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Tips for Marketing and Hosting Mega Open Houses
Open houses can mean big business for many real estate agents, but you have to know how to market and promote the open house, connect with other homeowners in the neighborhood and set up the open house in a way that allows you to gather contact information and establish rapport with potential buyers and sellers. Below you’ll find some incredible tips for marketing and hosting a mega open house from one of our top agents at eXp Realty.
This real estate agent recently took over an 800 home neighborhood in less than 6 months, thanks to her Mega Open House strategy!
In the video below, she will walk you through the process of marketing and hosting a mega open house, step-by-step. Here are just a few highlights from this incredible training video:
- Why Open House leads are superior to other lead sources
- How to make Your Open Houses a neighborhood event
- How to choose the right house to hold open
- Learn the right (and wrong) ways to market / promote your open house
- Find out when and where you should be marketing the open house
- Learn how to set up the open house in order to capture leads and feedback on the home
- How to leverage open houses to take over a neighborhood
Marketing and Hosting Open Houses
Key Takeaways from the Mega Open House Training Video
Why Open House Leads are Better than Other Lead Sources
First and foremost, the leads are essentially FREE. Open houses are a wonderful way to get in front of “ready to buy” home buyers, potential home sellers in the neighborhood and they also help to create name recognition in your preferred neighborhoods or service areas.
The lead conversion rates are SO much higher than a website lead for example. With internet leads, the typical conversion rate is typically 1 to 3% — or about 2 buyers for every 100 leads you generate. With open house leads, Shelia was able to break down the numbers so you can see how many homes you’ll actually sell each year if you follow her Mega Open House marketing strategy:
- The average number of people through open house: 6
- The average number “leads” per open house: 3
- Number of open houses per week: 2
- Total number of leads per week generated: 6
- After 30 days the total number of leads generated: 24
- After 90 days the total number of leads generated: 72
- Conversion rate at 90 days: 7%
- Total number of potential deals after 90 days: 5
- After 6 mo. total number of leads generated: 144
- Conversion rate at 6 months: 10%
- Total number of potential deals after 6 months: 14
- After 12 mo. total number of leads generated: 288
- Conversion rate at 12 months: 10%
- Total number of potential deals after 12 months = 29
29 home sales! Many real estate agents don’t even sell that many homes in a year. If you just worked your sphere and focused on hosting amazing open houses every weekend, you could easily sell over 50 homes each year. Please keep in mind, that any lead you generate requires FOLLOW UP.
How to Choose the Right House to Hold Open
eXp recommends that you think of the house like a storefront. You want to pick the home that has a great location (ideally near a main road or intersection), was recently listed, and has a look that will be attractive to many potential buyers.
Ideally, you can host open houses for your own listings, but if you are new to the real estate business or just don’t have any listings at this time, there are a few other sources to consider. Check with your team or agents in your brokerage to see if they’d be interested in having you hold an open house. If you still can’t find one, you can also reach out to agents at other brokerages or even call FSBOs!
Promoting the Open House: 7 to 10 Days Before Event
Create a home brochure, a video of the home, a landing page that allows people to register and learn more about the home you’ll be opening this weekend, and Facebook ads with a photo of the home and an invitation to come to the event.
Open House Marketing: 5 Days Before Event
eXp suggests a tactic called “Circle Calling”. This is where you target 200 to 800 homes around the Open House and call them to let them know about the upcoming event. You can find the names and numbers through several sources like REDX, Mojo and Cole Resources. If you don’t have time to call everyone in the neighborhood, you may want to have your assistant or a member of your team handle that for you.
Ask your favorite lender if they would be able to join you at the open house. Quite often, they will pay for the refreshments as well!
Marketing your Open House: 2 to 4 Days Before Event
Stop by the house and take a quick video that highlights the home’s features, pricing, etc. Once you have your video (iPhone or flip cam work well), add it to YouTube, Facebook, and any other classified ad websites.
Ask your lender and send you a Rate Card on for the home that includes loan programs available and estimated monthly payments.
