My son just recently sold his house, which got me thinking about selling real estate and more specifically the role that having an open house plays in the sale. What do you think is the true purpose of an open house? If you said, “To sell my house,” then you might want to guess again. The real answer is not what you think, and the truth is one of the best-kept secrets in the real estate business.
The real reason listing agents, especially new brokers, like to do an open house is to recruit new clients. Open houses are a great recruiting platform for new agents or agents who do not yet have many listings of their own. Yes, an open house may help to sell your home, but the real reason agents like them is for their own marketing. Brokers want unrepresented buyers to fall in love with their charm, their knowledge of the neighborhood, and their marketing prowess so they can represent the potential buyer walking through the door with whatever home they wind up buying. Your house is the agent’s best free marketing platform around.
So in business and in life, we oftentimes accept the commonly held belief and never look deeper to discover the real facts. We often strike a deal that we think is fair based on the surface facts. However, upon further reflection, we discover the situation is, in fact, a much better deal for the other party, because we never looked any deeper than the facts presented and our wrong but commonly held belief systems.
Are you guilty of taking facts at face value and not digging deeper to make better deals?
