Hold The Right Houses Open For The Right Reasons

The right houses are:

1. Located where arrows can bring good traffic
2. Priced at the market
3. Suited to the weather
4. Attractive from the curb

The right reasons are:

1. To capture a present-time buyer for the house held open
2. To capture present-time buyers for your other listings
3. To capture present-time buyers for any property
4. To make contacts with present-time sellers that will lead to listings
5. To contact future buyers
6. To contact future sellers

The people who come into any open house can be divided into twigs and berries.

The twigs are:

• Spies for your seller
• No-dough dreamers
• Sellers, already listed with another agent, checking their property’s competition
• Owners of similar houses looking for decorating and landscaping ideas
• Recent buyers of the same type of home worrying whether they got a good Deal
• Or, simply curious time-killers of all kinds and descriptions

There are three varieties of berries:

• Seller or buyers moving up, sideways, or down within your sales area
• Buyers moving in
• Sellers moving out

Berries come through your open house in various stages of maturity:

• Ripe – the need-to-move-now people who are pushed by outside forces or internal emotion
• Semi-Ripe – interested and able folks who aren’t pushed yet
• Green – people facing a possible change of circumstance, and people who want to move now, but believe they can’t act yet because of real or imaginary obstacles

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ve failed miserably every time visitors won’t give you’re their names. Don’t beat yourself down trying desperately to find the key, or say the magic word, that’ll turn a twig into a client. It can’t be done.

Keep your house presentation low-key and non-dominating.  Put gentle pressure on them to talk and reveal themselves by generous pauses.  That is, keep your mouth shut a lot.  Don’t beat them down with words.  When your mouth is on, your ears are off.  What they say is more important to you than what you say.  Ask cordial questions in a relaxed and non-threatening way.  If you watch and listen carefully, they’ll soon tell you, by words or actions whether they’re twigs or berries.

Hang loose.  Think of funny things.  Stay up beat.  Mr. and Mrs. Gattamoovnau are coming through that door any minute.  Be relaxed and ready to charm them.