It sounds like the marketing efforts are the least of your problems. No, open houses in metro Atlanta, for the most part, are a waste of time. We have too much inventory, especially new, and buyers aren't flocking to open houses like they do in Baltimore or Boston where inventory is so tight.
Price is the name of the game in our market - especially now, but really ALL the time. Metro Atlanta, especially the burbs, is very competitive - buyers have MANY choices - you have to be a stand-out, not just "one of the choices".

I've never sold a home via Open House in my seven years in the business.
I'll let you in on a Realtors Secret: Open Houses are a great way to pick up Buyer leads, and look busy for the seller.
The best use for an Open House is this: Your agent should personally invite all of the neighbors to an open house on a weekday afternoon, probably Thursday is best. Five to seven o'clock should get most folks after they get off work. Knock all the doors, and drop off written invitations.
He should also hold a 'Broker Open' at the same time. E-mail blast, MLS mail, E-flyers to all of the brokerages serving the area. Also hardcopy flyers hand delivered to the brokerages closest to the property.
Open house should feature snacks, soft drinks, beer, and wine. Include this info in the invite.
This gets all the 'tire-kickers', 'looky-loos', and nosy neighbors out of the way.
And the agents are the ones who will bring the buyers. So expose the property to the brokers. If you feed them, they will come.
Hope this helps,
-Jim

Susan,

I agree with your agent. Open houses are not productive. I do not host an open house for my sellers unless they insist despite my explanation. Once the open house is over they get my point.

Much more can be done to promote your home from 1-2 hours in the office than a whole day at an open house. In today's market if you are not getting traffic after 8 weeks then you need a price reduction.

the efficacy of open-houses, can be very regional and local. Some developments have great results in open-housing, and some areas couldn't BUY a looker at their opens.

In general, open houses are a favourite tool of sellers, because it's one of the sales tools that they know about and can understand. The same reason that FSBO's tend to use them.

today's Realtor has much more in his/her arsenal to help sell your home, and most of them are more effective and more cost-effective than an Open House. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do "any" open houses... but whether you do them, or how often you do them should be based on your local results... not simply saying "I just want some open houses".

At the risk of sounding like I'm ditto'ing the others who answered here...
A couple years ago there was traffic to my open houses. I used to average 3-5 visitors. (Most of them were neighbors, and/or tire kickers rather than serious buyers). In six years of real estate sales, I've sold one home from a visitor I met at an open house.... but it wasn't the home I was holding open.

In the last two years, I've seen a big drop-off in the number of visitors. Typically none; occasionally one or two. My judgment is that open houses don't appeal to buyers anymore. And it makes sense to me. If I were a serious buyer, would I really want to spend a lot of time on a Sunday looking at whatever houses happened to be held open that day? Or would I rather call my Realtor, and have him/her setup five or six showings of specific houses? Houses that I think I'm interested in, because I've seen ten or fifteen pictures of each on the MLS.

Because more and more people are using the Internet to find their next home, fewer people are willing to waste their Sunday afternoons.

Just my opinion.

Hi Susan-

I think if the Open Houses are held correctly, they can be quite successful. I send out invites to surrouding homes, advertise all over the internet, send e-blasts to local agents & current/past clients, etc..

As Bill mentioned below....you never know where your buyer will come from. In this market homes need as much exposure as possible.

Lawrenceville is in the heart of my market area and to be honest with you, actually, not usually. I still do open houses occasionally, but I am more discriminating about it - I won't waste a homeowner's time asking them to leave their home on a Sunday afternoon if I don't feel that the home and the area that it is in give us some chance of added exposure - it's not worth it. During my career I can honestly say that I have only sold 2 homes from open house and neither one of them bought the house that I was holding open when I met them. If the home is not "model home" staged, in a high traffic area, usually above $200K, the agent is usually left sitting the entire afternoon alone. Not a productive use of time for the agent or the homeowner who took extra time to prepare.
Right now if you are getting one showing a week, in Lawrenceville, that's not really bad at all. Best of luck to you!

Stephanie McCarty, ABR
REMAX Greater Atlanta
slmrealestate@earthlink.net
404-457-8089

I used to do Open Houses all the time, but I never sold a single house from an Open House. A lot of people who cam to my open houses told me they were either just checking out the neighborhood, just thinking about buying a home, just started looking, or already working with an agent.

My answer was to be a question, Susan-useful for buyers, sellers or agents? After reading your entire post, however, I will only answer for sellers. In my humble opinion, the chances of finding a buyer for YOUR listing during an open house is slim, but it can happen. All of the research I have seen in the past two years points to 80-90% of buyers starting their search by getting on the Internet, not like was done a decade ago, by getting in the car. In doing this, they typically find their price range, narrow their geography and even pick their school district and subdivision before leaving home. So taking that into consideration, who comes to open houses now? Either people that have already picked that neighborhood and plan or simply happen to stop by, or tire kickers who are window shopping. Good Luck in whatever you decide to do!

Susan,

Successfully selling a home is strongly dependent upon price and visibility. Today's sellers need to be in touch with the market and both understand and accept the presence of "short sales" and "foreclosures" as well as their impact on the RE market in general.

Visibility comes in many shapes and sizes, curb appeal, for sale signs, marketing plans, internet presence, corporate presence in the market place, etc. etc. An open house in indeed an important piece of the visibility factor....one never knows where the buyer is going to come from. The buyer may be an acquaintance of the person that attended the open house.