Do You Need an Open House to Sell Your Home?

Jan Blogs

The traditional open house format is still popular, but whether it’s effective in helping sell your home may depend on the type of property.
When launching a new property onto the market, an open house is usually standard procedure.

An open house invites people to tour a home that is for sale. A listing real estate agent often schedules two different types of open houses: a “broker only” open house to other agents, during the day on a weekday, and an open house that’s open to the public, typically on a Sunday. Usually, an open house lasts about 1.5 hours with the goal of attracting a buyer who is out and about looking at other homes for sale in the area.

But in the era of the internet where listing a home for sale online presents extensive photos, floor plans and videos, is this traditional format still effective? And if so, for what types of properties does it work best?

Here are some key questions to consider when thinking about whether an open house is the best strategy for your home:

  • Does an open house logistically work for you?
  • How does asking price factor into an open house?
  • How often should you hold an open house?
  • How can you keep your home safe and clean during an open house?
  • Do you need bells and whistles for an open house?
  • How can you prepare for an open house?

Does an Open House Logistically Work for You?
How flexible are you and what does it take to vacate your home? Young children or pets at home are considerations when scheduling showings and open houses, especially those on a Sunday when kids are not in school.

Perhaps regular open houses work best when you’re hoping to allow many people to see your home on your terms during a scheduled block of time. It might be easier to clean the house and make it look perfect for a scheduled showing as opposed to multiple impromptu appointments. The hope is, with an open house, the home will be seen by many potential buyers in one shot.

This begs the question of quantity versus quality – are those who drop by really homebuyers ready to make an offer? Keep in mind, a serious buyer will most likely want to return for a private showing to review the property at length and more thoroughly.

How Does Asking Price Factor Into an Open House?
Homes at entry-level prices for the local market usually attract first-time buyers. Many of these buyers are at work during the weekday and spend their time looking for homes on Sunday afternoons after a slow morning or meeting friends for brunch. Weekend open houses are convenient for this type of buyer, especially as she is figuring out what she wants and needs in a home, though a visit during an open house won’t necessarily lead to an immediate offer.

On the flip side, many high-end, luxury properties attract a more private client who prefers to view properties discreetly on his or her own terms. A public open house may attract those just looking for sport or curiosity, whether they’re your nosy neighbors or people who aren’t really interested in buying. For both reasons, homes at the high end of the price range are less likely to host public open houses.

How Often Should You Hold an Open House?
How many open houses are a good idea? Most ready buyers who have been waiting and watching the inventory flow usually appear, if interested, within the first two weeks of a property being listed for sale. After that, regular open houses may attract a general flow of weekend lookie-loos, as many buyers wander from open house to open house for fun. They may just be curious, but an open house format provides a no-pressure platform to look.

After those first couple weeks on market you can typically stop holding open houses, as the buyers who are interested in the property and that have a more deliberate plan to assess the house will likely make an appointment to tour the place.

How Can You Keep Your Home Safe and Clean During an Open House?
Agents do their best to monitor visitors, but all personal belongings should be put away. It may seem obvious, but jewelry should be secured – preferably in a safe. Items such as mail and newspapers with the owner’s identity on an address label should be hidden for privacy. Remember that people do like to snoop, so you can expect cabinets and closets to be opened.

To keep the house clean, many sellers prefer that visitors remove shoes or wear shoe covers to protect carpets. Discuss your preferences in advance with your agent.

Do You Need Bells and Whistles for an Open House?
Some real estate agents advertise coffee and donuts at open houses to entice traffic. Realize that strangers will be eating and drinking in your home. While it may encourage people to stick around longer, the chances food and drink will help sell your home are slim.

How Can You Prepare for an Open House?
The open house is showtime for your property and you can only make one first impression. Make sure the home looks fantastic. If there is a leak in the roof or the heat stops working, it’s better to cancel the open house than make excuses for something that is fixable and minor, but creates worry and doubt.

The goal of an open house is to make your home available to a potential buyer at a time that works for you, and when buyers are traditionally out shopping. If you’re still unsure an open house will be beneficial to you, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Will the buyer for my type of property want to come to an open house format?
2. Do I, the seller, want to have strangers wandering through my home?
3. Do I really need to do this to sell my home?

The realistic answer to most, if not all, of these questions is, “No, probably not.” You may still opt for an open house and consider it a useful marketing tool, but it’s unlikely you’ll get an offer directly from an open house.

How to Winterize a House

Nov Blog

Extreme winter weather can leave neighborhoods and communities without power or other public services for long periods of time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warns.

It’s a smart idea to prepare your home for such winter weather emergencies as well as cold weather throughout the season that can cause minor issues to evolve into larger problems – with potential damage to your property or risk of personal injury.

