Open Houses

Please read the below article. This is exactly what I feel about open houses.

Crain's Chicago Business - Issue June 19, 2006

Come one, come all? Feel free to skip it.

Random passers by are seldom buyers; 'the nosy neighbor types'

Open houses often draw "people who are shopping for new decorating ideas," says agent Linda O'Donnell. Many homeowners consider the traditional open house usually held on Saturdays and Sundays, often with street-side signs inviting random passers by to drop in an indispensable tool for selling their residences. But most real estate agents do not.

Sheila Price, an agent with the Oak Park office of Baird & Warner, says open house browsers are rarely serious buyers. Many are merely curious about what a particular house looks like. She has even encountered a few open house addicts who spend every weekend touring homes they have no intention of buying.

"Sellers feel that the more open houses you hold, the more people see the house and the more offers they'll get," Ms. Price says. "Problem is, when you open the door to people, you are opening it to any and everyone. You are getting people who are not pre-qualified and not serious."

Ms. Price sells most of her homes without resorting to open houses. Earlier this year, she sold a single-family home at 5808 W. Walton St. in Chicago in just 13 days. The property listed at $239,900 and sold for $243,900 no open house required.

Linda O'Donnell, an agent with Re/Max Signature in Roscoe Village, has also found that open houses rarely attract the highest quality of potential buyers.

"Often we get people who are shopping for new decorating ideas," Ms. O'Donnell says. "Or we get the nosy neighbor types who are interested in seeing what the Joneses have next door."

Ms. Price's solution is to skip open houses whenever possible. In May, she sold a condo in Oak Park that stayed on the market for just three weeks. The asking price was $165,000, and Ms. Price sold it for about 96% of this figure, sans open house. "The people coming through were serious," she says. "We didn't waste a lot of time with people who just wanted to look."

Millie Rosenbloom, president and CEO of Chicago's Habitat Brokerage, says she never holds open houses. She considers them a waste of time and potentially troublesome, especially for the high-end homes $1 million and up in which she specializes.

"There are security issues involved in open houses," Ms. Rosenbloom says. "It's hard to control people going through the house. You have to be very careful."

by Crain Communications Inc.