Open Houses at Odd Hours

"Open Thursday From 5 p.m to 7 p.m"

Most Realtors hold open houses on weekend afternoons.

In fact, I'd guess that more than half of all open houses are from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays (Vikings games in Fall excepted).

There's certainly logic to that: that's when most people are off work, and free to go house shopping.

And once there's a default time, it becomes self-reinforcing, because everyone wants to "piggyback" off the traffic being generated by the other open houses.

However, there's a case to be made for changing that up, at least occasionally.

I heard a story just this week about a Realtor who held an open house on a Thursday evening -- and got a Buyer!

The back story is, the Buyer has a lake cabin they go to every weekend -- no Sunday open houses -- and just happened to see the open house sign.