Open houses can help you sell retail property fast

We love to retail houses, especially repossessed homes for sale. We love to fix the house up. Just recently, I had a property where we ripped the cabinets and the countertops out. We spent some serious money on this rehab. Boom! The house was gone, just like that. Flipping houses for profit is a fun game to play.

It is a great idea to rehab bank repo houses, and then set up an open house. We have open houses going on all the time. At any given time, I probably have two of them going. It’s a great marketing tool and if it’s freshly rehabbed, you have something you will enjoy showing off to potential buyers.

I have made my open house check sheets available in my books and kits. You should get your hands on these, they are valuable.

If I had a third of a million dollar house, I’d consider doing an open house on the thing. Open houses are important.

One important thing to remember with an open house is air freshener. When they hit the door, it has to smell nice. A bad smell can turn buyers away. If you have b.o. and bad breath on a first date, you probably won’t get a second date. Sometimes a newly rehabbed home smells nice. It depends on the materials that were used.

So remember that if you are going do an open house, you cannot forget to use an air freshener. This is something that you wouldn't remember until you hit the front door and by then you got people standing out front waiting to get in. Be prepared in advance. By then, you don't have time to go to the store and get it.

Your potential buyers are going to be whispering to each other about how much that place stunk! That’s a nightmare for any realtor.

Air freshener must go on your open house check sheet. This proves how valuable check sheets are.

I have heard of realtors showing a property that was down the road from a pig farm. In this case, air fresheners will only do so much. Maybe you can load a semi with one and have it drive by the house. I'm just teasing, of course.

You also need to have a sign in sheet for your open houses. This is very important to have around. You never want potential customers to come and go. Never catch yourself saying, “They were the most excited people here but I don’t know how to get a hold of them.

I have a sheet with a place for their phone number. I make sure they fill it out when they hit the door. You have to point it out to them and have a pen lying on top of it.

Another important aspect to success with open houses is your timing. We have had fun with phasing our time so we can go from one property to the other. This is a good thing to do when you have a lot of empty properties. We've had people in three houses from 1:00 to 2:00, and then we all shift from 3:00 to 4:00 and do three other houses. You just move quickly and map out an efficient plan that shows a lot of people your homes. You can cover a lot of ground and get these properties filled up quickly.