What are the best places to advertise an open house? Free/cheap places would be prefered.

I was logging on looking for the same question and also to ask what creative things have you done for an open house.

Here is a freebie for you... I go out to my listings on the Tuesday before my open house. I have your standard open house yard sign that I use but I have modified it to include the day of the week and time of the event. Putting them out on the Tuesday before lets all the neighbors and passers-by know about my upcoming event. They make it a point to come if they are even remotely interested.

Craig's list is free.

Realtor.com is a pretty good place. Cheap to become a member if you don't have many listings.

Try placing a nice ad on your home page. That way anyone who visits your site will notice the ad. Free and everyone sees it. Also, try blogging about it.

In my area if you upgate the info in the broker exchange system it will show as an open on the major brokers websites under "open houses". A very good way to let the public know. Just be carefull about entering them to soon I recently had someone show up a week early on a home that was being held open.

no place. Open houses are wastes of time.

I always send post cards to the nearest 50 houses to arrive 1 or 2 days beforehand. The neighbors are all curious anyway, and often your best lead generators. It's not free, but for $25-30 it is usually cheaper than the newspaper. And about 10% of them usually show. It's not alot to pay for 5 or so interactions with homeowners. Then the ones that show should get added to your regular mailing list.

Plan the open house in advance, at least two weeks. Last minute open house are a waste of energy.

1. Post the open house through your MLS
2. Post on Realtor.com
3. Post on Backpage.com, Craig's List, VFlyer, Postlets, etc
4. Add the open house to your website next to the property
5. Post your upcoming open house in your blog and newletter
6. Add the open house to your signature line along with a listing of 3 properties
7. Plug the open house into your drip campaign for buyers and seller
8. Post an open house flyer on the office board
9. Create an open house post card and send it to renters (mailling list can be purchased online
10. Send out an open house post card the the real estate offices in your county
11. Have flyers added to every mail box in the office
12. Post on Localism with lots of pictures, links to tours, links to your site, etc

All distribution should be timed to be delivered no later than 5 days before the open house and avoid having it delivered on the Junk Mail day. The online ads should be reposted every 3 days.

Just a few thoughts that have worked in the past.

There are a lot of free websites, but the leads or traffic they generate can be a crapshoot. Craig's list, Backpage.com, Google Base, Microsoft live expo, etc are all free services. Our experience with these services has been mixed.

You have to be specific about the purpose of the advertising. Are you trying to advertise in as many places as possible? Or, advertise where buyers go?

If you are going for # of places, here's a list of 100+ places to advertise a home or open house.
http://www.forsalebyweb.com/nodiscount/discussion/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1037

Looking for free classifieds and fsbo sites?

http://www.forsalebyweb.com/directory/sh...sure+Properties

My experience as been that 90% of the most serious buyers
are found as follow:

Internet and multiple listing service (MLS) - 60-80% of buyers

Individual broker showcasing -- 5-10%

for sale by owner sites -- 5-10%

Listings by email -- 5-10%

You can have a lot of fun with advertising and promotion, but you will find the most buyers are predictable in terms of where they go especially on the internet.

Interesting. Tell that to our office's #3 producer for the year (who also was named Rookie of the Year for our office). The majority of her business was generated through Open House leads.

Our office is also one of the top producing offices for our area, as well - so it's not like she was number 3 for a bunch of losers.

Open houses certainly CAN be a waste of time if they're not implemented right.

Open houses are excellent for generating for future business. But I welcome any statistics or facts that can link sales of specific properties as a direct result of specific open houses.

There are always exceptions however many that result in a sale are often short sessions held to compress buyers for the purpose of auctions and bidding.

There aren't many activities that I consider a complete waste of time. For example reading a book can lead to the sale of a home
but not effective for fast result.

Put sign on every corner with "FREE beers" on it... :-)