Hello1 Welcome to Todd Miller TV. The subject today is do open houses work? So you’re a seller and you’ve decided to interview a bunch of agents, and one of the agents that you’re interviewing says they do open houses. And maybe you think that’s a great selling point so you hire that agent. And I’ve experienced this quite number of times, at listing appointments myself, where we tend to not do open houses on properties and I always get the question or the statement from them a lot of times “Well we once bought a house because of an open house, so we know they’re effective and we want you to do them.” So the truth is, open houses really don’t work. It’s very well known in the industry for those of us who do this that they don’t really work as far as helping sell the house. The house is gonna sell if it’s priced right, if it’s marketed right, open house is really negligible if nothing, a you’re probably saying “Well wait a minute, I/you might be one of those people and we went to an open house and bought it.” But the truth is, you went to an open house because you’re probably driving through the neighborhood anyway and you probably already knew you like this neighborhood, and there was probably a sign in the front yard; and even if you had been to an open house, you probably called off the sign and an agent showed you the house and you would have gotten it either way. So, the barrier to buying a house has nothing to do with how accessible it is. They’re all accessible. if they’re on the market they’re accessible. You can go write in it. So the question you have if you ask yourself is “Why do people still do them?” Well there’s a couple reasons. The first reason, agents do them is ’cause is they can be a tool to generate business for the agent. So, the agent does an open house, and you know what happens is, the neighbors all wanna come in and see the house because they’ve never been in there, they wanna see how it compares to their, ’cause we’re/by nature we’re very/ we like to compare. So we’ll walk at our neighbors house and check it out, and then that allows the real estate agent and that neighbor to start a relationship, maybe they’ll wanna sell their house. Or people who were just thinking about buying will drive through and then they’ll engage in a conversation about buying house and then the agent gets to generate business from it; and yes, will people will come in and buy, sure! But those people would have bought anyway. Why? Because A. They have the internet to look at all the pictures and B. If there’s a sign in front of the house, they already know they like the neighborhood, they can call of the sign, or/and then they can have somebody show them the house. But the open house by itself is really not gonna help sell a house. There’s no statistical data that shows that it will. We all know in the industry that it’s just something that we either do to generate business or to pacify the seller and secure a listing. And the truth is, that agency to do a better job explaining, that open houses are probably not good for them. Here’s an example why: 1, Do you really want strangers who have not met with an agent and been pre-qualified randomly coming in to your house? What if the strategy is, the they walk in to your house and then one person ties up the agent downstairs while the other one sneaks upstairs and start casing your house, looking where all you stuff is, maybe going through your drawers and stuff, your jewelry, and you have maybe prescription drugs, or electronics, or whatever and they can easily grab something of value very small, stick in their pocket and walk out the door. Okay? So, there’s a lot of problem with open houses and having your house that accessible. Best way to sell your house is have the agent do what they traditionally do which is they market it, they take the pictures, the only people who actually get to get inside your house are pre-qualified with an agent, either the listing agent or another agent, taking your won pre-qualified people that they know, that they have all their info that they can keep track of who is in the house, that’s another problem ’cause you don’t really knwo who those people were. They could come in, even if you have sign and list, they can make up information. Agents typically don’t take people out unless they know who the people are. So that’s my thought on open houses. They’re not effective, they don’t work for selling. They’re great tools for agents to generate business. So just be aware when you’re going through an open house. What it is, it’s they;re opportunity to prospect you and not necessarily you know, they’re trying to sell that house. I thought I would share that with you. That is my update for today, and hope to see you another video. Thanks!