One of the more common questions we’re asked from a seller when we list their property is…

“Does the open home time make a difference to the number of buyers that will attend?” 

It is a good question…and any seller who asks this question is rightfully pondering how they can enhance their chances of attracting more buyers who’ll inspect.

Here’s the short answer to the question – no.

My team and I generally commence open homes around 9:00 AM on a Saturday and finish around 3:30 or 4:00 PM…and we attract plenty of buyers at any of these times throughout the day.

There’s a train of thought amongst some sellers that the times between 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM on a Saturday are ‘peak times’ and that these are the best times to conduct open homes….and these times are certainly the most popular times to run open homes.

One of the issues with this is that many buyers are trying to get around and see lots of properties and when there’s often a good number of them open at the same time, buyers will often say something like…

“You bloody agents open all of the properties at the same time and this makes it hard for us to get around and see them all”. 

One thing I can tell you is that buyers will turn up at any time to a property if it’s of interest to them…and they’ll turn up in forty-degree temperatures or pouring rain.

In fact, stinking hot days and copious amounts of rain will bring more buyers out at times because willing buyers will want to experience how hot a property is when it’s hot and how well a property drains when there’s torrential rain.

Sundays can also be great days to open properties and buyers are often more relaxed as they stroll through with their morning coffee they picked up on the way.

I’m a huge believer that when buyers are more relaxed, the home they’re inspecting will offer a ‘more relaxed’ vibe and this will only increase the appeal of that property.

Additionally, a buyer will see themselves relaxing in the home on a Sunday morning (many times, the only day that a family will relax in the morning in their everyday routine) and as such, it will be easier to visualise what it will be like to relax in this particular property…especially when they ran around in a rush to see several properties in a stressful manner the very day before.

Mid-week open homes are a different story.

We’ve found that whilst they seem to work well on the Sunshine Coast or the Gold Coast, buyers may have good intentions but the late afternoon traffic, rush around with kids and dinner means that they often won’t attend.

As such, we find that very few people attend open homes at twilight during the week.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me say that conducting multiple open homes during the week/weekend can often lead a buyer to believe that the owners are becoming desperate to sell (when they aren’t desperate at all) and in fact, this process can be counter-productive as it gives the buyers more opportunities to attend and thus dilutes the impact of having many people jammed into a property at the one time.

At the very heart of it, the main reason an agent should run an open home (for no longer than 30 minutes unless the property is enormous) is that it provides willing buyers with a real life experience of the interest generated in that property…and this can have a huge impact on the speed of offers received and how much a buyer might offer straight up.

It’s human nature that people will want to have what everyone else wants and even if the buyer is unsure whether the home will suit, they’ll often be persuaded to look favourably upon the home if there’s plenty of people attending.

If the same buyer attends another open home where they are the only group that’s turned up, they may love the home but they’ll start to look at reasons why the home isn’t suitable since it appears that no-one else has given this property any attention at all.

There’s a saying that says, “Perception is Reality” and this is never more appropriate when looking at strategies designed to obtain the highest price for your property.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share a few ways that we work towards increasing the number of buyers at our open homes as we’re often told by buyers that our open homes seem to be the busiest…and that’s not by chance.

Until next week…Happy Listing and Happy Selling.