Open House: Strategies For Success

So the traditional open house now a real estate agent is going to put out maybe two or three signs. Now, let’s recognize that you get out of things what you put into things. So the more signage you have, the more attention is going to be drawn to the open house. And the more people you’re going to get engaged with it, do a neighborhood only open house from 11 to 12. And from 12 to three, it’s a general public open house. See, many of the people in the neighborhood would love to come to your open house yet. They feel a little bit awkward. If you invite them directly to attend and only the neighbors are going to be there, chances are they’re going to feel more comfortable and more confident being of them going and tour the inside of their neighbor’s home.

Now, prior to the open house, I’m also getting encouraged to go Oh, around the neighborhood preview every other listing within that neighborhood, take copious notes, invite your lender to attend the open house with you. When a prospect shows up at the open house, of course, you’ll hand them a survey on a clipboard. That’ll ask all the qualifying questions that you need to know such as what price range they’re comfortable with. And let’s answer the question. Do buyers look at open houses that they can’t afford? Yes or yes, of course they do. So you got to get their price range. How many bedrooms they’re looking for? How many bathrooms are looking for? Are they pre-approved for their mortgage? How soon do they want to purchase home? Are they working with another agent? All of those questions should be on your survey. And when they complete the survey appropriately, you know, if you want to follow up with this prospect during the open house, so you can approach the prospect and say, how does this home compare to others?

You’ve seen, how would you rate it on a scale of one to 10 and anything less than a 10? You’d say, what would you change about this home to make it a 10? And they say, well, we need a bigger kitchen, or we need a bigger backyard because you’ve previewed the other homes within the neighborhood. You can say, you know what? Based on what you just said, the home right around the corner at one, two, three main street that actually meets your needs better than the one we’re in. Have you got five minutes right now, run over and show it to you immediately. So you’re switching them from the open house that they’re looking at to run over and show them another house, your lenders at the open house. So they’ll babysit the open house while you’re gone. Now here’s something I suggest that you write down for your open house.

I want you to bring a laptop. I want you to have wifi access. Also bring in an ink jet printer with you. What type you can buy over at office Depot for just $79. It’s lightweight, it’s portable. And I want you to bring that to the open house with you. When the prospect comes in, they fill out the form. Let’s say you’re holding a $350,000 home open. They can only qualify up to 300,000. If you let them leave, you’re dead in the water. Rather. You’ve got your laptop there. So based on their criteria, what they’ve completed on the survey, you say, I’ll tell you what let’s do. I’d like to just input your criteria, the multiple listing service platform. In a matter of moments, I’ll be able to tell you exactly how many properties match your unique criteria. And I can print the list for you right here right now.

So tell me what part of town are you most interested in? How many bedrooms do you need? How many bathrooms, how many car garage, newer home, older home, any particular style of home. And you’re inputting this data into the MLS platform. And then you click the, how many buttons let’s say there’s 10, good in print, all 10 of them. And then I’m going to ask you to give them an assignment, to take these forms and create an, a list of properties, beans. These are the ones you want to see the inside of a B list of properties. These means it’s not right for one reason or another. Yet once you’ve got that a list of properties and you positioned yourself to possess something that the prospect wants. Let me ask how easy is it to set an appointment? It’s super simple. So guys, I trust you to take these little tweaks to your traditional open house and improve your conversion rates, improve your effectiveness and increase your profit.