Open House 101 - Home Seller Perspective

You're moving to Wisconsin and currently own a property in Portland, time to sell (or rent, but that's a whole other blog coming soon..) - should you have an open house, or not?

The only dangers are obvious – having strangers walk through your house with your personal belongings or the story of the visitor who intentionally left a window unlocked so that they could get in later… These are rare, but not impossible.

Do the benefits of an open house outweigh these potential dangers?

Simply put – it's not just the open house… it's also a question of how the open house is marketed and how the listing is marketed overall.

I usually knock on every neighbors door within a mile of the open house that I'm having, as well as sending out a mailer to every house within a mile as an invite to the open house. Not only that, the online marketing of the house includes a mass email to buyer agents in the area & my own person buyers, Facebook posts, and lastly, posts on all the real estate websites (RMLS, Redfin, Zillow, Trulia, etc..). The Open House becomes my excuse for getting as many eyes as possible on the house!

If the realtor your working with goes this far to promote the Open House, then the open house is absolutely worth the risk. If not, then who will show up and what will their intentions be?

This falls back on why it's better to use a realtor. As a seller, you can ask what your realtor will do and even request that they do certain things that aren't a part of their usual process, collaborate on target market and strategy – this is not something you can do with Redfin or Zillow and something you wouldn't be as good at alone.

In the end, it's up to you as the seller to weigh the good with the bad and decide if the open house is right for you.