I'll be straight with you. I'm not a big open house fan. Most of that comes down to safety. I cut my teeth in real estate during the REO days, and some of those open houses were rough. So I carry a little story in my head about them.
But here's the thing. If you're going to do an open house anyway, we may as well turn it into something that actually generates business. That's the whole point of this. Nothing more, nothing less. We want as much business as we can get out of the hours we're already spending.
And it all comes back to one universal law of real estate.
The more conversations you have about real estate with people, the more money you make.
That's it. That's the whole game. So let's build an open house that creates the maximum number of conversations possible. Here are the seven plays I'd run.
Play 1: Vlog the entire day and feed the content waterfall
Before you do anything else, document the day.
You don't need fancy gear. Use your iPhone. Use a mirrorless camera if you have one. If you want to invest a little, grab a DJI Pocket 3 or 4, or the new Insta360 Luna. But your phone is more than enough to start.
Here's what I'd capture, all in one video:
Open with why we do open houses at all. What's the benefit to the agent? To the real estate community? To the seller? Talk through it while you set the whole thing up.
Then state the goal. If this were the most wildly successful open house you've ever held, what would that look like? Say it out loud on camera.
Once you're on site, do a home tour and walk through the property.
During the open house, drop the camera in the corner and let it record for an hour. Pure B-roll. No audio. If clients walk in and notice, just tell them you're only grabbing behind-the-scenes footage.
When it wraps, document the results. Something like: "We held this home open at 123 Main Street from 1 to 4. We got 27 groups through. 26 had an agent, one didn't, and that one's considering working with us. Feedback on price was strong. Feedback on everything was great. Overall, a success."
Then close with why this matters to the client. Why open houses instead of just dumping more money into ads or Zillow? How is this different than a normal MLS showing?
Cut it together in DaVinci Resolve and aim for a 12 to 19 minute video.
Now run the content waterfall. (If you've never seen this, go to scalingagentos.com and learn the system.) Take that one long video and pull everything out of it. Four or five thirty-second shorts. Three or four quote graphics. One carousel. A LinkedIn post.
Do the math on that. One long-form YouTube video. Five reels for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Five quote posts. One carousel summarizing the result. That's at least 30 pieces of content out of a single open house.
And that's just play number one.
Play 2: Run a Meta invite ad three days out
Three days before the open house, run a Meta lead ad to the city plus a 15-mile radius. Make it an invite.
Keep the copy tight and specific. Something like: "This is the only home for sale inside Bressi Ranch over 4,000 square feet under $3 million. It's being held open this Saturday from 1 to 4. Register below to get all the property details."
Ask for three things on the form. First name, email, phone. When they fill it out, all they get is the flyer and the open house details. Make it dead simple.
Spend about $20 a day for three days. Run video creative and image creative. Make it disrupt the scroll. When the creative is good, you're looking at roughly $3 per registration. Not everyone shows up. That's fine. Every registration is another conversation.
Play 3: Hit every expired in the neighborhood with a business card
Pull every expired listing in the immediate neighborhood. I don't care why it expired and I don't care when. Last week or three years ago, it all counts.
Grab your business card and write this on the back by hand: "I'm the listing agent over at 123 Main Street. I had a couple questions about your home. Will you text me when you get a moment? - Steve"
Slide it on their door with the handwritten side facing out. You don't even need to knock.
One thing. Do not say "your home failed to sell" or "I noticed you took it off the market." None of that. Just the questions line. They'll flip the card over, see your name and brokerage, and go "okay, cool."
The business card is doing double duty here. When someone texts and says they got your card, you instantly know they're an expired.
Play 4: Hit every model match with a flyer
Find every model match in the neighborhood. Same square footage, same beds, same baths, similar condition if you can tell.
Print the property flyer. On the back, write: "I have something interesting to tell you about this listing. Will you text me when you get a moment?" Fold it in half and leave it on the door. No knock required.
Quick but important detail. Don't start any of these drops until the sign is in the yard. You want parity between what's on their door and what's on the sign in front of the house.
