The other day an agent friend of mine was bemoaning the fact that as time goes on his open houses are drawing fewer and fewer lookers. And that the one’s who do show up are less interested in what he has to say and spend less time at the open house than in the past.
Well, obviously, there are fewer buyers out there now than there were a couple of years ago, I said. But also, the internet has disintermediated the open house process. It’s come between the open house agent - who traditionally supplied information about the house - and potential buyers.
Because of all the information that is available on the internet about every house for sale – photos, aerial maps, street view maps, tax records, floor plans, previous sales histories, comparable sales, etc, etc – buyers are able to easily investigate many of the details of any house before deciding whether or not it’s worth going to have a look.
And consequently many houses, that at first may have looked like a possibility, end up in the reject file after just a few minutes of online investigation. Buyers discover that; it’s too close to the road, or to a neighboring house, there are electric/phone wires strung across the backyard, the backyard’s too small, the house is all electric, no gas, the orientation is wrong – east/west rather than north/south, no view, don’t like the floor plan - not a split bedroom plan, the kitchen is too this or too that, the house next door is painted bright red, the house is overpriced. You name it.
Whatever it is, it’s a deal breaker for those buyers, and there’s No Need to go see it in person. So they visit fewer open houses.
And if it does make their keeper list, when the buyers do arrive at the open house, they often have as much or more information about it as does the agent holding it open.
And because they already know the score, these informed buyers are less likely to hang on the agent’s every word. Resulting in the open house agent feeling more like a doorman at a poorly attended premiere, than a sought after provider of information.
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