← Your Daily Real Estate Podcast with Tristan Ahumada
Your Daily Real Estate Podcast with Tristan Ahumada
Episode 782: Stop Hosting Open Houses. Start Building a Neighborhood
00:10:59
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When it comes to open houses, most agents just show up, they put up a sign and they kind of just greet people coming in. They don't really think about the process fully. I mean, you do have a sign up sheet. You do get ready by having the signs in your trunk or if you're like me, sometimes you just keep them in your trunk. But there is no real process involved where you actually have a system. And today I want to go over a simple system system that we've used over time. Now this isn't going to include like all of the items in a mega open house which involve the multiple signs, the map, the ads on Facebook and Instagram, the post, the pre, the middle, all the big bulk. I'm going to go over just the key pieces that I think most agents miss. And these are the ones that are really important to connect with people so that you can get business from this long term in any community. So get ready, take a pencil out or a pen or just listen. But more importantly, be sure to see which one of these you're going to implement into your system. For open houses, I'm Tristan. This is your daily real estate. It's a podcast, it's a show, it's five to ten minutes every single day. This is episode 782. If you need this, I'll let you know how to get it in a second. But first, let's think about before the open house. I've got some things outlined on my sheet here that we were going over as a team and say, hey, what, what is it that we do? What is it that we've done? Why do we have such great success with open houses? Well, we door knock. It's one of the things that, that we've done for many years. That means if we know we're going to have an open house, an area, well, we door knock. Three, two, one, maybe even the same day of the open house. And when we door knock, we're not just inviting the neighbors to see the home. We're gathering information, we're connecting with people. We are making sure we understand that neighborhood better. Because when we understand that neighborhood better, we show up better for the open house. Here are some things that we do. We ask questions like what do you love most about living on the street? So I'm door knocking and I've got my paper, my flyer and I door knock. And the ones that open, I'm like, hey Joe, we're having an open house on Sunday or Saturday 1 to 5. We'd love to have you over. But I have a couple of questions on the neighborhood. You see, I live and you could say where you live, if it's close or, or if you're outside the area, just let them know. Right. But more importantly, ask them, hey, what do you love most about living on the street? And to shut up and listen because that'll give you a lot of information. And what you could also ask. Second question, any hidden gems nearby? What's your favorite coffee spot or trails or pizza? Just a place that everyone hangs out. Right. And if you were to ask me that question, I live here and I open the door for you. Be the hiking trails that lead to the ocean view, the great coffee shop, the that we have, ragamuffin. There's just a lot we can do here, but the locals well know and that becomes important for the open house. So you're piecing things together beforehand. And then the last one, here's how long have you been here? Because that can easily lead to the question about real estate. So this is the type of stuff that you want to gather because as you're connecting, remember you're also saying, well, Joe, thanks for taking the time to think about this. You have to have a newsletter. I know, it's like interest in a newsletter. Yeah, but listen, it's not going to be that newsletter where you just spam people. It's going to be the newsletter that gives you information as the person receiving it about everything that's happening locally. So I say, joe, thanks for the information, man. I actually didn't know about that drill, but one of the things that we do have is a big newsletter. Or it could be like, if it's not big, if it's small, you could say, I've got a newsletter that covers everything that happens in our city. You might have to add you to it. What's your email address? Right. Or if you're techie, you could just say, hey, is it okay if we bring you on to this newsletter? And they say, yeah, great, scan the QR code on my phone. It'll prompt you and then it'll let me know when you sign in. You could just wait in there and be like, got you. I got your email address. So now, Joe, every Friday or once a month, I'm going to send you out a newsletter. Gives you all the information about the area as well. So thank you for that. Now, as you're thinking about newsletters, you're going to be using this pre and during the open house. Because every person that I meet, buyer, neighbor, curious, Passerby. Everyone gets added to this newsletter. But first I have to have a newsletter. I think that's the piece that a lot of us miss. And you can use constant contact mailchimp, it doesn't matter. And in it, you're going to have local business spotlights, market updates on specific streets or the home of the week, home of the month event call outs, the occasional home that's coming soon. If it's from you or somebody else, just your marketing, your marketing information to them that's valuable about their neighborhood. This morning one of our coaching clients