Open houses DO sell houses. It’s just that they rarely sell the home where the open house is held. The statistics say that just one percent of all home purchasers actually buy the home they visited at an open house.
The truth is that open houses are a great place for real estate agents to meet potential buyers. In fact, a buyer is eight times more likely to buy some other house because of your open house than he is to buy yours. That makes a lot of sense when you realize that for a buyer, visiting an open house is kind of like going on a blind date with a potential new home. How many blind dates actually lead to marriage? Fortunately for open house attendees, even if the house isn’t right, they may meet an agent who is equipped to match them with the right home.
It is a good thing for your Realtor to be holding open houses, because every buyer he meets is a potential purchaser of your home. What’s more important than holding your particular house open is that your agent stages open houses in high-traffic, popular neighborhoods. For example, in Rutherford County we have found much success meeting customers in new construction neighborhood model and spec homes. This is where the people who want to buy homes hang out. And we have sold many of our existing listings because we met motivated buyers out in subdivisions far from the home they eventually purchased.