By The Tim on April 2, 2010
Posted a few hours ago on the Seattle Times: Realtors hold a special open-house weekend April 10-11
Anybody care to explain: A) Why REALTORS™ still get free advertising like this from local newspapers, even after years of crap like this (pdf “fact sheet” from 2006)? B) What the heck is that photo supposed to have to do with the story?
Posted in Humor, Local, News | Tagged mismatched-photo, open house, Seattle_Times, WA_Realtors
Tim Ellis is the founder of Seattle Bubble. His background in engineering and computer / internet technology, a fondness of data-based analysis of problems, and an addiction to spreadsheets all influence his perspective on the Seattle-area real estate market.
My question is about the photo. It’s late- I just finished watching Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot”- lots of gore and some mediocre acting, then I come to this. The world doesn’t seem to make sense any more. Is the woman dressed to tour open houses? Is that the new norm or expectation? Or is that a Realtor? That should lure the guys in! Or perhaps a subliminal message that real estate is still glamorous? Maybe it suggests you have to be rich to buy a house, “money to burn” as they say? Yes, that must be it. Money to burn.
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Hey now, everyone knows that hot chicks dig over-leveraged owners of depreciating assets. If you want to impress them, you “need the deed”. Which reminds me, where is our old friend “FinanceGuru” these days? He was always touting real estate as a vehicle to impress the ladies.
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The was a press release used to fill space that was created from an advertiser pulling an ad at the last second. The staff writer failed to rewrite the press release to make it more objective. No surprises considering that most journalists these days are intellectual puppets who get paid to do the political whoring of people far more powerful than themselves. Few journalists bother or care about objective reporting anymore. It doesn’t pay.
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RE: Scotsman @ 1 –
The photo? It’s not a real woman. The technology has vastly improved in inflatable women, and the NAR is now targeting single men as potential home buyers. Not only does each home come with granite and stainless, but each also with ” Doris 2.0″ the new high tech inflatable woman.
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I’m not sure why it’s called the first nationwide open house event. I’m fairly sure there have been similar “events” in the past.
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the photo choice is strange–at first I thought it was an ad for something else–it has nothing to do with real estate.
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That photo might be a picture of the Greek goddess Ananke, the goddess of fate and destiny. Perhaps the realtors wish to convey that our fate is home ownership at inflated prices and a huge mortgage to worry about? If not Ananke then it is the goddess Arachne the web spinner. The phrase “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” seems to apply here…….
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Tim, I think you’re looking at this the wrong way. With the credit about to expire, this allows first time buyers a good opportunity to visit a lot of listings without an agent. So it should be a great benefit to the limited service agent that merely writes up offers after the client selects the property. It’s a promotion for alternative business models! ;-)
Seriously though, I think the weather probably plays a bigger role in open house turnout than an event like this. I’m not even sure this event would increase the number of people that go through each house, because there would in theory be more houses to look at, and buyers can only look at so many houses. Stated differently, I’m not really sure who this benefits, except maybe brokers.
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I think I speak for everyone when I say that I don’t get my real estate news from media which accept advertisements principally from real estate-related businesses.
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RE: Jason @ 8 – Two washed-up industries clinging to each other. Sort of sad, actually. Since the REIC and the media are so steadfast in clinging to the past, it actually opens up opportunity for those willing to adapt. When the heavyweights have their heads in the sand, barriers to entry are lower.
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The closer we are to the transition, the more obvious it becomes what type of tricks and psychological madness this association (NRA) is wrapped in. The more desperate they become, the more laugh we are going to have.
Didn’t Geightner already mention to all of us that unemployment is expected to be unacceptably high for the next several years?
Well, NRA and is desperate. And is lying through its teeth…
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RE: Rushin @ 11 – Maybe Tim is going to have to start a gun control thread too! ;-)
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NAR or NRA what is the difference !!
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RE: gitano @ 13 – They go hand in hand. One wants you to buy a home and the other wants you to be able to protect it.
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RE: Ira Sacharoff @ 4 –
“The technology has vastly improved in inflatable women”
My heart flutters at the richness of this opportunity, but alas, restraint rules the day.
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“The technology has vastly improved in inflatable women”
Why did I ever get married?