brought up that she's been posting to nextdoor. I was going to see Netflix next door. Her name's Kelly and she says, Tristan, I've been posting a next door, I've been posting this, these sunset pictures and they're performing quite well because it connects so well with the, with the neighbors and it's so local. And I never thought to do that. I thought, damn, that's a great idea. Anyway, you could add that to your newsletter at the bottom. Here's the sunset for the week. Out of all the pictures I took, here's the sunset for the month or the sunrise. I think the more localized content you add to that newsletter, the more it becomes powerful for you and it connects really well with the consumer. Now, while you're at the open house, now that you've got the newsletter set up, you understand what you're going to be doing. Door knocking or if you want to call too, using red X or landvoice, whatever you use. And you're connecting with those neighbors at the open house. Here's the key. These are the little things that we miss, right? This is why I'm not going over the whole mega open house. But you create a neighborhood board. This is where you're going to have to do some legwork. And the neighborhood board goes near the entry. It's a simple display where you have local business cards, coffee shop, dry cleaner, handyman. In fact, you could put that picture or the flyer of the house there and then you could put local businesses around there, maybe even a map. Like my, my friend out here, he has a really beautiful map that he prints out and he puts it on this cardboard and it has an aerial view of the property and everything there is to do or all the things surrounding the area, whether it's hiking trails or shops or just the neighborhood in general. I love that. And then you can put community events like what's happening next? Farmer's market, where's the school? Maybe the school fundraisers. Block party, I don't know. But all that information that you were also learning, like you were doing reconnaissance work by door knocking, you can add that here and a hand drawn or printed map with favorite places, like, hey, Joe said the tacos were amazing. Joanne said the coffee place over here was awesome, or Saturday morning bagels, whatever it is. The point is you are now connecting the community and telling a story. When people come through, it's no longer just an open house. And if you want to add another layer to this, and this is the piece that we Talked about maybe 40 episodes ago, I don't even remember the episode number, but you can search for it in the YouTube section or in the podcast section. It's when we gamified open houses and now this you have to be a little bit sensitive to because I don't want you to gamify every open house because sometimes some sellers are more sensitive to this than others. But if you bring in a toy and if you're watching on YouTube, got Mr. Incredible on here, and I'm going to put this little Mr. Incredible toy somewhere in the house. And if you find him, and this is really good for kids too, but if you find him, you then please take a picture of where you found Mr. Incredible because he's hidden. And you don't make it hidden, like super hidden. It's kind of obvious. You don't want people snooping around the whole house. That's why I'm asking, is the seller okay with this? Maybe he's by the pool, maybe he's on the chimney, maybe he's in the bathroom, maybe I don't know where. But the point is he's somewhere. When you take a picture of it, your job is to text it to me. Because now I have your cell phone number. I know it's sneaky. Your job is to text it to me and then I'm going to enter you to win $100 gift card. But the hundred dollar gift card isn't given to everyone. It's only given to one person one time a month because I want to have other open houses. So those are the rules, right? And then you texted me the picture and your information as well. It's a $100 gift card. You could do it to any Amazon. You could do a Visa. The point is you're gamifying this process and you're capturing information because you're incentivizing. Now you're playing a long term game because you're bringing community together. You're offering something you're making your open houses very different people, remember? And more importantly, more importantly, you're attracting. You're not chasing, you're attracting. It's like, welcome to my open house. Now, as you're looking at this, you may see something on the front. Here's some things. Here's the area, here's the hiking trails. Take a look, right? These are all the surrounding things you could do here. I know a couple of neighbors that really love that coffee shop. And by the way, we're having a game today at the open house. Just do me a favor. Find. And then you've got a picture of what they're going to find. Tell them the rules, and you're off to the races. Now, you're playing a whole different game here, and that's what it is. You want to connect with people differently. You want to differentiate what you do. Because a lot of people don't do this. In fact, less than.01% of all people doing open houses do this. So you have an edge. Get to it. If you need this, message me on Instagram. I'll send this over to you. It's just a quick outline. It's not even long. It's like a page. I'll message you on Instagram. But remember, I'm super slow. We're building that site out so that you could download all of this on your own. Share this with somebody you think may need this. Have an awesome day.