mostly by real estate agents.

The Might Consider Having Ideas

• Snacks such as donuts or cookies
• Coffee, tea, soda, juice or bottled water
• Throw-away slip-on footwear for guests
• List of schools, shopping, parks etc in the area
• A sign stating “Please remove shoes at entrance. Thank-you”

The Don't Have Open House Ideas List

• Pets such as dogs or cats. Fish OK :)
• Younger children
• TV blaring in the background. LIGHT music in the background is great but careful of selection.
• Strong smells from the last meal you ate i.e.: fish, curry, cabbage etc.
• Unmade beds or unclean bathrooms

These next open house ideas when you sell house by owner are tougher to control, but you might want to ask your neighbor not to cut their winter supply of wood on the day of the open house with "Chuck's" new 300hp chainsaw, or ask them nicely not to burn trash in their 40 gallon homemade fire pit that day!

What Affects the Number of Visitors?

Everything is ready for your open house and all you are waiting for is your excited visitors.

How many visitors you receive, will depend on several factors. Here is a partial list.

• The real estate market conditions
• The weather
• The number of houses available in your area
• The price range of your house
• The neighborhood you live in
• How much exposure you prepared
• Open house and Directional Signs
• First open house or fifth?

As you can see there are many factors as to the amount of people that attend your open house.

You only need one buyer, so it`s not so much the quantity as it is the quality of the attendees.

If you have an open house where there is zero people that attend, what do you do?

Well you have to stay available, so another of the open house ideas, would be to read more of this web-site.

All kidding aside, this may, and does happen. You should just make the best of things and try another time.

If you have a few people in and they are spaced out, this is no problem.

You can spend more time with each visitor, and get a better read on their Body Language.

If you are very busy with people arriving in groups, you need to take control of the situation.

Another of my open house ideas, is if you have a 2, 3 or 4 level home as an example, you might want to share duties.

If you are a couple you can each take a level or 2 levels each. This will ensure that someone is keeping an eye out at all times, and people are not getting ignored.

Although it is actually very rare that a thief will arrive, you should take some precautions.

Don`t leave cash or credit cards laying around tempting someone.

Important open house ideas include locking up any valuables that would be easy to walk out with. Just use common sense.

The Big Scare Tactic

One of the many scare tactics that real estate agents will use, is the everyone is a crook or a serial killer!

They use this to try and discourage you to go "for sale by owner".

Think about this.

If there were so many thieves going to open houses, how come you don`t hear about all the houses being robbed blind when the real estate agents are doing open houses?

What do you think would be safer if your house was on the market.

A) One bored agent sitting in the kitchen doing paperwork saying; "Have a look around". "If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them."?

or

B) A for sale by owner couple of a two level house with one person on each level watching the guests view the property?

Thieves work in the dark. They work when no one is home. They don`t want to be identified.

Great open house ideas, means using common sense.

For the Record

Just as a note, during 13 years as a real estate agent, I only recall 2 incidents where something was stolen at either an open house, or a private viewing, in the Halifax Dartmouth area.

There was zero incidents reported to me during the 4 years I had my for sale by owner company.

The 2 incidents above, both involved other real estate agents, and were very minor in nature.

Sounds like a huge crime wave doesn't it? If it was such a big problem, I don't think I'd want a real estate agent doing an open house for me either!

For More Information about Open Houses
Planning for that Open House
More Great Open House Tips
Back to Open House Ideas - Main Page

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