{"id":19933,"date":"2012-04-27T11:16:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T18:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/?p=19933"},"modified":"2015-04-30T10:15:30","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T17:15:30","slug":"open-houses-fun-but-probably-pointless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/27\/open-houses-fun-but-probably-pointless\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Houses: Fun, But Probably Pointless"},"content":{"rendered":"

Full disclosure: The Tim is employed by Redfin<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just in time for the National Ass. of Realtors’ Nationwide Open House Weekend<\/a>, I just posted the results of an analysis I’ve been working on at Redfin to see if holding an open house is at all correlated with the chance that a home will sell.<\/p>\n

Do Open Houses Help Homes Sell?<\/a><\/p>\n

…we thought it would be interesting to dig into Redfin\u2019s stash of real estate data to answer the question: Does holding an open house make a home more likely to sell?<\/p>\n

To answer this question, we analyzed over a quarter million listings across eleven different cities around the United States.
\n…
\nIn San Francisco, an astonishing eighty-three percent of listings held at least one open house. In Phoenix and Las Vegas, less than five percent of listing had an open house. In the remaining cities, twenty to sixty-five percent of listings had an open house.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"What<\/a><\/p>\n

Seattle actually came in above most other markets for how common open houses are, with 53% of listings in King County holding an open house at some point while on the market.<\/p>\n

In the other eight markets we examined, there was virtually no difference in the percentage of homes that sold, whether they had an open house or not.
\n…
\nBut what happens if we break that data down a little further and take a separate look at homes that held an open house specifically within the first week of listing versus those that held an open house at some later date?<\/p>\n

Interestingly, when an open house is held within the first week, a home is thirteen percentage points more likely to sell than not having an open house at all, and twenty-six percentage points more likely to sell than if an open house is held sometime after the first week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s what that data looks like for Seattle specifically:<\/p>\n

\"King<\/a><\/p>\n

Obviously there isn’t some sort of magic about having an open house in Week One that somehow dramatically increases your chance of selling, because if there was you wouldn’t expect open houses held later in a listing’s life to decrease<\/em> the chance of a sale. Most likely holding an open house in the first week is just a sign of a hard-working listing agent.<\/p>\n

Open houses are fun for buyers and lookie-loos, but here in Seattle they most likely don’t help a home sell.<\/p>\n