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Buying and Selling Homes

How important are Open Houses?

14 years ago

Listing our house next week. I'm not comfortable about a public Open House. We agreed to a Broker Open House but told our agent we'd prefer to not have a Public.

Jane

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Comments (8)

cordovamom
14 years ago
I'm not a big fan of open houses, being of the mind that most people don't buy a home they see in an Open House -- although it does happen. We've never had an Open House on any of the homes we sold, and we've never purchased a home we saw at an Open House either. I think Open Houses are primarily for realtors to make contacts with people that are contemplating buying or selling. I think people that are committed to buying already have an agent for the most part unless they're in the beginning of their house hunting process.
xamsx
14 years ago
At my end of NY open houses sell houses. It has been that way for as long as I remember. As a matter of fact, the house around the corner that went up two weeks ago sold at the open house they had Sunday.

As a buyer I loved open houses. The reason I liked them so much was because I usually knew in under 5 minutes whether or not a house might work for us or not. I hated to waste an evening setting up appointments, chasing the owners out of their houses, trying to figure out if we had enough time to get to that third house on our list or, conversely, if we had too much time before we could get to the next house. With an OH we could be in and out of 10 houses under three hours. If a house interested us enough we'd schedule a "second" showing with the homeowners.

It was a great time saver and we were able to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time.

I can understand your trepidation. I would not want to leave my "stuff" for an open house. I never sold a house that was not empty, and I never will. Having an open house when the house is empty (except for a table and a few chairs) alleviates a lot of concerns.

I wish you luck :-)
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I think in this age of "staging" and renovating to sell, my tendency is to say more than I would have ten years back. I am not a typical buyer, since I want unrenovated property. There is a fair amount of this on the market as well, but I have looked at properties that were on the market and taken off that have had some cheap things done to them in order to sell, and I think that the house is worse off than before. What I've seen: worn but pretty floors cheaply refinished with plenty of dust in the new finish, sturdy but blue or beige bathrooms taken out with the cheapest but trendiest replacement money can buy (and poorly constructed as well); all new but all cheap appliances, and horrible paint jobs where everything gets freshened up but sloppily. On one of these occasions, I did tell the realtor I thought the house was better before the "improvements", and she said, she agreed (quietly and off the record). But she also said that while anyone who had seen the before would probably never buy it after, a different type of buyer would. So if everyone came in and said they hated my black hallway, I would paint my black hallway, perhaps. But I think there is a tendency, after watching TV, to think that a little paint solves everything. There is a group of houses (maybe 100 scattered loosely in the neighborhood) of which there are about 5 variations. I like the layout in general, but there are two variations I do *not like: one has a basement kitchen and dining area with no windows at all. The other has a great window in this area but there is an "alcove" in the back of the house so you can park a car there as well as have a patio. Since these are both in the back, you can't tell til you get inside. So, I *do tell the realtor if its the wrong layout for me, *specifically, even though the owner can't do anything about either one (except at significant expense). Without this feedback, the owners *might think its the old kitchen tile, or the fact that the paint is shabby or the carpet is worn out, and address these things as a quick fix. If they happened to have the "pedestrian" group that day that didnt want the parking, they may do that work for nothing. I did look at a house these past two weekends that I like a lot. It nas not been lived in by the current owner of ten years but just used occasionally. So prior to resale, it was obviously painted and when I opened up a closet there was a big roll of carpet in it. So, it was spiffed up for resale. But, the floors need to be refinished badly , the kitchen is due for replacement and both weekends that I was there, the people at the open house were talking about the house "having potential" and "needing work" and "altering the layout". And there were people that walked in the front door and walked out almost immediately. The half measures, of several thousand dollars probably, were UNneccessary for one group of people and not Nearly Enough for the other group of people.
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I think part of this is how well do the host/guest know each other. I was brought up to ask "What can I bring?" when invited to someone's home. If the answer was "Nothing!" I would still feel rude showing up empty handed unless I knew the host well and had entertained back and forth with them enough to know that was expected. An open house to me is very different than a dinner party. It's throwing together all the people the host(s) may know: friends, family, neighbors, co-workers - and if the open house is during the holidays these people may bring along their house guests as well. In that situation, I would expect many people to show up with something - wine, beer, sparkling soda, plates of cookies, dips and crackers, the 'famous jello mold' - lol. So what? That's part of the fun! The move of covering every spare space with food deliberately so there is no room for whatever a guest brought is more than passive/aggressive. It's extremely controlling and not at all in the spirit of a holiday open house.
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wantoretire_did
14 years ago
xamsx - Which "end" of NY are you in? We are in upstate-eastern end and having no action to speak of. I hate the thought of a public open house, but may have to do it.........
xamsx
14 years ago
Upstate-western. We've been one of the best markets in the country through the slowdown of the last two years. We never had a big run-up so while everyone else was going down we still were going up (and still are).
taboni
14 years ago
We are in Monmouth County NJ and are under contract after 40 DOM. We got an offer from someone on their first weekend of house hunting at our 2nd open house. It definitely does happen!
western_pa_luann
14 years ago
Here is western PA, open houses are pretty much standard.

All the homes we have owned were found via open house.
jane__ny
Original Author
14 years ago
We are in Westchester County, about 45 mins north of Manhattan. Houses are selling very slowly. We agreed to a Brokers Open House, but are not comfortable about Public Open House. My impression is they attract Sunday site-seers and not true shoppers.

I've gone to a few over the years just out of curiosity over a neighboring house. I wonder if they really attract shoppers.

When my daughter was house shopping two years ago she would check with her Realtor regarding open houses in the area she was looking. Her Realtor would tell her not to waste her time - the house was not for her.

I'm just not comfortable with doing them.

Jane
booboo60
14 years ago
I guess it depends on what part of the country you live in. We had an OH once a month for the 5 months our house took to sell. It was a bit of an inconvenience but I was convinced they helped because I think it "spread the word" that our place was a certain kind of property. I got so I would "stage" different ways before dh and I would leave the house. If you are concerned about the security of your
possessions; we put all our personal items away and in storage. No personal photos around, jewelry, etc. I purchased decorating items from Ross that were inexpensive to replace all the personal things around the house. It was kind of fun! I'm sure my dh would NOT agree as he kept the lawn in perfect condition the whole time!

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