Hand delivers at least 100 to 200 open house flyers to the nearby neighbors. This is a great way to meet the neighbors without being “salesy.” When they answer the door, you can just say something like “Your neighbors Bob and Joan wanted me to invite you to their open house this Sunday from 12 to 4 pm. They’d love to get your feedback on the home.”
She also shared the design of her Open House invitations in the video and each one starts with: YOU’RE INVITED to our OPEN HOUSE
Please bring your friends, family, co-workers or anyone looking to move to the area on Sunday, April 10 from 12 – 4 pm.
If the neighbors aren’t home when you’re door-knocking, you can just put the rolled-up invite on their door. Make sure that when you roll up the flyer that “You’re Invited” is the first thing the neighbors see.
IMPORTANT: If you aren’t able to do all the videos and some of the marketing, delivering the flyers door to door is the MOST important thing you can do. If you don’t have time to door knock, please hire someone to deliver the flyers. This is critical to the success of your open house… and
securing new listings in the neighborhood.
Getting Ready for an Amazing Open House
- There are several things you should always bring to the open house:
- 25 to 50 professional home brochures that are printed on heavy card stock
- CMA for the home so serious buyers can see that the home is priced correctly (or at fair market value)
- List of all the homes for sale in that neighborhood or zip code
- Black contract, just in case someone wants to write an offer at the open house!
- Get stocked up on the necessities: flashlight, napkins, water bottles, biz cards, etc.
- Install at least 15 to 30 larger directional signs, leading people to your “storefront”
- Install large Open House flags in front of the home (usually on either side of the driveway). See examples of the open house “feather flags” on Amazon.com.
- Add balloons where appropriate
One Hour Before the Open House Begins
It’s also recommended that real estate agents should have a card table and 1-2 chairs, so you can set up right next to the front door. The goal is to establish yourself as a professional and in charge of the home. It also helps to create a bit of a barrier so buyers can’t walk inside without meeting you, signing in and getting a copy of the home brochure.
It’s so important to make sure people sign in and the best approach is to tell them that the homeowners have asked that everyone register before touring the home.
She also brings a dozen clipboards with surveys attached, so visitors can give feedback about the home and you can share that with the sellers.
How to Get Contact Information from Open House Leads…. Every Time!
As you greet the open house visitor (i.e. potential lead!), you can ask them to fill out a survey of the home so you can share the feedback with the seller. She also brings a dozen clipboards with surveys attached, so visitors can give feedback about the home and you can share that with the sellers.
When the lead is done touring the home and is about 10—20 feet from the front door, this is when you want to intercept them and retrieve the survey.
Take a quick peek at the survey and if there is something they rated at less than a “10”, you can now ask them why they rated the floorplan or kitchen a “5” and what would it need to have to be a perfect “10”? Quite often they may say, “Well, we really need the master on the main level”.
This opens the door for you to suggest other homes in the area with those features. You can offer to send them information on those homes and gather their phone number and/or a ‘better’ email address (just in case they gave you a fake one on the initial sign-in sheet).
After the Open House
Take a selfie video and send to the people that came to the open house (LOVE, LOVE this marketing idea!!). Follow up with the top leads and try to send them something by 7 pm that same day – but make sure you reference the address of the open house, just in case they toured 10 open houses that day.
Als reach out to all the open house attendees to let them know it’s under contract, but you have one or two new listings coming up in the neighborhood or similar listings in the area.
Editor’s note: This article was created by Kerry Lucasse, Agent/Owner at eXp Realty. Information deemed reliable but is subject to change.
About Building Better Agents
At Building Better Agents, we are dedicated to helping agents build successful real estate careers. We help agents develop a plan, build a database, and work smarter to uncover the keys to success as a real estate agent. All without cold calling, door knocking, and chasing expired listings. Building Better Agents Leaders Kerry Lucasse and Kary Perry are proud to be agents with eXp Realty.
For more information, please contact us today!
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