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1. Broker's opens & Open Houses have very localized success. They really don't work in my neck of the woods. At all.
2. This is slow season. Made even slower by the tax credit earlier this year that has seemed to suck all of the 2010 buyers out of the entire year. Made even slower by the current economic climate. Overall, the market blows.
3. How many comparable homes have gone under contract since you went on the market? This is always the best gauge to me ... I can drive buyers to a house - but if there are no buyers, I can't create them out of thin air.
Thanks for the replies. I wasn't really expecting to sell in 2 weeks and wasn't expecting a ton of people to be beating down our door. I was basically trying to get an idea of a proper marketing plan for a home and what to expect from a realtor. Regarding the comps, each analysis had 3 recently sold homes and 3 listed homes. Our price point is not an issue based on everythng we've seen. Unfortunately as stated before this market sucks big time.
The NAR statistic indicates that less than 1% of homes sold were the result of open house. Not all, probably not even a large majority of homes sold had open houses. It doesn't indicate what percentage of homes that held one or more open houses sold as a result of it.
I don't think you should be concerned about the length of time you have been on the market. However i think you should be concerned about your chioce in agent. There are good and bad in every profession. I do know the higher their commission the harder they work.
Back in the day when I was a licensed realtor, when I did open houses (and I did a lot of them LOL), early early in the morning, I'd put out a ton of signs, on every busy intersection and leading directly to the house. I put up balloons and even on a bad weather day, I always had at the very least 5 - 6 people come in.
I remember this sad little house I did open houses for every weekend for about 2 months LOL, it got so bad from the same people seeing it that the neighbors knew me. The only time I didn't have any person show at all, I had three neighbors LOL
Whoever said that if it's sitting with NO interest for a few weeks - could be overpriced. I completely agree with. When we were house hunting, if it wasn't in the price range we were looking or we felt it should be priced at, we wouldn't even look at it.
I'm not a real estate professional but can share with you my personal experience. Due to my husband's job relocation to NJ (we're in NY-Long Island), we had to list our house for sale in July. The first open house, only 1 person came. The 2nd open house, only 2 people came and very few showings. In Aug, it was dead. No showings at all!
Then 2 weekends ago, there were 2 showings on Sat and the next day, we had an offer, albeit a low one. Today, we came to an agreement on the price.
All in all, we had less than 10 showings. It's a slow market but all you need is one buyer. Good luck!
You mentioned the pictures. I just want to add that pictures make ALL the difference in the world.
I'm not sure the exact number, but I've read most people decide ahead of time online which houses they will tour in person. You have to pull them in with the MLS listing or you will be looked over. Give someone a reason for your house to make their "short list!"
In my opinion, to sell in this market, your house has to be a major steal or have tons of "wow" factor (and still be priced well.)
It's rough out there - we finally sold our house after adding 25k in improvements and reducing it 40k. Ouch.
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