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Quick open house story. Friend had house listed with an agent who said 4% commission is she got the listing and sold it. 6% if a split commission with another agent. Open house planned. Agent called and said she had a family issue and could not cover the open house. She said they could reschedule or she would have someone from her office cover. Someone from her office covered. Someone came to the open house and became the buyer. Friend was told 6% as a it was a commission split. He had assumed as it was someone from her office covering, it would be 4%. Wrongo boyo.
I agree with him. He was not told everything.
Is this a new story, or one you have told here several times before?
Many realtors use the open house to prospect for new customers and the neighbors stop by to check out your house. Of course some houses are sold as a result of the open house, but I would guess this is not the norm in many areas - especially with how easy it is to qualify houses on-line...
Here's the thing...
Consumers need to recognize that everyone is not going to buy their house, that Listing agents will nearly always reap legitimate ancillary business opportunities from listings. No house is "The House" for everyone who comes across it, but they may desire agent services.
It is reasonable for the agent to convert inquiries to new clients, but only when it becomes very clear that the customer is not interested in the listed house.
Some activities that may bring the agent more clients:
MLS Listings and syndication of the listings to multiple sites.
Signs in the yard.
Good photography.
Booklets in the house.
Open houses.
Single-Property website posting with sign riders directing people to the site.
Networking.
Nextdoor posting.
Zillow posting.
Realtor.com posting.
Postcard mailing.
None of the above will convince every buyer to buy the listed house, but are legitimate outreach to get the house in front of as many people as possible.
The supplementary benefit to the agent is more exposure of services.
All that said:
1. An agent should NEVER put a family out of the house to hold an open house with the primary goal being to reap new clients.
Even in a vacant house, the primary goal must be to sell the subject property.
2. Any agent manning the open house should be familiar with the property, able to present it and answer basic questions, at minimum.
3. Any open house contact should be first handled as a potential purchaser of the subject property before any buyers agency role for the listing agent is explored, or other properties are discussed as potential opportunities.
I wouldn't have an open house unless I trusted my agent. I live in a 55+ now but if I didn't, I wouldn't want a bunch of families with kids wandering in and out acting like they were in a public space, sightseeing or in a hotel room. So I'd be demanding on that supervision thing. I'd expect I'd hire an agent with a personality like mine LOL.
I bought my condo because of an Open House. And the agent's subsequent initiative.
I only went into the HOA out of curiosity not even thinking of buying - in the near future. The agent had three properties there.
She was ready to move from one to the other at 1:00 so I went with her and she showed me the other two.
I gave her feedback: "Too dark a model, too dated, don't like the view.... blah blah".
Said "bye".
Two months later she called me saying she had a new contract not in MLS yet and she was sure I'd love it. Right in that HOA.
I said "Well I'm not really looking to buy but I'll come see it."
I bought it the next day, cash - only contingent on inspection.
I didn't want to have to fix the couple of inspection items because I was new to the area and knew nobody. The sellers RUSHED to have those items fixed immediately and we closed.
One of the items was something they had no clue about - the HVAC compressor outside where it was secured somehow wasn't "secured" and this is FLORIDA, and the unit had been totally renovated after a hurricane, ironically. I wasn't being nit-picky and there really wasn't anything to be nit-picky about.
OH, and the other thing was the shelf holding the interior AC unit was sagging. Something they wouldn't have necessarily noticed either.
The third item was the spray hose in the kitchen sink didn't spray. I assume they didn't cook much and knew they traveled all the time for work and that's why the unit looked impeccable. Since that was a weird thing to not know wasn't hooked up LOL. I didn't care about the $80.00 or whatever for the plumber. I cared that I didn't feel like being bothered finding a plumber yada yada. Even though of course the agent would have given me names. I'm pretty sure she just had the HOA maintenance guy swing around and take care of it anyway. She was a resident there and the maintenance guy did some moonlighting. But the HVAC items she gave me a formal receipt for the work from a bona fide professional company.
Last edited by runswithscissors; 03-09-2018 at 05:45 AM..
I recently purchased a home after an exhausting search. We used open houses to check out houses that were a little outside of our normal comfort zone. Either slightly above/below our price range, or slightly outside our desired geographic zone, or some other boxes not checked.
We saw two open houses that were real eye openers- we wouldn't have considered the house based on the listing itself, but after going to the open house we scheduled a followup showing with our agent and ultimately made an offer on both. Lost both to other buyers (lol!).
This! I did the same. Since we had seen a lot of houses with our agent, we didn’t necessarily want to drag her to houses that were somewhat of a longshot. We didn’t end up making an offer on anything we saw at an open house but did seriously consider a couple.
I think the biggest risk is the risk of theft, the other cons shouldn’t be of much concern to the sellers. Who cares if your agent is trying to pick up new clients as long as they are actively tying to sell your home? Although what I see a lot in my area is the listing agent isn’t actually the one hosting the open house and they send someone else from their office. It makes sense to help newer agents find clients, but several times they didn’t even know much about the house when I asked questions. Plus it still seems kinda lazy on the listing agent’s part and as a seller I’d probably want the person I hired to be the one holding it.
If I was an agent (which I’m not), I think in a strong market the second weekend on the market might not be a bad time for an open house. Hopefully you should have a lot of activity the first weekend and might be able to sell it then without an open house. But if not, I think an open house couldn’t hurt, but don’t necessarily want to wait too long to where you’ve now reached the “it hasn’t sold yet, what’s wrong with it” stage.
The public open house is basically a tool for your agent to try to get other listings. I do not believe it does a thing to help you sell your house.
The agent open house in theory introduces other agents to your house. I am not sure how effective this is in a seller's market like this since in times like this agents will hardly even answer phone calls from buyers, much less actually research houses.
And yet, at my last open house, I ended up with 2 offers on the property from unrepresented buyers for a listing that had sat on the market for months. Go figure. It's a mystical combination of right time, right buyers, right preparation and marketing, and right price. :-)
Personally, I think the broker open houses are a waste of time. New agents come to look at the house to get familiar with a neighborhood, agent friends of the agent come by for a free lunch, agents who have other listings in the neighborhood come by to take a look -- eh. I've never sold a house from an agent caravan in 10 years. I've stopped doing them. If the house is in an area that is in high demand, I'll have agents begging me for access, I won't have to beg them to come look at it. If it's not in a high demand area, they're only coming for lunch or the free bottle of wine. :-)
It is what it is and I doubt it is that uncommon. The story is worth telling as a warning/reminder of something that can and does happen.
Yet, you have never heard of it happening again in 20 years...
This is not an open house tale.
It is a "Mistake allowing dual agency" example.
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