What to do and not to do for an open house
Open Houses are great marketing events for your home. They allow buyers to informally view your home. Open houses are traditonally held on Sundays, but more often agents can also hold them on Saturdays, or sometimes both. In addition to public open-houses in Bergen County and Hudson County - there are also brokers open houses where brokers and real estate agents view the home. This is useful for professionals in real estate to evaluate a home for their client before showing the home to them. The agent or broker acts as "intermediary" and filters out homes that may or may not be well received by their clients.
Prior to any open house, you should read my top ten list for selling your home. If you have an agent assisting you, the agent should have submitted your home's open house date to the newspaper (Bergen Record, The Star Ledger for example), and also posted the open house date on the local MLS and Bergenlist.com (http://www.bergenlist.com) - Bergen County's Information Resource. This announces the open house date so you can have a plethora of visitors.
A agent or you should also bring signs to direct traffic to you home, and balloons as a means of securing attention to the signs. This should be setup at least an hour before the actual open-house start time.
Be sure to lock valuable poessions of value away, although such cases are rare, there have been cases (in Bergen County) in which visitors to home, have stolen items from the sellers.
Open the shades, and let the sunlight in. Sunlight has a calming affect, there are even studies on how sunlight deprivation affects one's mood.
Once the open house in underway, be sure to have a visitors log, to keep track of visitors, and if you're home is large, you may want to have multiple persons present, so visitors aren't roaming around the home, especially if it's currently occupied.
Offering some sort of refreshment or snack isn't a bad idea, you don't have to cook filet mignon but chocolate cookies, candy, and light snacks are good ideas. Especially, for parents with children. Some persons swear on baking a few chocolate chip cookies for the aroma it produces.
 |
 |
|---|