And if your business card or flyer doesn't match your for-sale sign, fix that. If your brokerage runs navy with white text, your card should feel like navy with white text. Don't make people work to connect the dots. We want this to be easy on them.
Here's why we use a flyer for model matches instead of a card. When someone calls about the flyer, you know it's a model match. When someone calls about the card, you know it's an expired. The medium itself tells you the source.
Play 5: Knock on every home that can see the open house
Now the five to ten homes that physically see the listing. The ones who look out the window or pull out of the driveway and see that sign every single day.
For these, you knock. Hand them a nice 8.5 by 11 flyer and say something like: "I'm holding an open house this weekend. There's going to be cars everywhere and I'm sorry for the inconvenience. If anything comes up, here's my number, call me and I'll take care of it. And if you've got time, you should stop by."
You just turned a potential annoyance into a relationship. And if you've ever thought about selling, now you know exactly who the listing agent is.
Play 6: Do it all again after the open house
Here's the play almost nobody runs. Everything above happens before the open house. That's touch one. Now we go again after.
This came up on a podcast with JD Lenard. I asked him: what if your agents hold an open house in Long Island, 75 people come through, and every single one already has an agent? Is it still a success?
My answer. It's a wild success.
Think about it. Every one of those 75 agents has a buyer looking in that neighborhood right now. And you are the only person who knows that. You're the one with the data. Seventy-five buyers, one snapshot, one neighborhood.
So use it. Run the same three door strategies again with the results baked in.
On the expired business cards: "Open house crushed it. 75 people through, a lot of them looking to buy right now. I have a question about your house. Text me when you get a second. - Steve"
On the model match flyers: "Great news, the open house did extremely well. 75 people through. I have a question about your home. Text me when you get a moment. - Steve"
On the homes that can see it, knock again: "We just wrapped up. 75 people came through. Most had agents, which is great, but a lot of those buyers are still waiting on the right home in this neighborhood. A few are likely writing offers this week. If you know anybody thinking about selling something like this one, maybe in a different spot, maybe it's you, here's my number. Have them call me right away, because these people are writing offers this week."
Same effort. Twice the conversations.
Play 7: Position it right and do it on repeat
The last play isn't a tactic. It's the difference between an open house that works and one that doesn't.
Too often I hear an agent say, "I did an open house, two people came through, it was so slow I just left." Then I ask what they did to support it. "I put signs up." That's it. That's why nobody showed up.
And position the thing like it's actually open. I saw an agent recently put "Private Event" on her open house signs. I get the instinct to make it feel exclusive. But when I'm in a hotel and I see "Private Event," that means don't go in there, you're not invited. If it's truly public, don't tell people to stay out.
How you position the open house is how it performs. Position it well and you'll surprise yourself.
Then do it on repeat. You don't need your own listing. Use somebody else's with permission. It can even be another brokerage if that's allowed in your market. The value was never being the listing agent. The value is doing the activities.
A new agent scheduled a call with me recently. Licensed three weeks, intimidated by a high-end market, but grew up in the area and knows a lot of people. I told her: sit in an open house five days a week with somebody else. Find a lender, a title or escrow partner, maybe another agent to split deals with for safety. Work out of someone's listing instead of your home or the office. Vlog it. Do a house tour. Go live during the open house. Build a media machine out of it.
She paused and said, "So that's really just a reason to make a ton of video, isn't it?" Exactly. And it's the easiest thing you can do with almost no overhead.
The bottom line
Run this three days a week. Expireds, model matches, line-of-sight homes, the vlog, the content waterfall, and the after touches. I genuinely don't know what else you'd need to do to fill your pipeline over the next 30 days.
It's labor intensive. I won't pretend it isn't. But pound for pound, there's nothing that gives you a bigger ROI on hours worked versus conversations had. And that's before you count all the people who actually walk through the open house itself.
If you run this, I want to hear about it. Email me at team@steveolsongroup.com, tell me what you did and what your results were. I'd love to have you on a live podcast to talk through it.
Now go crush your open houses.
