For many sellers, the very thought of advertising an open home and offering strangers an open invitation to wander through your property is about as appealing as watching NSW win a State of Origin series 3-0

(actually, most sellers would rather run a dozen open homes in a week that watch NSW clean sweep on origin series but there’s more chance of hell freezing over than this happening in the foreseeable future. Given the plight of the Eels on the bottom of the table and the very mediocre season of the Brisbane Roar, I have to hang my hat on something right now!).

So, what’s the true purpose of an open home and why is it a good idea or a bad idea to run them?

There’s a common train of thought that a majority of the open home attendees will be nosy neighbours but in reality, very few neighbours actually visit open homes these days.

From the last analysis of buyers attending open homes that we calculated, only 3-4% of the buyers were direct neighbours having a ‘sticky beak’.

The ‘sticky-beaks’ tend to do most of their snooping online these days.

There’s also a common myth that open homes are magnets to thieves that like to target valuables or those that analyse the easy ‘entry points’ into a home for potential ‘break and enter’.

Touching wood as I’m saying this but in 18 years of selling real estate (and almost 10,000 open homes), I’ve never had a single item stolen from one of my properties.

Putting these perceived issues aside, many people simply don’t like the thought of complete strangers opening their cupboards and invading their privacy.

So why run an open home and what are the advantages?

First and foremost, an open home creates a very distinct competitive environment amongst buyers.

There’s no better way of forcing willing buyers to submit quick offers (and even better, very good offers) than placing them in a situation where they are confronted with other willing buyers at the same time.

The fear of loss is one of the best weapons an agent has at their disposal in order to drive offers in an upwards direction and given many of the general public don’t believe much of what an agent tells them (remember my recent article regarding the ‘Reader’s Digest Top 40 Most Trusted Professions’), an open home that’s filled with people is the best way to prove to the buyer that they’ll need to move fast if they wish to purchase this particular property.

When running inspections by ‘Appointment Only’, an agent can often run groups inspections but it’s very hard to force 80-90% of the buyers that wish to inspect a property on any given week into the same time frame.

As such, it’s likely that you’ll need to accommodate buyers with several different times throughout the week rather than just once.

So, should an agent run several open homes through the week?

In our opinion…no.

Providing several viewing options will dilute the process and stagger the attendance over a longer period time – remember, we want as many of the buyers as possible to eyeball every other buyer that’s potentially interested.

A huge myth is that if you open a home for longer (or more times in a week) that you’ll obtain more inspections and increase your chances of selling it…and this is simply incorrect.

If you attend an open home and you’re the only buyer there, what’s your first thought? For many it will be “Gee what’s everyone else know about this house that I don’t know?” or “What’s wrong with it?”…and the chances are that you’ll start looking for reasons why you shouldn’t buy it.

But then you attend another open home with 30-40 people inside, it’s likely that you’ll make an immediate assumption that it must be good value for money and a commodity that won’t last long on the market.

As painful as it is, an open home can put tens of thousands of dollars extra into your pocket and whilst there are exceptions to this rule, we’d certainly recommend considering this strategy (even just for the first week or two) when placing your property on the market.

On a final note, Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mums out there. Our Mother’s make such incredible sacrifices for us every day and we’d be lost without them!

To my Mum (Carolyn), thank you so much for the love and sacrifices you’ve made for me over the past 46 years and been the most amazing Mother that any son could ever hope to have in his life.

As I write this, I’m listening to my little 4-week-old boy cry in the background as Erin tries to settle him…and it’s been a vivid reminder of just how much love a Mother places into her newborn child when the child seems to require feeding, changing, washing, nursing and settling almost every hour of the day (and yes I am trying to help out as much as I can as well).

Please take the time to pamper your special Mum for the day and show her how much she means to you!

Until next week, Happy Listing & Happy Selling!