I know this sounds strange but I don't like the daily life of a typical agent at all.  I went into this when first licensed in 1998 with the intention of becoming a broker so I could deal with management and administration and eventually have my own office (which I do now).   I also handle (99% of the time) REOs and HUDs to avoid trespassing on my agent's territory and duties.  I also provide a certain amount of backup for my agents if they have to go out of town or have unavoidable conflicts.  I keep very few leads that come across the web, phone, and walkins for myself....just enough to make sure that I can pay my own personal bills.

Off to an open house myself.  Hate them!

Not doing an open house!!  YEAH!!  I really try to keep a positive attitude when I do them, but at the end I am usually discouraged.

good luck to all that have open houses this weekend.  May the buyer gods be with you.

Shelly

Sorry, got interrupted and didn't finish my previous post.  As for agent-type-work:

I prefer working with buyers over sellers.  Just more interesting to me; however, buyers are more physically demanding.  With my back problems and respiratory problems, after viewing about 5 or 6 houses in a day, I'm done whether it is just one buyer or two or three.  I've been in tears at the end of a particularly long day because of the back pain.  I prefer door-to-door contact over phone when soliciting but the back problem rears its ugly head again.  I used to hate floor time when I worked for other offices so I took myself off the schedule but I would "schedule" my own time in the office and catch the phone overflow for my own version of floor time.  

Realistic sellers are OK to work with but I still prefer buyers.

Oh yeah, I forgot to answer the originia question..  My least favorite part of my job?  Home inspections.  I know they are important.  But sitting there for 2 to 3 hours is like watching paint dry with 3 minutes of a roller coaster ride at the end.  Especially when I have the sellers side.  My partner (and motherl) usually volunteers to do them so I can focus on marketing issues.  at least that is what I tell her I am doing, lol : )

shelly

I HATE Open Houses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I rarely do them unless the seller beats me. LOL!! Seriously, they almost have to before I will do one. The other thing I hate, with buyers, is family members who think they know everything and they don't know sh**.

I do try to explain that Open Houses aren't as productive as people think. I tell them with the internet most people have already seen the inside of their home and that for the most part the people out looking are tire kickers with nothing better to do. I do explain it in a more delicate way than I just stated.

My least favorite part of this career? Agents that are hard to work with. Such as, not letting you know what is going on, not getting documents to you in a timely manner, just basically being left in the dark and then cop an attitude when you want to be informed. I hate that. I would rather do something nice for my seller like host an open house over that.

Now Sharron, take it like a man, or whine like a woman. lol

At the very least you have the opportunity to get other buyer or seller leads, we all know it doesn't specifically help the owner/seller that much. But they do see that you have put some time in for them.

I'm with Ronda. I tell me sellers that opens where invented BY Realtors FOR Realtors so they can get buyer leads.

Here's a link to an article that ran in our local paper just this morning about open houses.

http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/100087.html

I dislike hold open houses also, but remember the story of the man that complained because he had no shoes.  

One day he met a man who had no feet.

I think in trying not to hold open houses, it makes me market the home very agressively in other ways.  Sell it and I don't have to spend the weekend there.

Gotta run and buy some shoes.  I found my feet!

Phil

The older I get, the more grateful I am that I can SEE my feet, LOL!

I rarely do open houses, which just don't work in our area.

Having to deal with fax machines (can't read clearly) and cell phones (can't hear clearly) is the least attractive of the 'necessary evils' of real estate for me.

Everything else I rather like . . .

I don't mind open houses.  I usually pick up at least one solid lead each time I hold one.  I admit that it rarely sells houses.  On the other hand our broker open houses are almost a MUST HAVE in my area.  And to be perfectly honest I don't like them nearly as well as public open houses.  I would rather talk with a potential client any day of the week.  I feel like I'm invisible at most agents opens unless the agent really does have a possible buyer.  I guess to each his own.

My least favorite part is inspections as well.  I just hate them and dread the list of often very petty requests.  However it's part of the deal so I guess it has to be done!

I don't do open houses any more.  I think I did two in the last year.

I'm going to guess that you didn't sell your open house today? :)

I hate them as well and that's exactly why I stopped doing them a few years back. I rarely have a seller who insists on them. My listing presentation says, "provide a competent host for public open houses, if desired." They know before they hire me that I won't be there on Sunday afternoons unless I'm showing the home to a qualified prospect. Try it. You'll probably find most of your sellers would also prefer that their home isn't held open. With all of the photos you can put on your P2 website it hardly makes sense from a marketing perspective.

I must be weird but I like open houses.  Maybe because I am not doing them alone.  I hated cold calling, was even glad the DNC list came out, gave me a good excuse not to do that anymore.  People who come to open houses are usually pretty nice, unlike the people sitting down to dinner that I just called...  Marcia and I do a lot of brain storming if our open house is slow, so don't feel it is a waste of time.  I do hate putting out and picking up my signs though, so maybe I should say I like open houses for the most part :)

Jana

My partner says "open houses are penance for taking an over priced listing!!"  right now I guess we have our share, lol : )

Shelly

If open houses worked to

(A) Sell the house or, even,

(B) to obtain as few as one solid buyer prospect per open house

then I would hold an open house EVERY day of the week - I'd be an absolute fool NOT to do it!

Why? Because that would mean that I would turn a minimum of 365 transactions per year (I could retire pretty soon and would be viewed as the saviour of the real estate industry for the year 2007).

Fact is... they are NOT anywhere nearly that effective ---- not even CLOSE, so I do NOT hold open houses - period!

I'd rather spend my time and money doing things that WORK.

"open houses are penance for taking an over priced listing!!"

ABBA-LOO-LEY . . . :)

When I did do open houses, I had some success with them.  Yes, I have actually sold the home to people who attended the open house.  One summer, I hired my daughter who was in high school at the time to sit as hostess.  I gave her very specific instructions as to what she could do and could not do since she was not licensed.  She never had trouble getting people to sign in, made sure they walked out with all the "stuff" at the open house, and made great mental notes which she shared with me after the open house.  I would have about 6 -8 open houses each month using both Saturday and Sunday most weekends.  She was pretty good at it because other agents in the office would hire her also.  Naturally, I had to assure them that when they hired her, she worked for them not me and I had no interest in the information she obtained at the open house.  Great way for her to earn some money and good experience too.  I paid her $15 for a 2 hour open house.  If it was a large house, we did it together.  Typically the Thursday or Friday before the open house, we would go door-to-door handing out a brochure about the house and the times we would be open.  If it was July, we didn't go door to door but on the Monday before I would send post cards to the nearest 30-50 neighbors in the area.  In summer, I usually had bottles of water in a cooler and some hard candies in a dish.  I was one of the first agents in the area who would set up a laptop with a continuous loop PowerPoint presentation.  I think a few others are doing that now.

After I got tired of having them, I used to pray that no one would show up so I could have a couple of hours quiet time to read and relax.  When that started making me feel guilty, I decided that I would only do open houses if specifically requested to do one.  I only suggest it now if I really think the outside doesn't do the inside justice.

The biggest reason I even started having open houses in the first place was that when I was with other brokers, they paid the cost of putting the open house ad in the paper.  It was a great way for me to get my name in the paper at no cost to me.