Helpful Hints for Open Houses

August 15th, 2016 | by: Lauren Biedenharn | Posted in : Customer Service , Marketing, Real Estate Tips

Timing

First and foremost choose a date to conduct your open house that does not conflict with events being held in the community or neighborhood, holidays, or major sporting events. Scheduling the very best date for a potential open house varies from different communities and the best day of the week can easily be found out by investigating local newspapers or advertisements that have open house sections. Requesting their opinions is a great way to get professional knowledge and experience from those that consistently familiarize themselves with the community’s open houses. Researching information on the best days to conduct open houses can be critical to a successful open house and can make all the difference.

Advertising

Make your property known by advertising in variety of ways to reach the maximum amount of people. The most common ways to advertise open homes include newspaper ads, local flyers, signage, television, and utilizing the internet and different platforms of social media to advertise your open home. Familiarizing with the local community to strategically place your flyers and signs is crucial, as you want to target high traffic and popular areas to promote your open home. Place signage at street corners that are easily visible and use flags, balloons, and directional signs that is appealing and eye-catching. Sending out personal invitations targeting those who you think may be interested is a way to control the amount of people that attend your open house if you want to regulate your amount of visitors. The personal invitations should include close friends, relatives, and neighbors as these are people who you can trust to invite friends or family member who can bring you interested buyers.

Provide Property Information

Provide property information sheet that is accessible near the entry way of the home that details the property in a way that highlights all of the attractive features of the not only the home, but the surrounding neighborhood as well. Provide a summary sheet that gives your buyers reasons to buy your home including all of the advantages of living in your home. Ultimately you want to provide a diverse set of reasons to why your property’s location is a great place to live. Investigate demographics and statistics such as crime rates, information and location on nearby schooling and recreation parks, historical facts about the community, popular shopping areas, local libraries, and nearby public transportation. To make your property sheet visually appealing, provide maps and color photos for an attractive presentation.

Securing Valuables

You can never be too safe when securing valuables in the home especially since it must be kept in mind these are often strangers and unfamiliar people that will be entering and exiting your home. Be sure to safely stow away, lock up, and remove all jewelry, valuables, items of sentimental value, personal electronics, prescription drugs and medicine, and firearms.

Staging

Ultimately, the goal is to have your home look, feel, and smell welcoming. Organizing, de-cluttering, and having the house clean are a must. The tidiness of the home will make the areas seem more spacious. Make sure the doorbell and all the interior and exterior lighting fixtures work, and remember to have a welcoming, well-lit atmosphere by opening the drapes or blinds to let in natural light. Refreshment availability is a common practice, but is entirely up to you. It is common to offer finger-foods especially baked goods such as freshly baked cookies or bread that will add a pleasing scent to your home.

If you choose against offering refreshments, there are other alternative ways to give your home an appealing scent while also adding in the staging presentation. Lighting candles throughout the home creates a calm and relaxing environment while providing a light scent. Another inexpensive way to boost your home’s interior experience is to have a nicely arranged bouquet of fresh flowers. The flowers will not only give your home some added lively color, but also a fresh floral scent.

Building Relationships

Conducting an open house is all about building relationships not only with neighbors and community locals, but establishing a foundation with interested buyers and sellers. Engaging your visitors is critical factor when conducting your open house so it is important to communicate effectively, be knowledgeable about the property, and talk to your guests to find out what they think about the property and what interests them. Visitors may be buyers, sellers, or even neighbors, all of which are great prospects to build a relationship with. Using guest book sign in is a great way to build new relationships as the open house visitors provide their contact information for future reference. By having the guest book list the visitor’s email, you can build your email database with prospective contacts. Another benefit of the expansion of email contacts is that it is a paperless way to communicate with potential clients. E-campaigns are another way that ‘goes green’ while building a consistent and assessable relationship with clients. E-campaigns have become a way to keep up with the client’s business through specialized branding tailored to an individual client. The branding methods provide instant communication with client relationships as these are often online exchanges. Establishing an online relationship with clients is becoming just as important as personal relationships with the dependency of new technologies in the real estate world. S.M. Sold builds relationships though the utilization of specialized E-campaigns to build a successful brand to all of our clients.

Please visit our site for more information on our company’s e-campaigns: http://smsold.com/solutions/email-marketing