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This post was last updated on Oct. 10, 2024.
Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, the open house has evolved. Gone are trends like fresh cookies and too much potpourri, replaced with smart technology evolutions like tablets with room-specific staging visualizations, GPS-tagged signage and award-winning safety apps.
Open houses are among the few ways today’s buyers can experience a property before agreeing to be formally represented by an agent, a byproduct of the long-simmering NAR settlement. A buyer agent can use a single open house to audition for business, for example.
Listing agents showing off their seller’s goods can leverage a new wave of buyers who will likely want to see more of a market before deciding who they’ll pay for service, assuming the seller isn’t open to covering the commission. (It is advised but not required that a listing agent have a visiting buyer sign a form confirming they are unrepresented.)
Additionally, if the number of unrepresented buyers attending open houses goes up, then the agent hosting has that much more opportunity to become their agent should the house in question not be for them.
Anyway, let’s look at a few of the tools, tactics and tech that can take today’s open house to the next level.
Marketing
FootFallz
A new company making strides into the industry is FootFallz, which blends lead generation, offer management, and, yes, open house marketing and oversight. Part of the company’s application includes a door-knocking feature that helps users identify, find and talk to neighbors, and then use that doorway meeting as an impetus for follow-up. Beyond using it for new leads, it can be a great tool for reaching people to promote a nearby open house.
On that front, FootFallz has a GPS-enabled signage tracker. Place your sign, mark it, and never worry about forgetting to pick it back up. This means you can place signs at great distances, too. The platform comes with a sign-in form, open-house-specific marketing guidance, follow-up tools, assignment capabilities, batch feedback solicitation and a scheduling system.
Pearl Certification
Pearl Certification is a company that helps homeowners better understand how their property uses energy. It looks at the house from the roof down and into each major appliance, heating apparatus, window and crawlspace. It offers a scoring system users can easily relate to and ideas on what can be done to cut costs and market to a buying public concerned about the true cost of ownership. It’s certified more than 200,000 homes in America.
RealReports
Similar to Pearl in concept is its new partner, RealReports, and it, too, can help an agent be fully transparent about how everything outside the home impacts what it’s worth.RealReports uses artificial intelligence to curate and categorize listing documents, data, and insights, pulling from a wide range of sources for consumer-facing use in an array of sales environments, especially listing presentations and home searches.
More than 30 data sources are gleaned and processed by the software’s AI to create what can be called a “Carfax” for homes. The concept of consolidating information about a home in report form has been in place for some time, most commonly manifesting in home management solutions like Milestones, CORE Home and LiveEasy. AreaHub, ClimateCheck and Reorzo, provide similar models around environmental and location data, respectively.
Check-in
Curb Hero
In a testament to pandemic-era innovation, QR codes play a big part in Curb Hero, which was once called Block Party.
Using the tablet resting on the end table or a sign at the nearby intersection, any aspiring buyer can scan themselves into your database, then be delivered a very cool property listing page, as visually engaging as any portal, before they even enter the home.
This is also a slick tool for pulling in random passers-by, which never hurts. The page has an agent bio, community information and a map tab for quickly finding out what else is nearby the house about to be seen.
Curb Hero has also included lead qualification and identity verification, as well as the ability to easily add and edit questions to the intake form.
Follow-up
Spacio
Spacio was one of the first to recognize the importance of connecting open-house contacts to your greater business experience. Thus, it made it simple to connect your CRM and automate the post-event follow-up. Its UI/UX is one of the more engaging in this category, making it easy, and especially non-salesy, for potential buyers to submit their information.
The software company was acquired by HomeSpotter, which was then scooped up by Lone Wolf.
Open Home Pro
Open Home Pro has been at it perhaps longer than most in the app-based registration process. It has terrific traction industry-wide and can be found in the App Store and Google Play.
Along with digital sign-in, Open Home Pro offers trackable, custom email campaigns, onboard lead tracking and, for those demanding sellers, an activity report to keep them on top of how well—or poorly—the home is performing.
Social media
I’m going to blend this category, as it has so many options that can be leveraged to promote and operate an open house. For starters, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook live streams can be quick, engaging tactics for inciting interest, as can some new apps on the scene like Real and 1060.
Real
Real is an agent-powered app that allows consumers to follow properties, markets and of course, their favorite agents. It’s also great for agents to share market information, events and network with colleagues.
1060
1060, new to the American market, is more promotional in nature, displaying a feature-filled, full-screen video interface for promoting properties that should resonate right away with the TikTok crowd. Its agent vetting process ensures its content remains of high value, and its overall short-form video UX could quickly pull Zillow surfers away from the long-established portal search.
Virtual tours, staging and dynamic media
Yep, even if they’re already inside, it never hurts to have alternative viewing options on hand. A 3D twin can also be used to show some features and amenities that a person may miss in a crowded open house. Not only that, the experience of viewing a listing in the digital environment lends a bit of marketing panache, elevating the home into something more than a physical thing.
Digital twin creation
Your options for creating digital twins are expanding, but Matterport, iGuide, and EyeSpy360 are all proven, dependable options with an array of capture options and evergreen marketing features.
BoxBrownie, too, provides all sorts of image enhancement tools to make homes look their best, which could help make a tablet-based property presentation solution, like Studeo, CORE Present, MoxiPresent or Agent Image’s Access really shine.
Virtual staging options
Other providers in the virtual staging space include Virtual Staging AI, which was scooped up by Zillow recently to be integrated into its Listing Showcase+ platform. There’s also Bella Staging and HomeKynd.
Remember to leverage your CRM to its fullest extent. If it offers marketing tools, as just about all of them do today, use them. Get your open house leads into your database, qualify them, categorize them and reach out accordingly until you find a reason not to. Don’t waste your time tracking down the tire-kickers; scrutinize leads carefully.
Use property landing pages to remind them of what they saw, link to any of the dynamic tour content you created and, most importantly, measure their responses.
Not every form of technology you use has to be “open-house specific,” in which case, know that it will take time for you to seamlessly link together the workflow from sign-in to contract.
The market is changing, and your marketing needs to adjust with it. Open houses are important again.
