Hosting an Open House: 3 Reasons to Bring Your Tablet

From marketing the event to staging the home, hosting a successful open house can be tricky. Be too specific — like targeting only first-time home buyers— and you risk missing a whole slew of potential leads. But be too broad — like not doing anything to set the property or yourself apart — might prove disastrous as well. One thing that’s a safe bet is making the entire experience as smooth and simple for each guest as possible. If being tech savvy is part of your selling strategy (and it should be), use these tips to integrate an iPad into your property showing:

Streamline the Sign-in Process

Having guests sign in at an open house not only makes follow up easier, but it’s also a great way to collect leads. Even if buyers aren’t interested in the property you’re showing, they might be interested in something else nearby. But just setting out a paper and pen near the front door won’t do. Guests may either only include irrelevant (and sloppy) information or they’ll forgo signing in all together. Instead, ditch the guest book and meet prospective buyers at the door. With the help of your tablet, use an app like Open Home Pro to easily collect contact information and continually add notes while walking them through the property. One of the app’s key features is it allows users to find out if a visitor is working with an agent and if he or she is pre-approved for a mortgage. Lastly, using a tablet will save you time (no more hours spent deciphering someone’s handwriting) and open house apps make it easy to stay in contact with personalized, automated follow-up emails and social media sharing integration.

Limit Equipment

Instead of lugging around a camera and juggling it with your smartphone in one hand and a folder full of pamphlets in the other, leave it all behind. You can upgrade your photography skills while downsizing on equipment. Before the open house, use an app like Camera+ to control the exposure, digitally zoom and experiment with effects in order to improve your listing photos. While showing the home, snap a few shots to post to social media and create some buzz around the event. This works especially well if you’re hosting a two-part open house as you can use photos to advertise for your next showing.

It may be easy enough to whip out your phone and do a quick Google search when guests have a specific questions, but why not up your game and plan ahead? At the open house, prospective buyers will likely want to know more about the neighborhood, nearby schools, crime stats and more. With a bit of planning, you can have this information pulled up and easy to access with just the touch of the screen. Consider using a map app to highlight noteworthy areas of the neighborhood. Use Pinterest to display information about specific homes. Not only will this help you connect with tech-savvy buyers, but it’ll make your listings more interactive. Consider gathering websites and resources visitors asked about and including them in the listing follow-up or an upcoming newsletter. Or, with the photos and videos you’ve taken and resources you’ve gathered, you could centralize the information and use it to host a virtual open house for prospects who are out of state or otherwise unable to attend.

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AMPI is the national association of real estate professionals that have, since 1956, gathered under laws and codes of ethics and conduct to create a reliable, trustworthy an efficient real estate environment in Mexico.

AMPI consists of separate autonomous sections all throughout the nation, as well as more than 4,000 associates and affiliates.

Each section is independent and has its own board of directors, only surpassed by a national board of directors comprised of twenty associates from all over the republic.

Developed over the years with the

input and knowledge of its members, AMPI is much more than just a collection of offices.

AMPI has been a solid and recognized institution in Mexico for the past 27 years. It was originally established in 1956 and was consolidated in 1980.

AMPI is currently represented in all the principle cities and regions of Mexico stretching from Tijuana to Cancun.

The Riviera Nayarita, Vallarta and Compostela chapters of AMPI are dedicated to promote the best practices in real estate by providing its members with education to reinforce the standards of ethics that give our industry the credibility which our clients deserve.

AMPI is committed to giving our membership access to a multiple listing service that forms the platform from which our industry can expand locally and into other markets while giving our members precise and up to date information that is vital to continuous improvement and growth.