If you and your team are going to sell homes, you need to show them first. An open house is like a product demonstration; no one can blame buyers for wanting a look at what you’re selling before they commit. When so much shopping is done digitally nowadays, there’s no reason that real estate sales have to be different.
Virtual open houses are a tool REALTORS® can use to make that happen. If you or a teammate get a new listing, consider posting a video tour before inviting prospects to the property itself.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021, virtual open houses gained popularity because in-person showings were unsafe. Thus, virtual showings were a way to keep business alive. Ann King, president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Network Realty, tells RISMedia that her team has scaled back virtual showings owing to lessened feelings of emergency.
“Since January, there’s only one property that we did virtual open houses with, and that was because the seller would not allow an open house but wanted the exposure. So if you look at that, compared to two years ago when we probably had 30 mega open house virtual showings.”
However, there’s no reason why virtual open houses can’t be used in conjunction with in-person showings. Here are some upsides that make virtual open houses worth the investment for you and your team.
You’ll weed out the most interested parties
As much as you want to raise as much awareness for your listings, in the end there can only be one buyer. Virtual open houses can be a useful tool to whittle out the window shoppers from the serious customers early on.
Say someone attends a virtual open house and likes what they see. The next logical step? Coming to see the property in person.
“Doing the virtual open house ads, it brought attraction to the listings, which had people click through and actually look at the photos a little bit more than if it was just a listing thrown out there,” said King.
By hosting a virtual tour first, you’ll only have to directly deal with parties who have a motivated interest in buying.
You can host a day’s worth of tours in an hour
At physical open houses, you have to see prospective clients one at a time. During the day, you’ll stack tours on top of each other, running through the same prepared speech over and over to a set of new faces.
At a virtual open house, on the other hand, you can host multiple prospective clients on the same video call and address them simultaneously. If you have 100 attendees, for instance, you’ll achieve the same result as 100 separate in person tours for 1/100th of the work. This reduced time at showings is a win for efficiency; if your entire day is taken up by leads and prospective clients, that’s more time for relationship building with colleagues.
It’s more convenient for buyers and sellers
“Right now the customer’s not afraid to travel and they’ll come and see the property in person,” says King about why virtual open houses are less common in 2023. However, what happens if the customer has a packed schedule?
In the past couple of years, have you ever felt thankful that you can just Zoom into a team meeting with no need to travel? The same principle applies to virtual open houses.
Scheduling can be a pain and you might lose potential clients because they just can’t make the time for an open house appointment. A virtual appointment, on the other hand, is easier to block out time for.
Safety, safety, safety
Even in business, safety should come before sales. For one, the Department of Justice lists REALTOR® as a high-risk occupation—not surprising when you come into contact with so many different people. Remind yourself and your team of this: It’s not pleasant to assume the worst, but it’s better to stay safe than sorry.
Though there are now greater protections in place for COVID-19 than at the onset, the disease is still present. This makes in-person gatherings, with people you’ve never met before, inherently risky. Screening protocols are helpful, but a virtual open house will let you bypass that stress altogether. The last thing you want is to be your team’s superspreader.
There’s opportunity for collaboration
BHHS Florida Network Realty hosts monthly Mega Open House weekends, where all the firm’s listings – no matter the price, neighborhood, or style – are available for public viewing. This demonstrates how agents showing off listings can become a collaborative, team-building activity. You don’t have to copy the mega open house model either. What are some other options? The collaboration can be as simple as you and your teammates making a video series together that shows off your listings.
