Saturday mornings are when people buy houses! You should definitely schedule some open home inspections every Saturday (and a few after work as well). The purpose of the open home is to introduce your house, and yourself, to the buyers, and hopefully encourage them to submit an offer or at least register their details as a prospect. You can include your listing’s open homes schedule in the inspections section and your opens will be advertised on all the online portals.
To choose the best time to schedule your open home, go to RealEstate.com.au and search for your suburb. On the results page select INSPECTIONS & AUCTIONS at the top of the page and click the Saturday tab – here you’ll find every inspection happening in your area on Saturday. Look for any windows in the morning before and after the other inspections to fit yours in. Buyers often make a run-sheet of homes they plan to look at, so if you hold your open at a time no others are on, there’ll be more buyers able to fit you into their schedule.
On the day of the Open Home be sure the place is display-home ready. When presenting your property to buyers, make sure your house: looks good, feels good and smells good! Keep it tidy, keep it uncluttered, keep it clean. Don’t cook anything smelly before people turn up for an inspection – consider some incense or an oil burner – soft music can also help but keep the volume low! Make sure the curtains are open in every room, turn on the air conditioning (even if the windows and doors are open), turn on every light in every room, and turn on all the fans. Making a house appear bright, and breezy is important. Consider removing personal effects like photos from walls and shelves, these can restrict buyers’ ability to imagine themselves living in the home (remember, buyers have terrible imaginations!) Make sure pets, family members, children, greasy teenagers, your alcoholic uncle (we’ve all got one), etc, are whisked away to Grandma’s house during inspections. Give the house one last walk-through to ensure there’s no mess anywhere, Remember to put out your OPEN FOR INSPECTION signs at the end of the street and out front to guide people in, take a deep breath, and get ready for the buyers – This is the fun part!
As the ‘agent’ your job at the open house is to welcome buyers in at the entrance of the property. You should always dress professionally, presentation is key! Be polite, confident, friendly, remember to smile and introduce yourself by name. This is a great time to hand them a printed brochure of the property (we will design a beautiful double-sided colour brochure for you to use here as standard). The brochure is good because it gives the buyers something tangible to take away from the inspection as a memory-jogger, and it also includes your contact details on it, so they know how to reach you.
Keep a note pad or tablet near the front door, and ask each group that comes through to please register their contact name and phone number. This is a standard procedure at all open homes, so buyers should be quite used to this. It is also good for security.
When the last of your buyers have gone through, remember the grab your signs and bring them back inside. Keep your phone on over the weekend in case anyone calls and if they do call wishing to make an offer, get them that offer document right away. Drive it to them if possible, otherwise email it, but don’t delay when someone wants to make an offer.
By Monday, it’s time to follow-up with your buyers. This is where your note-pad of registered buyers comes in handy! Call each buyer, ask how they went over the weekend and if they have any thoughts or feedback on the property. This is valuable information you’ll get from buyers about what may have put them off about the listing, that you can improve on for next week, or it could be just the call they needed to decide to make an offer. Either way, follow ups are important so make sure you do them, keep notes on everyone you call, and keep that note-book handy throughout your campaign. You may want to call those buyers back in a few weeks if you still haven’t sold if you decide to reduce the price or change the terms of sale. Either way, the data you collect is vital to your sales process, so keep it safe.
Remember, the purpose of the open house is to introduce both the property, and yourself, to the buyers in the hope that they’ll be impressed enough with both of you to submit an offer. The offer is what you want here so keep that in mind as your objective. Your secondary objective is to build a little bit of a database on your prospective buyers, if you can’t get an offer, the next best thing is a prospect because following up with your prospects at a later date can result in an offer down. Good luck!