THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 29, 1995 TAG: 9507270327
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 24 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MARY UMBERGER, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
LENGTH: Long : 138 lines
So, there he was, tooling along in his car with the kids because his wife had suggested he get them out of the house for a while.
Then Tom Dobrez saw the ``open house'' sign. Although he and his wife had talked about moving, it was still a mere notion at the moment he laid eyes on the sign and then at the house behind it. He and the kids walked through the house. Then he went home and got his wife.
``I knew I wanted it,'' Dobrez says. He and his wife made an offer on the house about two weeks after seeing it, and the suburban Chicago house is now their home.
Buyer, seller and and agent all beam. That's the way open houses are meant to work. And sometimes they do. But listen to Linda Kamerling, who last year sold her home in Evanston, Ill.
``They are just very anxiety-producing,'' Kamerling says of the three open houses she endured in the course of selling the the Evanston home. ``You feel like you have to make your house more than perfect. I'd start cleaning up the moment I woke up in the morning. You can't have a fingerprint. You have to have fresh flowers.''
Kamerling's agent had told her that if she wanted open houses, she would conduct them, but to not be overly optimistic about the results.
``I made myself nuts'' getting ready, Kamerling recalls. ``And our experience was exactly what our broker predicted'' - that it would be her neighbors who would turn out to walk through her home.
Those turnouts were relatively small, and Kamerling's agent found a buyer elsewhere.
So, are open houses effective? That may depend on your goals and timing. Statistically, open houses don't seem to be particularly reliable. A survey by the National Association of Realtors indicated that 6 percent of home buyers in 1993 were introduced to their homes at open houses.
So there's the paradox: They don't seem to work especially well, but everybody holds them anyway.
Take, for example, the Real Estate section of a recent Chicago Tribune. An edition that circulates primarily in the city contained no fewer than 242 display ads for open houses being held that day. Those didn't include ads for builders and developers who staff model homes and condos on an ongoing basis.
And if you began counting the open houses in that day's classified ads, you might get weary, as we did, when the total had reached 233, with several pages still uncounted.
Are open houses worthwhile? Isn't the competition overwhelming? ``I have very good luck with them,'' says Mary Sunderland, an agent for Re/Max South Suburban in Flossmoor, Ill. ``This year alone, I have sold three houses through open houses,'' she said in early May. One of those was Dobrez's.
``It's a good way to reach buyers who maybe don't want to make a commitment, as far as getting together with a real estate broker and going out and looking. They want to do it on a more casual basis.''
But one of Sunderland's colleagues in her own office is unconvinced. ``In my opinion, open houses do not bring buyers for that particular piece of property,'' according to Mike Kroopkin, who has been an agent for about 25 years. ``Some (open houses) have some success, but generally speaking, they don't bring the buyer.
``What (an open house) does do is help the broker get buyers for other properties,'' Kroopkin says.
In Hampton Roads, real estate brokers say an open house is just one method to market a property.
``I think they have their place,'' said Gary Lundholm, an agent with Womble Realty, who says he sells two or three homes a year at open houses.
``They're not appropriate for every house. It's another tool that we can use. Some houses seem to be in a better traffic pattern, a better price range. They attract more visits at open houses than others.
``It's certainly not the only tool we depend on. If you're in an area where you can bring a lot of people in from major arteries, they're effective. I'm sure to the sellers of those 6 percent, it was a valuable tool.''
Vicki Holasek, a broker with Rose & Krueth Realty, also says open houses are appropriate for properties in high visibility areas, those recently listed and those that have been for sale for ``quite a while'' and need more activity.
``With a new listing, it takes a couple of weeks to get the ads out,'' she said. ``So I go ahead and hold and open house to create an immediate response.
``It's a wonderful tool to attact buyers in an high visibility area - places near traffic where one or two signs will be seen by interested parties. It's also a good way to meet customers for other properties you have for sale.''
But homeowners must realize that, in this electronic age, there are more informational sources out there than ever before. The multiple listing service, which is widely employed by agents, has been computerized; searches of its data base can be defined as narrowly or as widely as the potential buyer wants. In the hands of an adept agent, those searches may result in fewer trips to homes - including open houses - that are clearly a waste of everybody's time.
Several agents interviewed for this story said that, although they find open houses to be time-wasters, offering to conduct them is policy at the agencies where they work, so they wouldn't speak negatively of them for the record.
But the Doubting Thomases cite their weariness with mere lookers, who can't afford to bid on the houses they visit. Then there are the curious neighbors. One woman, whose house in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood has been open repeatedly in the last several months, says she hates coming home to see all the familiar names who have signed in.
It's unlikely that they're going to rifle though the underwear drawer - indeed, brokers say that pilferage is surprisingly rare - but there's a sense of exposure that can put teeth on edge.
Displaying a level of optimism, open-house proponents point out that those neighbors have contacts and relatives who might be buyers and that they can spread the word about your house. If they're an evil, they're a necessary one.
One agent, Mary Beth Bruce, says she got a lot of reaction when she wrote an essay in support of open houses in a real estate trade magazine last fall. ``Brokers either felt I was right on the money and thanked me, or they said, `Are you crazy?,' '' she explains.
Bruce says that in the last three years, 10 percent of the sales at the agency where she works, J.W. Reedy Realty, have resulted directly from open houses. But she says that some neighborhoods and towns are better for open houses than others.
She also says that the outward appearance of the home makes a big difference. ``One that has more curb appeal is going to draw more people than a Plain Janer. And one that's in a more heavily trafficked location will do better.''
Other agents say that they put off holding open houses until a property starts to languish on the market, maybe after a couple of months without much buyer interest. ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
Open Houses: Do they really help?
L. TODD SPENCER
Real Estate agent Gary Lundholm at an open house on Hawthorne Drive
in Chesapeake.
Staff photo by L. TODD SPENCER
Realtor Gary Lundholm and mortgage broker J. Roger Garrett preside
over a Chesapeake open house.
by CNB