Posts Tagged ‘seattle open houses’

The world is changing rapidly with regard to how you go about finding open houses in Seattle.  Sunday from 1-4 PM is the traditional time that real estate agents hold listing open for the general public to come by and take a look at homes for sale.  Open houses are a great way for neighbors and buyers to get a feel for what is available in a neighborhood and at what prices.  Finding what homes are open on a given Sunday however is getting more difficult. 

Each real estate company has a vested interest in only advertising their own company open houses.  Both my company Windermere and John L. Scott take out adds in the Seattle Times each week to try to draw attention to our open houses, in addition to putting our signs on the street corner.

Obviously you don’t care what company lists a home, you want to see all the listings that are having an open house in a single location.  Well as of now there isn’t one location to see all open houses by all companies, and the waters may get even more unclear. 

The Seattle Times is facing some serious financial problems.   Given the wealth of information available on the internet and other outlets, readership of newspapers is dropping.  As such, The Seattle Times is having problems.  Windermere is the Seattle Times single largest advertiser.  There is discussion going on right now about changing, limiting or maybe removing open house advertising in the Seattle Times on behalf of Windermere.  We will see how that shakes out.

For now the best place to find open hoses is through the Seattle Times, unfortunately you need to go to a variety of places.  To find, all the Windermere open houses today or for any given period you can still check out my search engine from my web site.  Windermere launched a special Open house Search feature.  It is getting good traffic but only offers you Windermere listings.  Maybe that will change but for now it is what it is. 

Feel free to click on my search icon, to search for open houses.

Rob Graham, Accredited Buyers Representative

Windermere Real Estate

206-321-6349

robgraham@windermere.com

Popularity: 2% [?]

For those of you who enjoy spending your Sunday afternoons perusing the Seattle Times and carefully planning your open house rout.  I have a tip for ya.  It is a well held real estate secret, that open houses are a bit of a fraud.  Seller’s all believe that open houses are a sure sign that their agent is working hard to sell their home.  Bull Chips! 

Truth is that open houses serve one primary function:  Opportunities for agents to meet potential clients. 

Very few homes are actually sold as the result of open houses.  There are three people who benefit from open houses:

1.        Listing agents looking to find buyers as clients

2.       Neighbors looking to be nosey

3.       Early buyers to familiarize themselves with neighborhoods and price ranges.

The vast majority of buyers who are serious, about putting an offer on paper will come through with their agent when it is convenient for them.

That is why some agents at open houses are so pushy.  They want to meet potential clients.

Allow me to translate some agent speak you are bound to hear from an open house:

“Are you working with an agent?” 

TRANSLATION

“I am deciding if I should waste my time talking to you or not.”

“So what do you think of the house?”

TRANSLATION

“Tell me what you are looking for so I can steer you in the direction of another home and convince you to work with me”

“would you like a cookie?”

TRANSLATION

“The cookies are laced with narcotics and by the time you wake up I will have you duct taped in the trunk of my car and I won’t let you out until you agree to use me as your buyer’s agent.”

Ok, that last one might be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point. 

So what do you do if you enjoy going to open houses and really want to use them to familiarize yourself with neighborhoods or you are just a nosy neighbor who wants to be left alone?  Try these responses:

“Are you working with an agent?”  

 Answer

“Why yes I am, Rob Graham of Windermere.  He is awesome, thanks for asking”

(Ok you don’t need to use my name, but feel free to if it helps)

So what do you think of the house?” 

Answer

“I hate it.  Look at the size of those windows.  Do you have any idea how long it would take me to cover them in aluminum foil to prevent the aliens from stealing my brain waves?”

“Would you like a cookie?”

Answer

“I don’t eat cookies.  Do you have pie?”  When the agent appears confused demand to see the chef.  When they appear even more confused storm out indignantly mumbling that you will never come to this restaurant again.

PS – these conversations can also be easily modified to work with car salesman and pushy sales people at the Banana Republic.

If anyone has other creative responses, please feel free to add them as a comment.  I’m sure a few more will occur to me in the near future, so I’ll keep you posted. 

Give me a call if you need help.

Rob Graham, Accredited Buyer’s Representative

Windermere Real Estate

206-321-6349

robgraham@windermere.com

Popularity: 1% [?]