17 Jan The Playbook: Open House Essentials
Hello, there! Today we are wondering, what is your first reaction when you hear the words: “Open House”?
Do you feel excited? Opportunistic? Bored? Painful? Hopefully it’s not that last one!
We’ve been hearing some chatter about best practices for holding an open house. While we are by no means experts, we have come up with our “essentials” after lots of trial and error! This is what works for us, and I hope you find value in our essentials.
The Open House Breakdown
Signs: In a perfect world, you’ll have at least 12 signs.
Now, not every open house you’ll hold will require 12 signs. A well-placed home might need between 4-6, if there is easy access from major roads or other high-traffic areas. But, to be safe, aim to own at least 12 signs.
New to the biz? Join a team or ask your colleagues to borrow their open house signs until you can buy your own. You can also utilize Open House helper services to have between 50-100 generic signs placed out for you, typically for a good price.
Location: Be choosy!
Choose a listing that has easy access from major roads and areas of interest. The last thing you need is to confuse your foot traffic with 20 criss-crossing turns into a neighborhood! The perfect open house listing will have, at most, 3 major turns from a main road or landmark. For example, here is a listing we held this week:
At each intersection, we’d try to put at least on sign on catty-corners, directing traffic towards the property. At the turnoff into the property off of 12th Street, we’d put one sign on each side of the road, then one in front of the home. See how they add up?
A great thing to note about this location is that it is surrounded by areas of interest, like schools, churches, and even a few restaurants just down the road. Optimum foot traffic!
We also don’t really care about days on market when it comes to listings; at least, not as much as recent activity on the property. If a listing has been held open day after day for weeks, pass. Find a great listing, in a strong location, that hasn’t had an open house in a while.
Materials: Lead Capture and Takeaways
Long story short, you need the materials that you’ll feel comfortable using. Most importantly, you’ll need a sign up sheet of some kind. This can be as simple as a pen and print out paper (find templates on Pinterest!), or you can get crazy like us and download an app.
We use Open Home Pro on our iPad for lead capture. We love how simple it is to add in listing information, and the ability to control what questions our guests are prompted to answer. It will automatically send branded emails to leads about the listing they signed in at. Open Home Pro also has a great analytics tool to show you the open rate on sent emails through the app!
You’ll also want something to give to your guests. Be sure to have some flyers made for your listing with all the details; you can make personal branded versions yourself (we do on Canva), or you can simply print off the MLS plano. You may also ask your lender partner to provide you with buyer cost scenarios. This can be very helpful for serious buyers! Think about what other information your guests might find helpful. Is it neighborhood school information? A list of the ten closest coffee shops? The goal is to provide value, here.
We also like to have chilled bottled water, and individually wrapped treats. My favorite is the gold-wrapped Hershey’s dark chocolate pieces that we buy in bulk from Costco! Guests love that they are individually wrapped. Bonus: They don’t leave crumbs!
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