With The Interest Rates Slowing The Market, The Open House is Officially Back in Business

For the longest time, agents didn’t need to host a formal open house for their properties. For sellers, listing their home was like the dating pool of your average 20-year-old — there were no shortages of suitors and they all brought something to the table.

Lately, the market for both new and existing homes has slowed down significantly. Thanks to the Fed’s blitz of interest rate increases, the pool of eligible buyers has decreased. Now, for the skilled Realtor that knows how to market a property, this isn’t a huge deal. Hosting open houses is a solid strategy to get a home sold, and sellers are stashing clutter, staging, and putting balloons on their mailbox. The open house is officially back.

For Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty, not only is the open house back, it’s back in a big way.

“We are seeing a big return to the in-person open house. As fun and convenient as virtual open houses are, you still crave to be in a house, to walk through it, to see the natural light, to feel the proportions of the rooms,” Maria Cintron, executive vice president of marketing at BFSIR, told CandysDirt.com.

While we’ve detailed several houses that are open this weekend for your perusal in our weekly open house roundup, if you’re hungry for more open house action, BFSIR has more than 60 open houses scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 15 and 16. Houses are open either Saturday or Sunday, but not both, and they can all be found on one handy website.

“Open houses are back — and the North Texas market is robust. If we compare key indicators back to 2019 — the last market that can be considered normal — our market is very healthy,” Cintron said. “For Dallas County alone, sales volume was $9.7 billion for the first nine months of 2022, which is up 38 percent from the same period in 2019. Even with some signals of economic fragility ahead, our market should be somewhat insulated. The big reason? The continued attractiveness of North Texas for those relocating from other states. We expect this demand to continue.”

You can see an updated list of homes on the Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty Fall Open House Tour here.