Poorly Planned ‘Open’ Houses Can Leave Bad Impression
I recently visited several open houses in Chatsworth and was pretty shocked by what I found.
One home advertised as “open” was, in fact, locked up.
Another “open house” was too open. The door was unlocked and the broker was nowhere to be found. I walked around the house asking if there was anybody there. Alas, I heard only the echo of my own voice.
A third house that I visited did have someone on duty. He wasn’t a real estate agent, however. He sat in one of the bedrooms watching television with his bare feet propped up on the furniture. His answers to my questions about the property were more confusing than they were helpful.
So much for superlative client service.
The moral of all this is that if you’re a seller planning an open house, you’d better ask your real estate agent lots of very specific questions about how it will all be handled. A poorly planned open house not only makes a bad impression, it can mean the loss of valuables from the home and even the possibility of vandalism.
Real estate broker Susan Cashman has been showing up at a growing number of open houses to find no one there. “The listing brokers are really doing their seller a big disservice,” said Cashman, who is an assistant branch manager at Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate Services in Woodland Hills. “This is a problem that’s been getting worse.”
On Tuesdays and Fridays--which are known as “caravan” days on which agents preview new listings--many homes are listed as open when they’re not really open. Many agents from all over the San Fernando Valley simply let themselves into these homes by accessing the key safe attached to many doorknobs, Cashman said. Needless to say, this isn’t exactly the best way to monitor an open house.
“Some agents will just pay a teen-ager a few bucks to sit in the house for a few hours,” Cashman said. These house sitters often know nothing about the features in the home and they don’t always dress or behave very professionally, she said. “There should be a professional there,” Cashman said. “More sellers need to ask if their agent will be present at the open house,” she said. A seller’s best bet is to have two agents at the home. This helps ensure the safety of the agents themselves and security at a home that may have several visitors at a time.
Some prospective buyers and brokers come in packs, Cashman observed. “When they get in the door, they spread out all over the place and it becomes impossible to monitor what they’re doing.” Besides demanding an adequate professional staff, she said, sellers should also take responsibility for putting away their valuables. “I’ve seen money, jewelry and guns just sitting in plain view,” she said.
Some agents and brokers just don’t see the need to be around at their own advertised open houses.
Jerry Berns, a broker at Jon Douglas Co. in Sherman Oaks, currently has about 50 residential listings--about six to eight properties of which are open on any given Sunday.
“I want the property to be available all the time and I can’t possibly be there all the time,” Berns said. He pays other agents between $25 and $30 for house sitting one of his listings for about three hours. When a prospect shows serious interest, the agent is instructed to page Berns, who spends his Sundays shuttling between his open houses. There are plenty of agents hungry enough to take his relatively small remuneration, Berns said. Besides, he added: “you’re not going to find a high caliber person such as myself to sit there for three hours.”
Not only are agents these days either too busy or too lazy to show up for their own open houses, they’re also not spending as much time as they used to previewing homes to keep up with what’s new on the market.
“Apathy in the real estate market is taking its toll on the enthusiasm salespeople show toward knowing the inventory,” Berns said. So listing agents are trying all sorts of gimmicks to get their homes looked at by other agents. One developer recently had a $100 prize drawing for agents who left their business card at the door of each new home they visited. A lender with several homes on the market offered a somewhat more generous prize of $300 in cash. There are also trips to Hawaii, not to mention catered luncheons that are being used to coax agents into visiting the vast number of listings in the Valley and Ventura County.
How effective all these incentives are is anybody’s guess. But Berns is sold on the idea. On one recent weekend, he said, he doled out $5 to each agent who visited and at one property more than 100 agents came by. “It’s been very effective,” he said.
Some open house visitors find their own incentives. Berns recalled one visitor who sat down at the bar in the home of one celebrity seller. The visitor helped himself to several drinks before Berns could coax him out of the home.
Other open house visitors find satisfaction merely in getting a better look at their neighbors’ lives. In fact, Berns conceded, only about 5% to 10% of all his buyers come from an open house.
“I would like to see the business do away with open houses entirely,” said Cashman of Coldwell Banker. Serious buyers can always make an appointment with their agent to see any house on the market, she said. It might mean an end to some free catered lunches, Cashman said, but still, she added: “I’d like to see the open houses completely abolished.”
