Open houses- waste of time or key to selling a home?

I sat at an open house on Sunday from 2-4.  I met neighbors, a first time homebuyer couple represented by a buyer’s agent and someone in the real estate industry who stopped by.

Is this a productive use of time of my time? Essentially I opened the door for another agent’s client and answered their questions, and visited with people.

Here is what I think, and as usual I will take the slow horse getting there. A month ago I had to take continuing ed so that I could renew my license. Twelve hours is mandatory; I had already taken 6 CE hours in commercial, but decided to take the whole shebang at one sitting.

I had been hearing that Massachusetts was on the cusp of implementing online CE courses, and that sounded great to me. Sitting in my home, paying pretty good attention, sipping my coffee and multitasking through the mandatory 12 hours- yep, a match made in heaven. But that would have to be the next time around, so I signed up for 12 hours in a straight shot from Bill Morgan, the Hat Guy.

Because of that experience I swear I will never take a CE class online. The 12 hours went by- not in a snap, but pretty quickly. And Bill incorporated the 3 Es of good presentation (online or off, by the way): education, entertainment and engagement. I would expect education- after all, that was what everyone was there for. But he nailed the entertainment (thanks for the candy, Bill) and engagement parts too. He was funny, he involved individuals from the class, and he kept the attention of the class as a whole- no mean feat for a course lasting 12 hours that few people really wanted to be at.

So what does this have to do with open houses? A lot, believe it or not. Buyers can get a really good sense of some elements of a home from the Internet- where most of them are starting out anyway. They have an idea of what individual rooms look like. They do NOT have a sense of the neighborhood, a sense of the way one room flows to the next (and you don’t really get a complete sense of this with a virtual tour), or the overall gestalt (for lack of a better word) or “wholeness” of the place- how all of these characteristics fit together. And really, the sum of these parts is what makes a house a home.

You can’t get that online any more than I could have gotten the entire experience of my CE class online. The class was more than what was presented- it was the friends that I made on either side of me, the joking, the mistakes we made, and the teacher tying it all together.

That’s what an open house does. Was it a waste of my time? Even if no one had shown up, my time is never wasted. I could be sketching out a post, planning for my week, or any of a hundred things. But in this particular case I met an online business associate (and his two sweet daughters) face to face, I showed buyers through who left with a complete sense of the property, and met the neighbors who know of someone interested in the property.

So, the short answer is, “Yes, I think open houses are useful.” They take me out of the Internet world in which I find myself immersed and bring me face-to-face with people in general. I may not sell a home right then and there, but I will connect, and I will learn from these people what they think of their neighborhood and of the market.

And by learning and listening I will become better at what I do.

Diane is one of the remaining dinosaurs who enjoys Open Houses. What do you think, as a consumer or as an agent?