Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My house is being listed this week. I live in a hot sellers market (most homes go pending within 2-3 days), and I have a cookie cutter split level entry level home in a standard subdivision. I like my house, but it’s nothing special. It’s had some updates over the years (granite in the kitchen, master bath redone), but there are lot of non-updated area of the house (hall bath is original....kitchen cabinets could use repainting). So even among comparable houses it’s pretty average. And, it will be priced at the around same price (perhaps even a tad lower than some) as almost every other house in the area with similar square footage and bed and bathroom count. My market is hot enough that my agent told me it would be better to take a trip this weekend, but it’s not hot like places in California, etc. (houses go over asking, but not hundreds of thousands over asking). I’m in the Midwest.
My realtor is planning on having a brokers open house the day before my house goes live. I don’t object to this (although I do wonder if in COVID times it’s wise, but I won’t be there so it’s up to each agent I guess). I just don’t really understand the rationale behind a brokers open for my kind of house. I get the concept for higher priced homes, perhaps ones where the ability to preview the home for particular buyers may be useful. I get the concept for slower markets. I just don’t get it in my case.
My agent told me that the goal is to help build interest. However, in a super hot market, why does interest even need to be built? I like my agent, and I don’t really want to grill her with a million questions, so I was hoping some of the pros here might be kind enough to provide more clarification.
Get in as many in the house as you can so you can get multiple offers and drive up the price. But I would not do it for brokers, just the general public.I've never done Agent OH's except on very rare properties.
Also, don't take offers before it's been on the market 3-5 days. Let the public see it and get your best offers.
I wouldn't. I just don't see the point, other than a social hour and particularly in a red hot market.
Why have nonproductive traffic traipsing through your house?
The only benefit I can imagine is maybe it's something you CAN do while it's not yet listed.
You can't show it to buyer's yet, but maybe you can show it to agents.
We can't advertise it at all before it's live, here.
I am wondering if perhaps when I can leave the house may be causing an issue.
I work exclusively from home. Because of the number of showings my realtor anticipates, she doesn’t want me at home. She’s asked me to move out for the weekend, which I plan to do. That is completely understandable, and if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic I could go and work at a coffee shop for the rest of the workday until I could leave town. But, we are in the middle of a pandemic so that isn’t an option. I told her that the listing can go live at 5pm on Thursday when I leave my house for the weekend. I don’t know that she will have the listing go live until Friday (I just figured if the listing goes live on Thursday that some people may want to look Thursday evening). So it may be that she’s just trying to do something productive with that evening.
I believe that my realtor can add my house to the pre-MLS as a coming soon so that other agents know when it should be available, and I believe she can put a coming soon sign once there is a sign listing agreement with a date. But, I don’t believe that any other marketing is allowed.
I wouldn't. I just don't see the point, other than a social hour and particularly in a red hot market.
Why have nonproductive traffic traipsing through your house?
This is how I feel about it. My teams sold over 2,000 homes in the last 15 years. I've never had an agent that attended a brokers open sell the house for me. I stopped wasting time on Brokers OH years ago. Hasn't affected my business one iota. Busy agents with buyer clients don't have time for those things.
So I think Diana’s theory is correct. My realtor doesn’t want my house to go live on
Thursday and if it doesn’t get the whole day on the market. Houses here sell in their first weekend unless they are grossly overpriced and so any extra time on the DOM clock can count against you (typically once you start to hit day 3-4).
I do this with all of my listings. Pre-COVID I would usually offer food or a raffle to get people in the door. As your agent said, the idea is to build interest in your house. There's a HUGE difference between looking at photos or even a Matterport tour vs. actually stepping foot in the house. So, I want people to come in and preview the house so they can tell their buyers how great it is. Sure, there may be other houses like yours in the neighborhood but I would imagine none are exactly like yours.
The reason why this is important in the market plan I employ is that I'm not allowing buyers in the door at this point. Typically, I do a broker open house Thursday morning and then I put the listing in MLS Thursday afternoon. Buyers are allowed to see the house starting either Friday or Saturday. So, I find it helpful to get the brokers through so they can talk about the house knowledgeably with clients.
My market was very hot pre-COVID and I've been using this timeline for a while with some small modifications along the way. It's been quite effective.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,578 posts, read 81,186,228 times
Reputation: 57818
In this market those brokers all have a list of people looking for a house, and as soon as they have seen it they will start putting together the short list of people that would be interested. Would it sell just as fast without that Brokers open? Probably, but the more buyers that see it the better chance of a bidding war driving up the price.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
