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Why Realtors Prefer Open Houses on Sunday Afternoons
Do you know why Realtors prefer open houses on Sunday afternoons? Many Realtors who take new listings put them on the market on a Thursday afternoon. This gives us a few days to market the Sunday open house to ensure a high number of visitors on a Sunday. I signed a new listing today in Natomas and met our photographer there. Our plan is to roll the property out on Thursday and enter it into MLS that day. I have ordered a Coming Soon sign, which will also promote it, and I will market the open house online in several places.
Years ago, when I worked for a company in Sierra Oaks office in 1998, we held open houses on Sundays from 2-5 PM or Saturday 1-4 PM. Back then, Realtors thought that was too long and everyone started doing Sundays 2-4 PM and Saturdays 1-3 PM. This trend caught on and the new times took root.
What I noticed at opens on Sundays at 4 PM, often the visitors are still coming. We see many Sacramento Realtors locking up, telling people the open house was closed. I thought this was an odd practice as aren’t we there to have people come? I decided that as long as visitors were still coming, I would stay. Much of the time, the bulk of traffic came at 3 PM and after. Realtors prefer open houses on Sunday afternoons because it is the busiest day of the weekend.
Like my partner Elizabeth Weintraub says: “Sunday open houses is a religious experience of California.”
It takes a lot of preparation to complete the planning and advertisement for a well attended open house. Pulling comparable sales in the area and preprinting flyers so we can deliver them to the neighborhood the morning of the open is a great practice. Likewise, putting out an open house sign rider stating day and time early in the week so people see it beforehand and come back on Sunday.
Sending open house marketing to agents who have sold or listed in the area is a great way to increase traffic, because they tell their buyers about it. Social media posts are very effective to increase traffic. Also, setting out all the open house signs from busy streets to easily direct people.
These are just a few ways you can ensure great traffic, we have more but I am running out of time. The thing is Realtors prefer open houses on Sundays; even though it may be a lot of work to prepare for, but we want the highest traffic and best opportunity.
If you would like to have a very busy, well promoted open house, please call the Weintraub & Wallace team 916-233-6759.
— JaCi Wallace
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.
A McCloud River Falls Trail Hike Instead of an Open House
This is a bad day to hold an open house in Sacramento but it’s a perfect day to hike the McCloud River Falls Trail around Mt. Shasta in Northern California. Actually, there are at least 3 times during the year that are not recommended for holding an open house: 4th of July, Labor Day and Christmas. I am not sure why Memorial Day Weekend is not included in that bunch. In any case, it feels a little bit weird not to be focusing on open houses today.
The McCloud River Falls Trail is a popular and easy hike, a little over 3 miles round trip. You’ll encounter 3 distinct waterfalls. We entered the area at Shasta Trinity yesterday and spotted the long row of cars parked on both sides of the dusty road, where I managed to gouge my ankle by carelessly brushing against a broken manzanita branch. I could not believe I had injured myself and we weren’t even on the trail yet.
The lower falls at the McCloud River Falls Trail is located very close to the parking lot, and there were lots of families lounging about on the rocks, which didn’t look all that comfortable to me, and other brave souls were swimming. A sign nearby said this is where native peoples noted centuries ago that the salmon turned back.
Salmon swimming upstream to spawn is one of those things that I never really believed until I saw it with my own eyes. It sounds so unreal, not only that fish can swim against the current but that they can climb waterfalls, but they most certainly can. We saw them at the fish ladders in Ketchikan last year. The sad part is some don’t make it. It’s a remarkable sight and something everybody should experience at least once in their lives.
Kids jumping Middle Falls, McCloud River
When we reached the McCloud River Falls Trail Middle Falls, about a half mile up the trail from the Lower Falls, it was a spectacular surprise. Rows upon rows of water fall from 100-feet heights over moss covered rocks, so of course a few crazy teenagers elected to jump from that height into the pool below. People from all over the world come to this spot, and we encountered many from a wide variety of countries on the trail. Everybody seemed so respectful of others, kept their dogs leashed and pulled to the side; those coming down let you pass coming up, not at all like the crowds we’ve run across at Yosemite.
At the McCloud River Falls Trail Upper Falls, we watched from a distance as a couple lowered a long rope down the face of the falls. Wondering what they were doing, we approached, but we were so quiet I was worried we’d freak out the guy and startle him. Didn’t want anybody falling off the cliff on our account. But by the time we reached them, the woman had already descended and we spotted her swimming toward shore. Her husband said they routinely travel down the face of waterfalls; this adventure was her birthday present to herself.
I applaud that kind of effort, especially since it differs from my own. Faced with crawling down a waterfall or lying on the beach in Maui, I know which one I picked. The sign nearby says there are salmon in the waters at this point at Upper Falls. So you just know they had to jump up not only the Lower Falls but also the Middle Falls.
