I'm not a big fan of open houses, being of the mind that most people don't buy a home they see in an Open House -- although it does happen. We've never had an Open House on any of the homes we sold, and we've never purchased a home we saw at an Open House either. I think Open Houses are primarily for realtors to make contacts with people that are contemplating buying or selling. I think people that are committed to buying already have an agent for the most part unless they're in the beginning of their house hunting process.

At my end of NY open houses sell houses. It has been that way for as long as I remember. As a matter of fact, the house around the corner that went up two weeks ago sold at the open house they had Sunday.

As a buyer I loved open houses. The reason I liked them so much was because I usually knew in under 5 minutes whether or not a house might work for us or not. I hated to waste an evening setting up appointments, chasing the owners out of their houses, trying to figure out if we had enough time to get to that third house on our list or, conversely, if we had too much time before we could get to the next house. With an OH we could be in and out of 10 houses under three hours. If a house interested us enough we'd schedule a "second" showing with the homeowners.

It was a great time saver and we were able to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time.

I can understand your trepidation. I would not want to leave my "stuff" for an open house. I never sold a house that was not empty, and I never will. Having an open house when the house is empty (except for a table and a few chairs) alleviates a lot of concerns.

I wish you luck :-)

xamsx - Which "end" of NY are you in? We are in upstate-eastern end and having no action to speak of. I hate the thought of a public open house, but may have to do it.........

Upstate-western. We've been one of the best markets in the country through the slowdown of the last two years. We never had a big run-up so while everyone else was going down we still were going up (and still are).

We are in Monmouth County NJ and are under contract after 40 DOM. We got an offer from someone on their first weekend of house hunting at our 2nd open house. It definitely does happen!

Here is western PA, open houses are pretty much standard.

All the homes we have owned were found via open house.

We are in Westchester County, about 45 mins north of Manhattan. Houses are selling very slowly. We agreed to a Brokers Open House, but are not comfortable about Public Open House. My impression is they attract Sunday site-seers and not true shoppers.

I've gone to a few over the years just out of curiosity over a neighboring house. I wonder if they really attract shoppers.

When my daughter was house shopping two years ago she would check with her Realtor regarding open houses in the area she was looking. Her Realtor would tell her not to waste her time - the house was not for her.

I'm just not comfortable with doing them.

Jane

I guess it depends on what part of the country you live in. We had an OH once a month for the 5 months our house took to sell. It was a bit of an inconvenience but I was convinced they helped because I think it "spread the word" that our place was a certain kind of property. I got so I would "stage" different ways before dh and I would leave the house. If you are concerned about the security of your
possessions; we put all our personal items away and in storage. No personal photos around, jewelry, etc. I purchased decorating items from Ross that were inexpensive to replace all the personal things around the house. It was kind of fun! I'm sure my dh would NOT agree as he kept the lawn in perfect condition the whole time!