Great idea Pat. We need to add some "POSITIVE" to the US real estate message. Our firm, Windermere (Washington state largest real estate market share by far) has had 2 State Wide company-wide open houses so far (one in 2007 and 2008). Lot's of publicity. I am on the Board of the Snohomish County - Camano Association of Realtors and we are condsidering a COUNTY WIDE open house as we speak. Now, your idea would really be cool. Get the MEDIA involved. See if they could actually come up with something POSITIVE. You have my vote.

Sat May 24 2008, 22:11

"This really is a great time to buy a new home. If we as professionals don`t go out and tell the public. Who will?"

lights are on
nobody home

Tue May 13 2008, 12:33

i live in london and want to buy a house in the 13205 zip code area

Tue May 13 2008, 12:21

National Open House Day, what a great idea. I hope it went well. Every Sunday is open house day around here. Any new ideas and concepts are always welcome.

Tue May 13 2008, 12:09

Yes, I am a home buyer too (like CEO of Trulia :-) In fact, I just made an offer of this $1.789m house in Warren (this house would worth at least $3.5m in CA). I am not a realtor although I am much more knowledgable than most realtors because I am "real estate downside expert". I am very successful in helping realtors, sellers, buyers to have a match since "matching is NP Complete problem" and it is an open question; I got the solution, not yet published.

I help realtors, buyers and sellers, and also mortgage bankers and lawyers... just everyone in the real estate business because my work is Nobel prize level of work on "Economics" and "Peace" and Computer Turing Award (Nobel prize). I have an Economics model with Web 3.0 technologies (hey! many still just step into Web 2.0) and if I can help millions of American families to sell and buy in a lighting fast of method; I deserved the awards.

I am in the business to help homeless to get a home, and help poors to become rich, and rich to become millionairs, and millionaires like Trulia to become billionaires.

Ideally, you need to have open house every weekend, and with 4 consecutive open houses, there is NO home won't sell, but listing agents have that problem. Community Open House is much better way and effective, and it is PROVEN. Selling house is NOT political campaign. It is a simple "matching" process to match "buyers and seller".

If you think of matching "girls and boys", would you hold a National Dating Day for ALL girls and boys to meet? NO! Firstly, frequency is not enough. 2ndly, boys and girls can be matched "locally", NOT remotely, with very few exception. I know many people find their spouse in chatroom of just dozens of members. So,matching is a local activities. Put a word "National" is politics.

I said it very clearly that you need to get condo/townhouses sold first due to the fact many first time buyers in apartment can just go to buy without contingency. To be more precise, each 1st and 15th of month, 1/24 of the tenants will receive lease expiration notice to be either swallow the rent hike or move out within 60 days. So, you need to catch that 60 days window to help first time buyers to find, buy, mortgage and move in. It is not easy if you do not know how. If they can not, they may go back to renew for another year, and you lost those buyers ...

Once condo/townhouses or small houses under $450k sold, the sellers become "buyers". So, the beauty of this game is that YOU NEVER EXHAUST buyers. They more buyers buy, the more buyers created.

You need to Trulia because I carefully examine Top 20 real estate website quoted by USA Today last December, Trulia is the one can be easily match my model.

Realtor.com is largest but lost 10% visitors last year, 2nd largest was Yahoo with 48% increase of visits, but that's because of my thousands of real estate community yahoo groups. Yahoo will definitely drop this year due to the fact I no longer using Yahoo!Groups.

Also, using Trulia or just any website, to my Web 3.0 prototype, they are just a storage. e.g. If you search with google on any address, Google gave Trulia #1 in searching. I guess Trulia paid Google for ads? Anyway, I need to have a media to "educate" millions of realtors in the US, and Trulia is a great site.

So far, most people still thinking "get max exposure" of a property, but my model works reversely, ONLY show prospective buyers. If you are not buying condo at Mape Grove, I won't let you see them. So, if there are only 100 buyers in this world will buy condo at Maple Grove, they will find me. All others won't.

e.g. Pete at Edison Hollow South told me, he virtually visit over 100 condo/townhouse communities and nothing match till he came across my message on Edison Hollow South open house, and he came to see it; that's it. He made an offer and bought it.

If you ask any realtors in Edison NJ area, they would NOT know that I have been helping them by sending "matched prospective buyers" their way. They could just tell you Edison is great, booming, real estate sales so fast ..etc. They would jusy say, market like Edison. Some like Melisa at Starpoint Piscataway may tell you. "Amazing! I just listed and the buyers came, and when they came they just made offer and buy." "They seems to know the town, community, neighbors, schools, ...etc very well." as if they used to live here.