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I recently took the real estate class needed to become an agent (as an elective, I have no plans to become an agent) and the instructor there said open houses are not done as services for the homeowner. They are marketing tools agents use to generate more business for themselves. Think about it, every time you walk into a open house, the agent hands you a business card, asks you if you are currently working with an agent, and tells you to call them for all your real estate needs.
An event like this one on the 10th & 11th just is a sign to me that traditional agents are struggling more than usual to get business.
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“When visiting a participating brokerage’s Web site, consumers can click on an open-house symbol, and then specify certain criteria such as price range, number of bedrooms, and geographic preferences. A list of open houses that match the criteria, regardless of which brokerage has the listing, is produced so house hunters can plan their tour schedules and routes.”
So…. what they are saying is these brokerages now have a feature Redfin has had for a long time now. Why again should I bother with these other websites?
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By Dave0 @ 18:
I don’t really track the competing websites for this particular feature, but any broker website does get fed the open house dates. That’s one advantage they have over sites like Trulia, Zillow or even Realtor.com. Realtor.com does get fed listing data automatically from most firms, but for some reason they don’t get the open house information automatically.
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By Dave0 @ 17:
There are some agents that do that–to the point even that they try to sell the buyer on themselves even before the property. Some people say an agent should pick up about 3 buyer clients for each listing. We pick up maybe one or two a year that way, and it’s typically because they want us to list their property. Just as an example, the most reason “related business” that one of our open houses received was our stager picked up a new contract because the person walking through liked the staging.
That’s one of the reasons we very seldom have another agent hold an open house at one of our listings. We want to make sure the open house is for the purpose of selling the listing. You can’t be kicking people out of their home to promote your own business.
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Open Houses are a way for people to see listings without an agent. Even though an agent is there, the first function is to see that the property is secure.
There are techniques for developing a buyer base at Open Houses that are kind of difficult for an agent to follow. You only have the time that the buyer is in the home, and they are avoiding you. The chances of some one seeing the Open House and writing it up with the agent in the house are slim.
An agent in a home has a sign in sheet, so they know who was there, a list of similar houses in the neighborhood for sale, pending, and sold, and finally some materials unique, for the home, and showing the skills of the agent on site.
Ultimately what an agent does at an Open House is meet the neighbors, collect traffic data, introduce themselves as a Real Estate resource, but is looking at other listings in the surrounding area.
A good agent is looking for new business constantly, no matter what they do.
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By David Losh @ 21:
They are? ;-)
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The photo makes sense in today’s paper, it’s to the companion piece about the Kardashians.
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RE: David Losh @ 23 –
Shows you how hip I am. I wouldn’t know a Kardashian if I tripped over one.
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RE: Ira Sacharoff @ 24 – I was just coming here to ask if that’s who it was. I wouldn’t recognize her, but I did see the connection in the print version. She’s someone who is only famous for being famous, so I too wouldn’t recognize her.
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Indian invasion?
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 20 – In my experience, about 1 in 4 agents at open houses will tell me anything about the house before trying to sell me their services. About half give me a hard sell, and will answer questions about the house by telling me how good they will be about giving me whatever I am asking about if I hire them.
Some agents will legitimately try to tell me about the particular house I am looking at, but it certainly hasn’t been the majority.
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[...] Open House Traffic is Serious Business. Tags: For Realty Professionals, National Association of Realtors, Real Estate, REALTORS®, Stockton Homes for Sale Posted in Real Estate by Dave Thurman Add a comment Subscribe [...]
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 5 –
Hi Kary,
It is the first nationwide event of its kind. It started in WA last year in June where across the state there were 5000 Open Houses. It got all-weekend coverage with the media and many said just the media alone increased business. The success of the event got many more states involved this year.
ABout 40 states are participating…
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RE: Dave0 @ 17 –
Those glossy housing magazines that you can pick up for free are the same thing. People pick them up and say, “wow that advertisement is great; I want this brokerage to sell my house.” I doubt many buyers actually get value from those things, the info is often out of date. Just more advertising in the guise of helping the seller.
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[...] images with their weekend real estate blurbs online. Back in April we had a Kardashian paired with a story about REALTOR™ open houses, and today we get Mel Gibson in a story about CoreLogic’s home price index.Has Mel been [...]
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