Realtors, house flippers, spec home builders and homeowners do it. It’s called an open house and anyone in the real estate industry knows it is a sales event designed to pique interest in a property with the hopes of making the sale. My builder hosts an open house party for every client. He’s not interested in selling their house, he’s interested in selling himself. Ours was number 256, or there about, in his long list of houses completed the last 10 years. For our open house he scheduled a half day event at our house and invited all former clients, friends, family and industry professionals to see his recently completed house and indulge in finger food, cold drinks and company. During his most successful open house events, 100-200 people may visit the home. It’s an entertaining social event for his customers and a great business opportunity for him. Something tells me our home was a little different.
I started the open house angry because the first thing I noticed was something that wasn’t there — a favorite tree. The nimrod on the bobcat knocked it over when he was clearing jobsite debris. That’s the same slob that tore up the the sacred portions of our home site the first day work began. I’ll discuss the replacement tree with the builder later. This was after I learned our insurance company would only insure our home for 2/3 of the replacement value. The week after you find out your taxable value increased 60% you don’t want to learn your insurance company will not insure your home. Anyway, I didn’t let those annoyances interfere with the open house.
For purely selfish reasons, I wanted the open house to be an onslaught of hungry customers because I assumed and hoped viewers would be intrigued by the SIPS, 2-speed HVAC, tankless hot water and green design strategies. Who better to help them than an architect who had been through the whole thing himself? The builder thought the same thing. However, in the three hours we attended only six people visited. Two of them were neighbors who came to meet us, two were former builder’s clients stopping in to say hello and two were random drive-byes who were interested in buying rather than building. The builder said a few people stopped by later, but I suspect it was his least productive open house. So, our open house was a little different, much like us.