Whether it’s for your primary residence or a second home you plan to leave vacant until spring, here are tips for winterizing your house:

Clean out gutters and clear the roof.
Insulate the attic.
Have your heating system serviced.
Prepare your plumbing.
Call a chimney sweep.
Check for drafts.
Have a friend on call.

Clean Out Gutters and Clear the Roof
Leaves, sticks and other bits of nature make their way onto your roof and into your gutters during the fall. But before the first heavy snowfall, be sure to clear debris from your roof and gutters to prevent a buildup of ice and snow that can get under shingles and cause leaks and water damage inside your house.

“If they don’t have their roof cleared off, that’s typically where stoppage and backup issues happen,” says Mike Gulla, senior director of underwriting and customer support for Hippo Insurance, based in Palo Alto, California.

If the house is vacant: Clear as much debris as you can before you close up the house for the winter, but you may need to have a local friend or contractor finish the job when you’re away.

Insulate the Attic
Another way to reduce the chances that an ice dam will form is to insulate your attic floor. This helps keep the living areas of your house warmer, explains Anne Cope, chief engineer at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety in Richburg, South Carolina.

Cope recommends going up to your attic before the winter weather sets in to examine attic vents, check for leaks and get a look at the insulation. “If your insulation looks terrible, now is a great time of year to get that taken care of,” she says.

If the house is vacant: Insulation will help you avoid hefty heating bills during the months that you’re not staying in the house. Good insulation that leads to lower heating and cooling bills can also be a plus when you sell the house.

Have Your Heating System Serviced
Have your heating and ventilation system checked for problems and cleaned before the weather gets too cold. If you wait until the first cold snap or snowstorm of the season, many service professionals will be overbooked.

Beyond keeping you warm, a functioning HVAC during the coldest days of the year is key to avoiding frozen pipes, which can burst inside your walls and cause significant damage.

If the house is vacant: It’s important to keep a vacant house at a temperature well above freezing; the standard is between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Having your HVAC system serviced before you leave for the season is also important so cold temperatures don’t cause a bigger issue like a burst pipe. “That’s typically the reason that someone has a frozen pipe – it’s not usually a faulty pipe but because the HVAC stops working. … If it’s 20 degrees outside and you have no heat in the house for a few days, you can expect the pipes to freeze,” Gulla says.

Prepare Your Plumbing
Ensure your plumbing is set up to withstand the cold, and consider utilizing sensors to let you know when there’s a problem.

In Northern states where freezing temperatures are expected for a portion of the year, housing codes require insulation and for pipes to be properly protected from the cold. Places that don’t see regular frost, however, won’t always have a basement for plumbing to stay warmer or effective insulation to keep heat from escaping. As a result, a day or week of freezing temperatures in parts of North Carolina, Georgia and even Texas can cause a lot of damage, Cope says.

If your plumbing runs through a crawl space, consider insulating the pipes or the crawl space itself. “It can be a do-it-yourself project, or it can be a hire-a-handyman project,” Cope says.

Gulla recommends getting both water-leak and pipe-temperature sensors. The former will let you know if pressure inside the pipe suddenly decreases, indicating a burst pipe, while the latter will notify you of dangerously cold pipes so you can prevent a burst pipe.

Additionally, automatic water shutoff valves are becoming more popular in homes. They stop the flow of water should a pipe freeze and burst to reduce the amount of damage to the home.

If the house is vacant: Gulla stresses the importance of having sensors and a remote water shutoff valve option to prevent damage in the house before you can get there.

Call a Chimney Sweep
Whether you have a wood-burning or gas fireplace, make an appointment for your chimney to be inspected annually to see if cleaning or repairs are necessary, according to the Chimney Safety Institute of America. In wood-burning fireplaces, a professional will clean out creosote buildup, which comes from burning wood and can cause a fire hazard inside the chimney if it’s not cleaned. In any fireplace, it’s important to clear animal nests that might be blocking the chimney and to check for issues in the masonry.

Gulla warns that a blocked chimney “can also cause carbon monoxide to back up into the house, which can obviously be life-threatening to anyone in the house.”

If the house is vacant: Be sure to close the chimney flue as well as any hearth doors. That way you’ll keep cold drafts from making your furnace work harder and prevent animals from entering through the chimney and getting into other parts of the house.

Check for Drafts
As the weather cools, walk around the house and check for drafts or air leakage, particularly around windows and doors. Use caulk to seal cracks and weatherstripping to help insulate around door and window frames.

If the house is vacant: Checking for drafts and leakage will help cut down on the work your furnace has to do by keeping cold air from coming in.

Have a Friend on Call
If you go away for vacation or on a business trip, it’s good to have a friend, relative or neighbor on call for your temporarily vacant house. Especially if a winter storm occurs while you’re gone, you want someone to make sure your power stays on and even shovel the sidewalk to prevent slipping hazards.

