Open House

I've always been a strong proponent of doing Open Houses for my listings, but I enjoy Open Houses, for me they're fun. I get to talk with a lot of different people who are out shopping or maybe just browsing for a home, and I listen to what they say about the house that I'm holding Open, other houses that they've seen, what they think about the neighborhood, the state of the market here in the Tucson Foothills and anything else that comes up. It's the best way that I know of to see how people feel about that house I just listed for sale and get a handle on what buyers are thinking about the real estate market. Do the people linger and talk amongst themselves and pause and go back to the kitchen or family room, do they go through the house two or three times and ask a lot of questions. Or are they in and out in a flash with a muttered 'thank you'. You can learn a lot at an Open House, and it's a great way to get your listing exposed to people who are just beginning to look and don't yet have an agent. And occasionally you get lucky, and sell your listing from that Open House.
But here in Tucson it's fairly easy and generally very pleasant to do an Open House on a Sunday afternoon. Neighbors drop by and introduce themselves and I've never heard any complaints from neighbors or been discouraged in any way from doing an Open House. Apparently the Open House thing is a different ball game in New York City, as the New York Times describes the travails of Open Houses in Closing the Door on Open Houses  '...to many other residents in buildings with open houses, a Sunday afternoon with a mob of potential buyers clogging their lobbies and monopolizing their elevators is tantamount to having strangers walk in off the street and invite themselves up for dinner'.
I assumed that agents didn't do Open Houses in New York City, it just seems too ripe for problems, I couldn't imagine it. The New York Times article talks about some those problems, and some of it's pretty funny, "Mr. Miller had vivid memories of a 2002 open house that drew about 90 people in an hour and a half in a Greenwich Village building that had an escort rule. “When I went down and saw the first horde of people, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or call the police,” he said. “I was alone. I felt helpless. I felt like Pauline having a peril.” - And the article also makes some good points about why Open Houses are a very valuable marketing tool. Read it here - Closing the Door on Open Houses