As more and more home buyers turn to online listings, video tours, and other digital tools to buy homes many in the real estate industry are wondering if open houses are still a viable way to sell houses. There’s no hard and fast answer to that question, but there’s also no doubt that for many agents open houses aren’t worth the cost and the hassle.
Open Houses Are Expensive And Time Consuming
Throwing an open house requires a lot of preparation and planning and also they can be quite expensive. Making sure that the time is in good shape to be viewed, buying food and drinks and decorations as well as having piles of brochures and other paperwork printed can cost quite a bit. Agents need to give up an entire day, and sometimes an entire weekend to be in the home in addition to the time spent advertising the open house. And after all that work and expense sometimes no one will show up.
Now that modern technology has given agents so many digital tools for finding homebuyers it may be that the days of the open house are over.
Digital Open Houses
One exciting option that many agents are embracing is a digital open house. The agent live streams from Facebook or other social media platform at a certain time and then viewers online can watch while the agent walks through the house showing off the best features and charm of the house. That way people can see the home and virtually walk through the home without having to sacrifice their weekends or evenings to drive to the house just to look around. After the virtual viewing homebuyers can decide if they want to contact the agent and see the home in person or ask for more information.
Digital open houses are easy to promote on social media and on the agent’s website and they can draw a lot of interested homebuyers. The agent doesn’t have to invest an entire day or an entire weekend waiting to see if anyone shows up to tour the home. And the video of the tour can be posted to the agent’s social media or website after the live stream is done so that more homebuyers can look at the tour in their own time.
Now that more than 50% of homebuyers start the home buying process online and a massive 99% of Millennials and 89% of Baby Boomers search for homes online it might be time for real estate agents to utilize modern technology and streamline the process of showing homes by getting rid of open houses for good. Taking advantage of modern tech tools makes it possible for agents to connect to an even bigger pool of potential buyers than ever before.
Posted by Gurpreet Ghatehora on
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