There are 3 ways a buyer buys a house: booking online after deciding via pictures, visiting the house in person and paying full money in-hand, and choosing from open houses nearby. While the first two methods are commonly used by sellers to sell properties, open house sale is a one of a kind; you get all potential buyers under one roof, and the one who bids the highest gets the house. Not all open house sales guarantee a buyer in the very first attempt, but you can get all the publicity you need to generate interest in your open house for sale.
The key to having a successful open house sale is to meticulously plan every step of the process. Perfect planning and flawless execution ensures that your house is seen by as many buyers possible, widening the scope of offers you may receive for your house. If you want to set up an open house sale for your property, here are the steps to follow in order:
Step 1: Renovate the House
Open house sales are meant to be an open invitation to all to show that your house is good-looking and well maintained. If the house is anything but those two, it will defeat the very purpose of the open house sale. It is essential to renovate the house and replace broken tiles or repaint the entire house if needed. You can limit the number of changes to minimize your expenses, but the ones that give off a bad look to the house should be dealt with immediately.
Step 2: Clean the House
This is very important: your house needs to be shiny inside out. No matter if it’s a brand new house or a 50-year old house, the house needs to be in impeccable condition. People will be coming to see the house in person, and even a little amount of smudges on tiles or walls may put off most of them. Renovating is good, but if it is dirty or unclean with blackened kitchen or unmaintained lawn, people are less likely to make an offer.
Step 3: Decorate the House
Renovating and cleaning should be followed by decorating the house to make it look tasteful. Make a point to remove all personal belongings such as family pictures or children’s drawing from public view, as the visitors will walk through every room and corridor envisioning it as their new home. Decorate the house with flowers, statues, carpets and whatever necessary to make the home look cozy and comfortable. Don’t overdo it; the decorations should complement the style of living there. Finally, make sure to have lots of snacks and drinks.
Step 4: Spreading out the Word
Once the house is fully ready for public, you need to advertise it as much as possible. If you have an agent who’s doing it, you don’t have to do much advertising apart from posting your open house event invitations online on social media. But if you are doing everything on your own, you need to ready up posters to paste all around the locality, flyers, newspaper ads if possible, posting on all social media channels, email marketing, posting on online property listing websites and real estate portals. Finally, set up markers and direction arrows to direct people in that neighborhood to your property so that anyone can find the house very easily.