I think the are two reasons home sellers hesitate to have an Open House. Reason number one is that they typically don’t want ‘their neighbours snooping through their home’, and reason number two would be safety concerns - both are, of course, totally understandable. Having said that, if you think about it, an average person knows approximately 500 people, whether that’s friends, relatives, people from church, sports clubs, work, school, social media connections, and you name it.
And while most sellers tend to focus on the more negative aspect of having neighbours come through the Open House, I believe that, at the end of the day, neighbours want to have good neighbours - whether ‘good’ means ‘we hope they are going to be quiet people’ … ‘we hope they don’t smoke’ or ‘we hope they have kids the same age as ours’…
And so, instead of assuming your neighbours are probably just nosy, I like to hand out some feature sheets in advance and extend a special invitation to the neighbours because ... who knows? They might know someone that wants to move to the neighbourhood, and if we frame it the right way, we just might open some doors we didn’t even know existed, right?
After all, you always get what you focus on and, personally, I like to focus on the positives, and that just seems to be working a whole lot better for me and my clients.
The second reason sellers are hesitant about Open Houses is safety and that, quite frankly, is a matter of proper professional representation and skill. It is my duty to ensure that you can feel safe and at peace, knowing that everything is well taken care of and your interests and your property are represented professionally and with the utmost attention to detail.
I hope this article helps you to look at the topic from a different perspective, and whenever you are ready to move, I’d be happy to dive deeper into the topic if you have any questions and help you make the moving process a truly positive and worry-free experience!
After all, life’s too short!