Are Open Houses in Sacramento a Good Idea When Selling a Home?

Open houses tend to attract buyers in Sacramento.

Is it worth it to hold an open house when you’re selling a home in Sacramento? If you watch HGTV, the answer there will be yes, because without an open house, how can they kill time between rehabbing a junk pile and shoving it down?the throat of some unsuspecting buyer? Open houses in Sacramento are something agents do generally as part of the Sacramento real estate services offered, but if a home was never held open, it would still sell.

Out of many of the studies that have been focused on open houses in Sacramento and the results, the acceptable percentage of homes that sell at an open house are less than 5%. However, it doesn’t take into consideration the number of buyers who might have viewed the home at an open house and a few days later wrote an offer. I suspect if that number was included, the percentage might jump to 10 or 15%. Which is still a decent enough number to continue holding open houses.

I have a client who does not want us to host any open houses in Sacramento. He straight out said he doesn’t believe in them, and he implied that its sole purpose is to bring the open house agent a bunch of buyers to whom the agent can sell a different home. Yet, it doesn’t hurt, either, I pointed out. Why throw away that 5% or 10% chance of finding a buyer? It just might happen. Turns out he is not diametrically opposed to open houses after all.

Buyers often buy a home on impulse. You would think they would buy a home the way you or I might do it — by agonizing over every single detail, filling out mounds of paperwork to obtain preapproval, sifting through homes online, one photo after another until our eyes bulge out of our heads, watching video after boring video of four walls and a roof, but no. Some people will be out driving to an errand on a Sunday afternoon, pass an open house and say to themselves, hey, it’s a roadside attraction, let’s stop and take a peek.

Next thing you know, they are salivating and asking if they press hard whether the third copy is theirs. This is absolutely true. They can’t whip out that checkbook fast enough to write an earnest money deposit. It can happen to anybody. It could happen to you.