Open House Blues

Open House Blues

I am a relatively new real estate agent (licensed about 8 months), have a couple of transactions under my belt, and I seem to be getting pretty good at this Open House thing.  As a new agent, I attended all the obligatory “how to” classes that my broker suggested I take, but as with most lessons learned, real life is the best teacher.

First of all, with Open Houses you really don’t know what you’re going to get.  You could have people marching in and through the house non-stop to such an extent that you feel like you’re trying to herd cats.  Other times, you’re the Maytag Repairman sitting patiently waiting for that front door to open.  (That is currently my situation now, and so I decided to do something productive, like write in my blog while I watch the clock tick down to 5:00 o’clock).  Whether you’re idling your time or dancing in circles, invariably Murphy’s Law will always prevail – what can go wrong, will.

A bit of background about me that will help illuminate my suffering.  At the ripe old age of 53, I decided to reinvent myself.  As with many other women my age, the idea of growing old, fat and ugly is particularly painful.  So with middle age in its full force and effect, I took my future into my own hands and went back to school, and voila – I became a realtor!  However, middle age has its pitfalls, and fall I did!

Hot Flash Blues.  As most middle aged women know, your internal body thermostat has a tendency to go straight to hell whenever it wants, and mine usually wants whenever I hold an open house.  That combined with the heat and humidity of Houston, Texas, adds up to a most unpleasant experience of overactive sweat glands particularly when I am trying to look poised and professional.  It is inevitable that as soon as my Open House guests arrive, I proceed to start sweating like I had just run a marathon, causing my mascara to run like Tammy Faye Bakker’s and perspiration stains to form under my arms, not only embarrassing myself, but also causing the poor house hunters to fear that I might be contagious with some sort of communicable disease.  Not a pretty site. Of course, in these circumstances Murphy’s Law always kicks in, and I can never seem to get the a/c to go down below 80 degrees.  After suffering through several of these episodes, I ended up confiscating one of my 16 year old daughter’s lace fans from her collection, so now I just resemble a Japanese geisha or some ante-bellum debutante flicking my fan like crazy whenever those pesky hot flashes creep up on me.  The nice thing is that it usually works.

Lockbox Blues.  Technology is an amazing thing.  Back in the dark ages before I got my license when I was just buying and selling houses as a consumer, I recall seeing lockboxes on houses that agents could open with just a master key.  Then the lockboxes graduated to having nifty combination locks where the listing agent would have to secretly pass along the combination to the selling agent.  I had always thought myself rather technologically savvy - understanding how to use email, scanners, Facebook and Linkedin.  I could even understand, to some degree, the texting shorthand that my daughter uses.  Now in the digital world they have the SUPRA key!  This is a way cool device that allows you to utilize your smart phone and a fob (I recently learned what that was) to communicate with the SUPRA box and have it magically unlock and the key to the house appear.  You simply point the fob at the box, press the button, enter your password on your smart phone app, watch as the phone and the box talk to one another, then a delightful chirp from the phone tells you the key is ready.  

At one Open House I held this past summer, I arrived 30 minutes early to set up my stuff and located the SUPRA box on the side of the house.  It was 95 degrees outside and 900% humidity, so I was most anxious to get inside into the cool air-conditioning before the middle age sweat demons started to show up.  I stood humbly before the black box, mosquitos swarming and feasting on every inch of my exposed flesh, whipped out my fob and my smart phone, pushed the button, punched in my code and waited to hear the chirp of success.  Not happening.  Instead I heard the grating sound of the “failure to connect” beep admonishing me for my ineptitude.  I tried again – whipped out, pushed and punched.  No success.  I tried again for 15 minutes.  By then, any semblance of makeup had melted off my face, my clothes were soaked through and through, and the mosquito bite welts were swelling to such an extent I was scarcely recognizable.  I was mortified that I was so technologically challenged, and I conceded defeat.  There was no way I was getting into that house.  So I sheepishly gathered all my Open House signs from around the neighborhood, set my helium balloons free, and went home to tend to my bruised ego. 