Heard about Second Life website? Their concept is for people to live in a cyber space to be what they could NOT be in real world, e.g. millionaire ...etc. My concept is for prospective buyers to live in their future commuity to know their future neighbors, schools, all REAL, so, say, two years later they want to move out of apartment to buy a condo or townhouse, they know exactly where and what to buy and act fastest. Remember that 60 days limit? You either "create" a first time buyer and then turn seller of condo/townhouse to be bigger home buyer, or you lose ...

Mon Feb 11 2008, 09:15

I am quite intrigue by your answer, Dr. Cheng.

A question, your profile says your are a Home Buyer in Central NJ. Bur obviously, you are not just a home buyer but a real estate pro to some degree and a quite successful one (according to what you said). .

It seems to me you are certain organizer / business that help agent to sell their condos/ town homes, specifically. The last paragraph of "2. Provide a mechnism for realtors to hold Community Open House for all listing agents. Currently, I did it buy broadcasting thru all listing agents of a community thru email addresses on realtors.com and I gave listing agent incentive buy getting 1,000 invitation flyers out to "Prospective Buyers".

I am curious as to what business are you in?

Yes, it'd be nice to have a Spring National Open House Day, but not just for condos and town homes and not limited to Trulia.

Patrick??

Sylvia

Mon Feb 11 2008, 08:21

I just saw this one when click on the best trulia voice, but I was very excited that Patrick used my pattened phrase "Community Open House" @

Here is how Community Open House works on downside real estate to get a community of condos or townhouses sold out, and I have proved it works almost 100% and hopefully you all realtors can benefit from this.

1. Every realtor has a few buyers for some community, say, Maple Grove at Piscataway http://maplegroveatpiscataway.blogspot.com/ but not a lot. an isolated open house could have very few visitors with just a sign and balloons.

2. In summer 2007, there were dozens units listing for sale in the community, how to sell them? We organized a "Community Open House" to invite all listing agents of Maple Grove to hold open house at the SAME Sunday afternoon. So, you can guess, each realtor bring in just 3 to 5 buyers from his or her marketing channel, with dozen open houses, you got several dozens of buyers.

3. Buyers are normal people like to have some peer pressure to take action, and when buyers see so many other buyers on the sign up sheets, they made offers on the units they like right away. So, many units got multiple offers. Yes, you need 3 to 5 offers to bid up to fair market price.

4. Before Community Open House, we invited Piscataway High School Environmental Club students and Rortary Club roadside cleaning team to get all streets sparkly clean, not even a cigaratte budd, from all major highway exits all the way to the community. We get township to patch hundreds of potholes and some road like Birch Run, Sewell St... the township even came to pave. We also get Health Dept to send inspectors to get environment grass cut and trees trimed.

5. We form a "Community Group"@ based on Yahoo!Groups for all who interested in Maple Grove, and have the listing agents to post SOLD info in real time so that several dozens of buyers came to Community Open House kept inform of which unit sold. Amazingly, many buyers decided to buy than wait, and they invited many more other prospective buyers to join the community group.

6. The result is that the whole community almost SOLD OUT. And dozens of sellers who were able to sold their condo/townhouses went to buy bigger homes at Bridgewater, Branchburg, Warren, Greenbrook, ...etc.

7. Later you saw most listing agents of this community came from those towns, NOT Piscataway because they have identified the "Migration Paths"@

So, what do you realtors learn from this business strategy? If you are interested in, I can show you more on how to get a condo or townhouse community sold out. And, it is important to realize houses over $450k may not be affordable by first time buyer due to the $417,000 limit. So, selling condo and townhouses create huge amount of move up buyers for bigger homes.

If you look at craigslist closely http://cnj.craigslist.org/search/rfs?query=stn+just+sold&min… especially Trulia's CEO or CTO, you can see the proof by yourself.

This is proven technique, and we have been using it for past two years here. It could be proven because it is based on Computer Theory in Combinatorics I learned at UC Berkeley where I went for bother under and grad on EECS/CS. This theory is called Pegion Hole Theory.

What is says is, basically, if you have N pegions fly to fewer than N holes, then you got to have a hole with at least TWO pegions. e.g. if you have 3 holes and 5 pegions, you can tell one hole got to have at least one pegion.

