Open houses are a lot of work. You've got to list your Mississauga, Ontario real estate with a listings service, advertise the event, put out direction signs, buy party supplies, clean the entire house, send the kids to a sitter for the day, and spend an entire afternoon letting strangers romp through your home. You could be forgiven for thinking that the effort isn't worth the return, but you'd be wrong. There are numerous reasons why open houses are worthwhile to your selling efforts. We'll list some of them for you here.

Exposure

When you've got something to sell, whether it's an old sofa or a house on Ashbridge's Bay, you won't get any offers on it from buyers unless you've told them it exists. The real estate listings and property signs are a good form of advertising but open houses occur only at a certain time and place, forcing buyers to get off their butts and come out to the event if they even think they might be interested. The lure of free food also helps to draw buyers out.

Killing many birds with a single stone

Selling a home is an exhausting prospect. For the weeks or months that your home is on the market you'll need to keep it in a constant state of cleanliness and order that may require a massive effort if you have kids just in case a buyer wants to come by at short notice. With an open house, all or most of the people who have an interest in your particular piece of Mississauga real estate have to come to look at the house at the same time so you only have to clean once.

Inciting bidding wars

When a buyer makes an offer, he or she has no way of knowing who else is interested and how interested they are in the same piece of Waterloo, Ontario real estate unless they happen to be in the same room together. Open houses bring lots of buyers together in the same space and time, forcing them to size each other up and jump at making a better offer faster than the other buyers they see as their competition. This may set off a bidding war and raise the price of your home.

Speeding up the process

If you've got to hurry up and sell your home now so you can move down to the new Pleasant Valley, NY real estate you bought to accommodate your spouse's new job, then you don't want the house to be on the market for weeks or months. To hurry the process along, have an open house, which helps to concentrate the advertise/view/offer process into a single weekend in many cases.