Getting The Most Out Of Your Open House

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An open house for your property is the best chance to attract new buyer interest. Even though this is almost universally known, it is rarely treated with the importance and urgency as it should. If you have gone through the process of rehabbing your property, you should spend as much time, if not more, on getting it sold. Any work you have done could be for naught if you do not find a buyer quickly or at the right price. Simply picking a date and opening your doors is not doing everything you can to find the right buyer. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do that will help.

The first is to spend some time and money on the curb appeal. Buyers will form an opinion on your property before they even step foot in the house. A new layer of mulch, a couple of new flowers and a power wash of the house will go a long way to give a positive vibe before anyone enters. At a minimum, they will walk into the house with an open mind as opposed to seeing weeds and overgrown bushes.

After you have the house exactly the way you want it, get the word out on as many channels as possible. Your realtor will do their work with the MLS and possibly some print advertising. You can do your part with social media, signs in the area and word of mouth. A few posts the week of the open house may seem a bit much, but you never know who is going to share your information and be interested in the property. The same goes with the immediate area surrounding the property. You should have signs up a week before your open house. If you go just a few miles out, it shouldn’t take you more than an hour’s time, but it could pay huge dividends.

On the day of the open house, set the mood of the property with a couple of scented candles, soft light and possibly opening the windows. The best way to generate buyer interest is to give them a feel for how it would be to live in the house. The more they can visualize your house as their home, the more likely they will be to make an offer. Smells matter much more than you may think. Odds are that your open house visitors will see more than one home that day and if they remember the smell they will remember your house fondly. In addition, you can leave them with a nice, glossy handout of all of the pertinent information about the property with pictures. If your property is the one they keep thinking about that night or the next day, you can expect an offer to come in.

You should treat your open house as a debut to the market for your property. You don’t have the time to do a trial run, so you have one chance to put the best foot forward. The quality of the work may not be enough to find the right buyer. Take care of the little things and treat your open house as the important event that it is.