Forget Open House, Savvy Sellers Say

Broward County real estate agent Marisa DiLenge will schedule an open house to showcase a property… but only if the seller insists.

“If they get cranky, okay, I’ll do one,” DiLenge said, adding that the staged event usually attracts more neighborhood gawkers than serious buyers. “I just don’t think they’re effective.”

Some of her peers across the South Florida housing market still preach the importance of an open house but concede the once popular weekend ritual has lost ground to the Internet as a way to corral potential buyers.

Many would-be applicants for Florida mortgages are now used to searching for properties while sitting at their computers.

But the recent growth in online videos and virtual home tours has ramped up real estate marketing on the Web during a housing market downturn that has dragged into a second year.

“There’s no denying the power of the Internet,” said Jeff Levine, of Illustrated Properties in Wellington.

Open houses became popular in the 1970s, when it was common for families to drive through neighborhoods after church Sunday mornings.

Cookies and punch kept the kids occupied long enough for the parents to tour the homes, ask questions and consider making offers.

But priorities have shifted in recent years as families spend less time together. More condominiums and gated communities, and even rising gas prices, also have led to the downfall of open houses.

Mostly, though, home buyers are doing their initial legwork online, even shopping for the lowest Florida mortgage rates as well as for homes.

Last year, 80 percent of buyers nationwide used the Internet to look for homes, up from 18 percent a decade ago.

Steve Fields, 41, is considering a move from Long Island to South Florida, and he said he looked at photos and videos of many houses online before working with an agent, Debbie Anderson, to visit properties.

“An open house can work, but I think more houses are sold by people making their own arrangements from the Internet,” he said.

“The market’s changing.”

Steve Feldott, of E2 Properties in Hollywood, acknowledged this when he recently started posting his property listings on YouTube, the popular Web site for videos.

He takes still photos of his homes for sale and assembles them into a video before uploading it to YouTube.

Feldott has made about 18 videos for YouTube, each lasting 50 seconds or so, that incorporate a soundtrack, voiceover and graphics.

YouTube isn’t meant to be a real estate site, but tech-savvy people are starting to use it to search for homes.

“I’ve gotten quite a few hits and exposure,” he said. “I’m not going to sell the houses because of what people see on the videos, but I am going to get the interest.”

Some say an open house does nothing for the seller because it generates little traffic and rarely results in the sale of the house.

If anyone benefits, it’s the real estate agent, who meets potential new clients.

A few agents say a rebound in the real estate market will help the open house return to favor, but “it’s certainly not the end-all it used to be,” said Bob Goldstein of the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches.

What’s more, open houses raise security issues. An agent said she once was uneasy when a stranger walked in and wanted her to answer questions in the back of the property.

Safety concerns aside, Palm Beach County’s Douglas Rill, of Century 21 America’s Choice, an agent since 1973, said open houses still provide opportunities to find buyers.

In this sluggish housing climate, he said, sellers and their agents have to try everything at their disposal to draw interest.

“You’ve got to use a shotgun approach,” Rill said. “Today you can’t not do anything.”

Real estate agents bear most of the costs to market a house, including fees to post properties on Yahoo, Craigslist and other Web sites.

DiLenge, of Prudential Florida 1st Realty in Plantation, said it’s not uncommon for her to spend $3,000 or more marketing one house.

She lists properties on several sites and also is fond of another marketing tool: catered meals for buyers’ agents.

Earlier this month, DiLenge and two others chipped in to serve a $400 lunch to agents as part of a plan to showcase three listings in the Venetian Isles development of Coral Springs.

DiLenge said the money is well spent; she sold a house recently by holding a catered lunch at another community in Coral Springs.

More than 40 agents toured the Venetian Isles properties, including Dori Nelson, of Prudential Florida WCI Realty. Between bites of shrimp curry and penne pasta, they chatted about the industry.

Nelson said networking and Internet marketing are keys to finding buyers, although she did hold an open house for a seller recently.

It didn’t go well.

“Not one person came,” she said. “Not one. Not even the person who called about the ad. And I got bit by the dog. It wasn’t a great day.”

SOURCE: South Florida Sun-Sentinel