So, I’ve never been much of a proponent of Open Houses in real estate to sell houses but, last night I watched a movie on Netflix called just that, “Open House”, and WOW….it really reinforces why I have always believed that holding an Open House is an inherent safety risk!
The movie depicts a person coming into an Open House and, basically staying in the house and hiding out, undetected by the real estate agent holding the Open House when the agent leaves. The perpetrator remains in the home undetected by the family for several days until he makes his move by attacking and killing them. It ends with him following the famous…you’ve seen them everywhere…Open House with the arrow sign towards yet another house where, presumably, he’s going to commit the same acts over again! Quite unsettling and really scary if you think about it and, while not based on a true story, it really opens your eyes to the dangers of opening up your home to the general public to enter and roam about as they please while you aren’t present and, an unsuspecting agent, preoccupied with other open house visitors, could in fact lose track of someone inside your home!
Here are the statistics as put forth by the National Association of Realtors: less than 2% of homes are sold as a result of an Open House. That’s a really LOW percentage! Why would you, as the owner of the home, put your home and your safety in jeopardy on such a low percentage of results? You wouldn’t! In my opinion, Open Houses serve one purpose and that is for new agents (and even some old-school agents) to have an opportunity to self-promote. That’s right, new agents view the opportunity to sit in an Open House as a chance to get in front of the public who may be interested in purchasing a home at some time in the future. The Open House shows on HGTV give people the false sense that Open Houses actually sell homes! That’s just simply not the case. If you went behind the scenes of those HGTV shows, you would see that the are completely staged and the visitors to those Open Houses have been preselected to appear on the show and be real-life actors. Unfortunately, due to the popularity of shows such as that glorifying the success of Open Houses, some in the real estate community and the public believe that holding an Open House will help to sell homes. Again, it’s just simply not the case!
As a seasoned agent with 15 years of full-time real estate experience, as opposed to sitting in a home for several hours on a weekend day, I prefer to use that time working with pre-approved Buyers who are ready to buy a home. Those are the people I’ll be bringing into your home by setting a pre-scheduled appointment. I’ll never ask my Sellers to vacate their home for 3+ hours so that I can let the general public walk through, putting their belongings and them at risk for theft or harm. Not to mention the fact that real estate agents themselves are what I term “sitting ducks” in an Open House. What’s to stop a criminal (as in the case of the movie I watched last night) from coming into the home and robbing or hurting the real estate agent and stealing whatever they desire in the home.
To summarize in case I haven’t driven my point home enough, don’t allow an Open House at your home if it is for sale! If you goal is to sell your home versus open it up to the general public and your nosy neighbors, then have your agent pour their energies into other forms of marketing your property that provide a higher yield in getting your home sold.
