An open house display is an age-old real estate tool for selling, and it is used in every neighborhood, regardless of density, type, location or even country. People want to see in person what they are buying, especially when it’s going to be the place where they will be living for the next few years. As a result, the open house can very often be a game changer that either puts your home ahead of the pack, or places it behind because various aspects become a turn-off for visiting potential buyers. In a hot seller’s market, this doesn’t matter so much because every home is getting multiple offers and bids even reasonably priced. However, a neutral market or a buyer’s market, the open house event is a must and needs to be utilized seriously and with a strong approach.
However, just opening the front door and letting all the visitors in on a given Saturday doesn’t work. The house needs to be prepared as well as the selling process. So if your real estate agent is not asking for these things, as a seller you should be and making sure they get done to enhance your open house event effect (which may also be a reason to change agents too!). Here are five of the most fundamental steps to take for any sale:
1. Get Rid of the Clutter.
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Your home is a place that you have lived in for years, so it has just about everything that you’ve brought home as a possession stored or place in every aspect. However, all that clutter takes away from buyers seen what the home really looks like and beginning to imagine themselves living in it. Anything that doesn’t enhance the way the home looks needs to be removed. This is the time when every room of the house needs to be gone through and, if something is not essential for living or necessary, it needs to be removed and put in storage.
2. Make the home less personal.
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Sellers sometimes have an emotional issue with this tip, but depersonalizing the home again goes a long way to helping buyers see the house in terms of how they would live in it. Seeing someone’s photos, they’re personal belongings and images gives a sense of invading the homeowner’s privacy. A number of buyers get leery about that and then rush through the home, feeling uncomfortable. Depersonalizing the home makes the buyer feel more comfortable about spending time in each room and getting interested in the sale, and that often helps make a purchase happen faster.
3. Technology is your friend.
Everybody is hooked up to the digital world these days. And buyers looking around for homes are searching as they are traveling for new listings, open houses, events, and buying opportunities by the moment. Newspaper ads and street corner signs are not going to cut it attracting this growing crowd. Buyers expect and look for homes to be on major listing sites and with sufficient detail to understand what’s for sale. Fortunately, it’s extremely easy to take good photographs with a digital camera and upload them and list open house information on various sites very quickly via the Internet. Every seller should be taking advantage of these tools as well as making sure their agent is doing so as well. In addition, sellers should be networking the home availability through their own personal social media connections in case a friend may know of someone looking for a house as well. A good number of sales occur through referral versus blind searching.
4. Notwithstanding #3, signs do matter…for directions.
Signs still serve a purpose for your open house event. While the Internet tells people generally where your home is and when the open house will be, it’s still quite easy to get lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Signs help direct traffic and bring them right to your door instead of getting lost and ending up at another competing sale event happening the same day in the same location. Don’t go through all the trouble of marketing and then waste it with a basic direction mixup. Make it obvious to folks coming off main routes how to find your open house.
5. Don’t forget the neighbors.
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Your local neighbors can be a good source of referrals and even buyers if invited over to see what your open house looks like. They often have their own network of friends and contacts and probably wouldn’t mind someone they know moving into a soon vacant home on their street. Many times neighbors can be extremely effective in marketing a home just by word of mouth, especially if they know the key features of the property and what it offers.
Because Modesto is a little bit off the beaten track in the California Central Valley, an open houses Modesto event takes on an even greater significance in selling, especially to out of town buyers. A good agent will already being sending out invites to the open house via his or her own network and list of buyers or sales agents sharing information, and that will bring in folks who otherwise may not travel to Modesto to see a home. So take advantage of the open house as the big chance to really show the place off to them versus other areas nearby like Stockton, for example. Even better, try coordinating with other open house sellers and make it a neighborhood event, drawing even more buyers. Creativity is the key in successful deals many times.
