Open Houses & Days on Market

Shannon Quagliata

Open Houses Direct

Can Coming Soon Open Houses Help Sell a Home By Reducing Accumulating Days on Market? Yes They Can.

Open Houses have had nothing but a bad reputation, yet have been used to sell homes for over 100 years. “They aren’t safe for the REALTOR®. They don’t sell homes. They are just for REALTORS® to get leads. They aren’t safe for the seller.” These are all common statements that have been connected to Open Houses for many years. With the evolution of technology, Open Houses have changed and so has the way we can market them and run them. With new digital Guest Book Check-In Systems, like Open Houses Direct, all Open House visitors can now be verified and tracked. REALTORS® who are holding the Open House can now be advertised as the direct point of contact for the consumer. And, by partnering up with a lender or a real estate partner at your Open Houses, they can now also be safer for both the agent and the seller. Mortgage companies like Amerifirst Financial are now eagerly offering to help sit an agent’s Open Houses with them to not only make Open Houses safer, but also to help them give buyer financing options that they might not know about. With interest rates on the rise, this is a very important part of getting a home sold, and also a great way to get the listing side of the buyer who also has a house to sell. 

I think one of the biggest myths about Open Houses is that they don’t actually help sell the home. With buyers and sellers now having more access to listings online, Open Houses have actually become one of the BEST ways to sell a house.  Buyers can now look online or follow Open House signs without engaging an agent until they find a house to buy.  Open Houses allow them to look on their terms and buy a house when the timing is right AND they find the right home to buy. Due to the fact that Open Houses do sell homes, agents should be utilizing them more, especially in a market with high inventory. In a market with high inventory, sellers get nervous that their home will never sell, or they will have to reduce the price so low that it prices them out of being able to buy the home that they wanted to upgrade to. The biggest factor with selling a home in a high inventory / high interest rate market is active days on market. In any market, high days on market gives a buyer the idea that something must be wrong with the house, and most buyers don’t consider that the home may just be priced too high. Many buyers will gravitate toward newer listings because they don’t look like the house that no one wants to buy. 

So how do we then sell a home without having to accumulate days on market and publish several price reductions within a short period of time? The best way to do that is to market the listings in “Coming Soon” status for up to 30 Days and have “Pre-Market” Open Houses for them. A Pre-Market, or Coming Soon Open House allows neighbors, potential buyers, and agents to preview a home before it hits “active” status. With Arizona Regional MLS Coming Soon rules, we can have Open Houses on a Coming Soon listing for up to 30 days prior to it EVER starting to accumulate days on market and ACTIVE status on the MLS. You can even have an Open House on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and not even publish it as a Coming Soon until Monday evening. That would mean your 30 days would start 4 days after having 4 Open House opportunities. That means for 34 days before it ever starts ticking away at days on market on Zillow, Redfin or the MLS, a REALTOR® can be pre-marketing a home.  This early marketing allows a seller to get important early market feedback including being able to test list price without ANY history of days on market or price adjustments. Being able to pre-market a listing for up to 34 days prior to it going active on the MLS allows you to manipulate things like price, rearranging photos online, etc. without accumulating days on market. Many homes could be sold prior to ever going active or at least can reduce active days on market, due to doing pre-marketing before it starts accumulating days on market. 

Open Houses Direct is one the best consumer direct platforms for advertising an Open House for a Coming Soon listing for up to 34 days prior to it going Active. With now over 6,000 registered buyers in Maricopa county alone, Open Houses Direct is a great consumer direct marketing platform for advertising and running your Pre-Market Open Houses. Open Houses Direct allows Realtors to create a Coming Soon Listing Landing Page that not only goes to consumers directly, but also creates a marketing page with a unique URL that REALTORS® can market on social media sites, mailers etc. With over 50% of consumers following Open House signs again to find Open Houses, having an Open House every weekend for four weeks while in Coming Soon status could attract almost 50+ showings. If all the leads are then captured correctly, an agent could have 50 potential opportunities to get feedback. 

Pre-Market Open Houses are also a great way to meet potential neighbors who may be in the market to sell. Doing a “neighborhood” exclusive preview Open House might give a neighbor a possible sense of urgency to see the home without having to schedule a showing with the listing agent. This neighbor may have been thinking of selling and would love the opportunity to see how their home compares to the new listing before hiring a REALTOR® yet to sell their home. 

For more information on how Open Houses Direct works and how you can advertise your Coming Soon listing on their platform, go to www.openhousesdirect.com or www.openhousemasters.com/workshop to sign up for our FREE workshops held via Zoom every month. You can also contact me directly at shannon@openhousesdirect.com or 480-293-4579. 

Shannon Quagliata 
CEO, Founder
Open Houses Direct /Open House Masters
(480) 293-4579
www.openhousesdirect.com
www.openhousemasters.com/workshop