The Big Open House Draws ‘Incredibly Positive’ Results

RISMEDIA, May 1, 2008-The Big Open House, a region-wide event highlighting the many great homes available in the metropolitan Detroit market, lived up to its name Sunday, drawing traffic to the homes and underscoring interest in the best buyer’s market in recent memory.

“The feedback from every real estate agent and broker we’ve heard from has just been incredibly positive,” MCAR CEO Walt Baczkowski said. “Homes that ordinarily would draw one or two guests during an open house were pulling in five times as many.”

And those guests were interested in buying. In fact, the event helped spur home sales even before it was held.

Rosalee Hill, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Schweitzer in Birmingham, received an offer for a listing the Friday before the event. “A couple saw that the house was featured in The Big Open House and put a bid in on it before anyone else could walk through it on Sunday,” she said.

And that was only the first offer Hill attributes to the event; a Birmingham condominium also elicited an offer. “These weren’t just people looking,” she said of the day’s visitors. “These were people out to buy.”

That’s also what Diane Cancro, a Realtor with Max Broock in Birmingham, discovered.

“Buyers have been sitting at home in their pajamas thinking about buying and thinking that they’re the only ones in the market, but The Big Open House helped them realize there’s competition out there for these houses,” Cancro said.

That realization helped her out over the weekend. “I sold two houses on Sunday as a direct result of The Big Open House,” she said. “I was in three multiple-offer situations this weekend, in part because of The Big Open House.” One open house her buyers attended had 30 guests that day alone.

“One of the things we wanted to do with The Big Open House was to change the conversation about local real estate,” MCAR President Furhad Waquad said. “A lot of talk has focused on mortgages and foreclosures – and for some good reasons – but we wanted people to start talking about the homes again. I think we succeeded.”

The Big Open House was sponsored by Chase Bank and Land Owners Title Agency.

For more information, visit www.MCARonline.com.

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