Most real estate agents hold Open Houses on Saturdays or Sundays.
Why?
Because that's how everyone does it.
I think it really depends on when prospective buyers look in your local market. I've heard that in Florida, many agents hold open houses on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, but in most areas, Sunday is the customary open house day.
How about holding an open house on a Thursday evening?
Dan, are you crazy?
An open house on a Thursday? Why then?
Well, here's a strategy to take an action on:
Hold a 60, 75 or 90 minute open house. Wouldn't you rather have more people come in a shorter time frame, so that it has more of an 'auction' atmosphere? Why would an agent want to hold a 3 or 4 hour open house? It's a waste of everyone's time. If prospective home buyers are interested in seeing your listing, they will come at the advertised time.
I did an experiment once where I listed a home on a Monday. I then put up directional open house signs on a busy corner for a Thursday evening open house from 5:00pm - 6:00pm. No internet or classified advertising. Nothing else!
When I arrived at the home, there were 8 couples waiting for me. Now this house was nothing special. It was a nice, brick, cape cod, starter home. In that hour, I had 13 couples - 2 of whom had their agents with them and the rest were nosy neighbors.
Guess what happened next! The next day I received 2 offers from the people with agents. They didn't want to lose the home. They didn't know that most of the people were just nosy neighbors. There was a buzz in the house!
Now if I had spread the open house out for 3 hours, I'd probably only have one or two people in the house at any one time, but nothing like the flurry of activity that I had. There would have been urgency or motivation for the prospects to take action. They wouldn't know if anyone else came through the open house and they would probably take more time to 'think about it'.
Another way to increase attendance at your week day open house is to promote it to the neighbors...by sending a postcard, door hanger or calling to invite them. It shows you being proactive and you may get future sellers this way.
If your listing is way back deep in a subdivision, it may be harder to pull this off, but if you have any decent road exposure, I challenge you to try it and tell me what happens.
Your seller will be out of their home for less time, you can do more open houses that day if you want to and you'll hopefully have more people attend with more prospects to follow up on.
I hope this helps you. Let me know if it works for you.
To your success,
Dan
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