Please Support Your Local Open House!

I try not to make a habit of pleading with the public, but…

 

In a world of virtual tours, video tours, talking signs, auto-response text messaging, 24-hour info lines, e-brochures, digital photography, zillow, trulia, and the rest, there are a lot of good and interesting properties that I believe people are not going to see, simply because some listing agents are not plugged in to all the new media sources. 

 

It has become easy to simply look through a bunch of e-mailed listings, pick the ones with the pretty pictures, and dismiss the rest.  This is where I see open houses and casual tire kickers (“gossipers”) being forced out of the real estate picture.  Why go look at a home that lacks a glitzy marketing campaign, or a slick video tour on youtube?  Why waste a perfectly good afternoon casually strolling the blocks of a neighborhood in which you are looking to purchase, seeing other houses that are not necessarily what you’re looking for, but could give you a perspective on the rest of the area? 

 

Let’s be honest:  Not all agents and/or brokerages have caught up to the technology revolution.  Not all agents have figured out how to load all their property’s info into one of the thousands of online real estate sources.  Some of these agents have gems of listings, too. 

 

It’s a little like comparing E-Bay to a yard sale.  You could spend all your time looking online for a potential treasure, along with millions of other people in the cyber-world, or you could take a break every now and then, and actually get out and get your hands dirty with the real thing. 

 

Some may say I’m terribly nostalgic, but in this world of “viral” marketing, sphere’s of influence, social networking, etc., you never know how your simple visit to a humble open house may contribute to a buyer or seller’s happiness. 

Tags: open house, Real Estate, trulia, trulia.com, video your, vitrual tour, youtube, youtube.com, Zillow, Zillow.com