If the house is vacant: Your HVAC may be in perfect condition with everything insulated, but you still shouldn’t leave the house unchecked for the entire winter.

“I wouldn’t want someone to think that a property can sit vacant for months at a time without someone coming to check on it. You wouldn’t do that with your car,” Cope says.

If you have friends or relatives nearby who can check on the house every few weeks, ask them to do so. Otherwise, hiring a local handyman to regularly check in can help ensure the heat continues to work, the power stays on and no critters manage to break their way into the living space. Even if you have security cameras and sensors, you need someone who can come by on short notice if an issue occurs.

How Big Should Your Real Estate Agent’s Firm Be?

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Take a careful look at how the size of a real estate brokerage may impact your agent’s experience, time and marketing capabilities.

Does the size of the firm that your agent works for matter when selecting between two great real estate agents – one at a smaller, boutique agency and another at a large firm? After much thought and consideration in selecting a real estate agent to represent the sale of your most valuable asset, your home, it is time to make the final decision.

In major cities like New York City, firm size can vary from 150 agents in a small firm versus more than 2,000 agents in a large firm. In smaller cities, a boutique firm could have just a handful of agents. Does the size of the real estate brokerage matter when it comes to picking an agent?

Selectivity and Economics
First and foremost, it is important to note that real estate agents are independent contractors, and the firm is the broker who “holds” an agent’s license, and is ultimately responsible for their conduct.

In smaller firms, one often finds a higher concentration of experienced, thoroughly trained agents. Why? Office space is a very valuable commodity and smaller firms have to be selective about who they hire. Every agent needs to be a high-performing, full-time agent. There is a lot of attention to agent development as the success of the agent is meaningful to the firm, because it has invested valuable time and money into the individual, as opposed to some of the larger firms who have a sink-or-swim mentality.

There are many, many excellent agents at large firms, but it is always harder to manage and supervise agents who are independent contractors, so more variation in experience and less training may occur.

On the flip side, a compelling consideration for marketplaces in areas like Texas, Florida and Arizona, are large, nontraditional firms such as Redfin. With specialized roles for marketing, showing and closing on a house, you’re working with multiple team members. Additionally, many nontraditional brokerages offer discounted commission rates, which can make a difference to the seller’s bottom line.

Access to Leadership
Boutique firms are high touch and the head of the firm typically owns the company and has a vested interest in the success of the agent and the deal, regardless of the size. Larger firms have many more deals and agents to monitor.

You never know how good your doctor is until you are sick and really need them. The same can be said about any professional, and it is important to know there is reputable leadership at the helm of the firm you select, just in case.

If you know your transaction will be fairly straightforward, this may not be a part of your concerns in selecting an agent. A large, well-known, licensed brand name might feel like a powerful advantage.

Marketing
It is indisputable that large firms have significant marketing budgets that smaller firms cannot compete with and as a result, they have most likely created stronger brand recognition.

This is the consideration that most sellers focus on, yet many sellers do not realize that it is not how homes are sold. It is important to understand that most advertising is really branding for the firm. Although it can happen, listings don’t often sell from a New York Times or Wall Street Journal advertisement. Nonetheless, this is still meaningful to many sellers.

The vast majority of properties are sold when agents or customers search for homes through an online listing property search such as Streeteasy in New York City, or national databases like those on realtor.com, Redfin or Trulia. Counterintuitively, in a smaller firm, agents actually have a higher likelihood that their listings will be featured in print media, as there are fewer agents and listings to compete against for the available ad slots.

Representation
Real Estate agents are typically hired to represent either a buyer or a seller in a transaction. Each side deserves a fiduciary, and it is impossible for an agent to represent both sides in a transaction – think of an attorney representing both sides in a legal dispute.

This gets tricky when both agents work for the same firm or broker. Therefore, the broker is representing both sides and a disclosure form must be signed by both parties. When a firm is so large, and the market is flooded with agents from one firm, there is a higher likelihood that they may “co-broke” with another agent from the same firm. Dual agency is not an uncommon occurrence in the marketplace, but it has a higher likelihood of creating a scenario for discomfort and distrust.

In the end, selecting the right real estate agent is about important qualities such as trust and expertise. The firm that is supporting the agent should be evaluated as well.

The data relating to the real estate for sale on this web site comes in part from the Internet Data Exchange Program of the NJMLS. Real estate listings held by brokerage firms other than RE/MAX Real Estate Limited are marked with the Internet Data Exchange logo and information about them includes the name of the listing brokers. Some properties listed with the participating brokers do not appear on this website at the request of the seller. Listings of brokers that do not participate in Internet Data Exchange do not appear on this website.
All information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Last update: 06/05/18.
Source: New Jersey Multiple Listing Service, Inc