In 2019 one of our biggest goals is to grow our real estate business. When we were strategizing our 2019 plans last year, we decided we would host more open houses to grow our brand and meet more potential customers & clients. Over the past few months, our weekends have been dedicated to hosting open houses in various price ranges and different parts of our city, and it has been interesting to say the least. For example, one Sunday we held an open house for a fellow agent and unfortunately the agent didn’t inform us there was an alarm on the property. Of course, it was our luck we had groups of people arrive either early or right on time and the alarm was blaring. We then couldn’t get in contact with the agent and to make matters worse the police ended up responding to the alarm. As a result, two somewhat funny things occurred… the open house attendees still leisurely toured the home while the alarm siren was wailing and then when we finally turned the alarm off no other potential buyers showed up! Talk about embarrassing! So, lesson learned... always ask if there is alarm on the property! Side note: I (Terren) held an open house for another property that following weekend or so and a police officer stopped by to tour the property. When she walked in the front door my heart almost leaped out of my chest because my first thought was “Did I set off a silent alarm?” and “Where is the alarm key pad?”. She must have read the expression on my face because she just smiled and explained why she was still in uniform and that she was interested in the property.
We recently held open houses on a couple of USDA eligible homes as well as one on a home in a popular neighborhood and the turnout was pretty good. When we were door knocking the Saturday before the USDA open houses, we found a great area to canvas for leads so that is a bonus we can’t wait to follow up on. However, there was one somewhat scary lesson we learned…ALWAYS have pepper spray for roaming dogs (or people) especially in county areas. We came across 6-10 dogs roaming the streets which put us on edge but thank God nothing happened. It seems there is never a dull moment in the life of a Realtor! We experienced a couple other awkward yet teachable moments that we will share at later time when we think you all need a good laugh.