Wow!  That was unexpected.  Broker Agent News re-posted an article I wrote on open houses,  ”7 Rules that Turn Holding Opens into a Dependable Flow of Business” (e-mail me if you would like a copy).   Thousands of Agents read it and hundreds of them sent me complimentary e-mails.

There is a crazy amount of interest in successful open houses and that makes sense because we are in a market where the pent up demand of the past few years along with some decent economic news and continued low interest rates are driving hoards of people into the market.

The keys to a successful open described in the article and its attached checklists and scripts is to engage people at the open in the conversation that leads to make an appointment with you to discuss working with you to buy a home.  Stage the home as a place where, in addition to the house showing well, you are demonstrating your personality and professionalism.

Then treat the open house for what it really is, an opportunity to generate a bunch of leads in one place and in a relatively short period of time.  This also means choosing opens that you know will have good traffic and not holding homes open just because the owner wants the open when you, the Agent know that there will be little or no traffic.

Bottom line: unless you abhor open houses this is a market in which well priced houses, newer on the market and relatively easy to access are worth thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars.  My record is eight appointments made at one open house that turned into six sales to Buyers and one listing.  See if you can beat that.

It’s one of the most interesting parts of my job.  When an agent that I coach is in the middle of a tough negotiation I ask them to call me.  Debbie did.

The asking price was $769,000.  The offer came in at $625,000.

Debbie is smart and talented.  As the owner’s anger and frustration arose, Debbie calmly explained that: “All offers are good offers,” that in this market, buyers feel that owners may be desperate.  The key is that she kept the owner objective.

She did not disparage the offer, the other agent or the buyer.  She didn’t compliment them either.  Instead she kept it objective.

The owner countered at $725,000.  The buyer came back at $640,000.  Again, as you might expect the owner was angry and frustrated.  Again, Debbie kept her cool and told him:  “I want to be as upset at you are but my job is to keep my eye on the goal of getting you the price you need to get the job done.  So, let’s decide do we want to tell them we won’t respond until they raise their offer?  Do we want to make a small concession and keep inching closer?  Or do we want to go to or close to your bottom line and send the message that we want to get this done with less “Mickey Mouse” back and forth.”

She explained the risks of not responding and allowed the owners to lead the decision making with her guidance.

So many agents who are far less skilled negotiators than Debbie empathize with their client in ways that paint the other agent or the other party as wrong, greedy, etc.  Debbie demonstrated three key negotiation skills of a talented negotiator:

1. She kept the negotiation and her client objective.
2. She kept the conversation and the negotiation focused on the goal.
3. She kept herself objective and focused on the goal.