Ok, now coming back to your condo and townhouse community. If you have 30 units (holes) listing for sale, how many buyers (pegions) you need to bring in so that each unit would have more than one buyer?

Let's generalize a bit, you know you need to have 3 to 5 offers to have a unit sold to the full price, or fair market price, and you got 30 units listing at market, how many buyers you need to bring to the community? What is the minimum buyers you need to get this community SOLD OUT?

So, after understanding this theory and application, you know you have the power to get any condo/townhouse community SOLD OUT, or very close to, since many realtors as soon as heard the news a community moving very fast, they shall come to persuade more owners to listing their units.

Suggestions to Trulia CEO or CTO (I saw you are on this forum):

1. Provide "Community Group"@ for each and every condo/townhouse community in the US, it may be 100,000 or more. I used to run several thousands of Yahoo!Group, each condo/townhouse and apartment complex, I all had a community yahoo group. You can implement with Trulia Voice forum, which is sufficient. I will show you.

2. Provide a mechnism for realtors to hold Community Open House for all listing agents. Currently, I did it buy broadcasting thru all listing agents of a community thru email addresses on realtors.com and I gave listing agent incentive buy getting 1,000 invitation flyers out to "Prospective Buyers".

Mon Feb 11 2008, 06:46

Interesting idea! Why don't we get started on another one? February????

Mon Dec 10 2007, 02:29

National-Open-House.com STATS

Day # of requests #of page requests
1. October 22, 2007 456 72
2. October 23, 2007 386 74
3. October 24, 2007 364 66
4. October 25, 2007 549 101
5. October 26, 2007 540 109
6. October 27, 2007 457 96
7. October 28, 2007 365 74
8. October 29, 2007 778 150
9. October 30, 2007 1,403 330
10. October 31, 2007 817 170
11. November 1, 2007 653 122
12. November 2, 2007 687 144
13. November 3, 2007 461 96
14. November 4, 2007 307 65

Site URL Number of requests
1. http://www.national-open-house.com/ 2,708
2. http://www.searchprg.com/ 467
3. http://activerain.com/ 432
4. http://national-open-house.com/ 204
5. http://www.trulia.com/ 152
6. http://www.aprincessparty.com/ 136
7. http://chicago.craigslist.org/ 108
8. http://www.realtown.com/ 87
9. http://www.rosevilleandrocklin.com/ 82
10. http://homes.longandfoster.com/ 52
11. http://mygreenvillehome.blogspot.com/ 40
12. http://webmail.kw.com/ 31
13. http://www.google.com/ 30
14. http://mail.prunewjersey.com/ 22
15. http://www.michigangroup.com/ 20
16. http://64.233.169.104/ 16
17. http://www.i-newswire.com/ 16
18. http://www.realtyone.com/ 11
19. http://mail.google.com/ 10
20. http://www.blogger.com/ 8
21. http://search.yahoo.com/ 8
22. http://realtyexecutives.postoffice.net/ 7
23. http://att.my.yahoo.com/ 6
24. http://mail.realtor.com/ 6
25. http://webmail.aol.com/ 6
26. http://searchprg.com/ 6
27. http://cm.my.yahoo.com/ 5
28. http://by116w.bay116.mail.live.com/ 5
29. http://us.f358.mail.yahoo.com/ 4
30. http://www.realtownblogs.com/ 4
[not listed: 66] 98

Mon Nov 5 2007, 20:22

I met some agents from Delaware today and they will participate next time.

Mon Nov 5 2007, 15:57

I'm pretty sure Coldwell Banker did this a few years ago. Seemed like a good idea.

Sun Nov 4 2007, 11:01

I would like to say a special thank you to the John and Susan Real Estate Team of the KW Grass Valley (California) market center. I e-mailed them with the info for the National Open House a week ago and they will have 7 of their listings open tomorrow. Way to go John and Susan!!!

Sat Nov 3 2007, 21:17

Awesome guys! Next time we do this it will be even better. I will be bringing in Tennesse, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Sat Nov 3 2007, 21:03

Ruth we or I think have 25 or 26. states it is 8:39 pm in AZ.
I called about 10 Realtors in Maui until I spoke to somone live . Mr. Ken Smith of Maui Real Estate, was driving when I called, he told me to email him the info they were having a open tomorrow. He would register in the next two hours.

So now we have NY to Hawaii, that is cool.

Sat Nov 3 2007, 20:44

Congratulations!!! We broke the 300 mark!
Ruth

Sat Nov 3 2007, 20:21