Then next day I visited the nice folks over at HAR to inform them that their super SUPRA had FAILED miserably causing me shame and embarrassment.  The cute little Gen Y girl who was all of about 19 years old, carefully and slowly asked me (you know us old folks don’t really understand this techno talk) if I had turned on the Bluetooth on my phone.   I told her I thought Bluetooth was that obnoxious looking thing that people who wanted to look important stuck in their ear when they pretended to talk to other people.  No, she explained, that was how phone magically talked to the SUPRA box.  Oh.  We checked my phone – no magic coming from it whatsoever.  Amazing – so much for my techno savvy.

Signage Blues.  The key thing to holding an Open House is get potential buyers to come in and take a look.  There are several ways to do this – the listing agent updates his MLS listing with the open house information, your brokerage can send out emails announcing the company’s open houses for the week, you can post the event on your social media page, or one of the tried and true ways is to blast the neighborhood with Open House signs and dancing helium balloons.  It was this last option that proved to one of my latest downfalls. 

As a new agent, I hadn’t stocked up on the various signs that other Realtors use, so when I hosted my first Open House, I dashed over to the HAR store and purchased five $5 Open House signs.  They were corrugated plastic signs which were held up by flimsy wire stakes which you were supposed to push into the ground.  They said “Open House” on them and had a big red arrow pointing the way.  These signs are basically designed to be disposable – you wrote the address of the open house with a marker on the big red arrow, then when you’re done with them, you throw them away.  Well, I felt that was wasteful and decided that instead of writing the address, I would print out a nice color coded address in big letters, cut it to fit on the big arrow and glue the paper on the sign.  They looked fabulous and were reusable!   I felt that my Open House signs were far superior and just as professional as those of my competing realtors.

 After scoping out the neighborhood of my Open House, I decided I would put my signs on the most high traffic corners.  Now, what I didn’t know what that below the dirt/grass on the corners of most major intersections is concrete.  So after I double parked, I found the perfect corner of a busy intersection and proceeded to juggle my sign and balloons out of the car and into the moist hot Houston air.  I found a spot of damp green grass, put my sign in place, then placed my foot on the bottom rung of the wire stake and stomped!  Nothing happened except that the wire legs of my sign hit that concrete (unbeknownst to me) and decided to spread eagle and not sink into that grass.  I gathered up my sign again, straightened out the legs and tried again.  This time I decided that I need more force, so I jumped on that sign like you would a pogo stick, determined to get it in the ground.  I am sure in that most dignified moment I nearly caused a wreck between on-coming cars!  It was then I realized that I was dealing with concrete as opposed to nice soft dirt.  Lesson learned.  I found a nice bush nearby (there had to be some dirt under there) and was able to stick my wonderful new sign.  It was a bit lopsided however, because of the bent legs.

After my open house, (which had been unusually slow) I carefully went to retrieve my new signs.  As I came upon them, I found that the lovely Houston humidity had managed to cause all the glue on my signs to un-stick and my nice color coded addresses had completely fallen off, leaving my open house signs blank and barren.  I am sure my neighborhood competitors had big fat open houses and reveled in my misfortune!

Lessons Learned.  Now that I consider myself almost an Open House Pro, I would like to pass along some valuable lessons to avoid Murphy’s Law that I’ve learned over the last few months:

·         - If you are a menopausal middle aged woman, refrain at all times from holding open houses in the middle of summer in Houston, Texas.

·         - If you find that you must do this, bring all your stuff to the house HOURS beforehand - BEFORE you put on nice clothes, do your hair, put on makeup, or even brush your teeth.

·         - Turn the A/C down as cold as you can get it when you’re there early.

·         - Wear layers of clothes that can easily be removed as needed. 

·         - Wear waterproof mascara.

·         - Update the Supra app on your phone that morning, and for goodness sake, make sure the Bluetooth is turned on.

·         - Order pre-printed Open House signs with your name, brokerage and phone number (they’re cheap – about $15 apiece)

·         - Bring cookies and a laptop.  Laptop for you to write in your blog while you wait, and cookies to munch on in between visitors.