New House Selling Trend –
Open House Saturday
Whether you are selling your house privately or through an estate agent you may find that holding an 'Open House' to show your property to prospective buyers is a useful sales tool. An Open House simply means that you throw your property open for one or two hours, usually on a Saturday, so that anyone can come along and have a look around. It is standard practice in the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
The benefits of this approach are that firstly you only have to clean the house up, find a babysitter for the kids and hide the dog once instead of every time an individual viewer wants to come around. Secondly you can generate a lot of local publicity that your house is for sale – you want all your neighbours, friends and relatives to pass the word around that your place is on the market. Finally if you are lucky two interested parties could get into a ‘bidding war’.
Disadvantages are that of course anybody could wander into your house so don’t leave anything valuable lying around and if you are not the outgoing type you will need to get a more extravert friend or relative to help with the crowds (you hope).
Persuade some friends to turn up so that the first genuine potential buyer doesn’t feel intimidated. Prime them to get into conversation with viewers and talk up the house and the local area.
If you are selling through an estate agent you can ask them to tell everyone on their books about the Open House, however if you are going it alone advertise in the local newspaper, put up posters on community notice boards, in supermarkets, put the details on your website or webpage if possible (most FSBO sites allow you to edit your details) and on your ‘for sale’ sign.
On the day, put signs up so that viewers know that they are in the right place and most importantly make sure you have made up a set of details of the property to give to every viewer. Remember to include a photo, the address, asking price, and any contact details such as phone, email and website.
You can Make Your Own Flyer using our free flyer generator tool.