You, watching me, watching you.
Here's a late-breaking news flash: open houses are frequently boring—is it 4:30 yet?—occasionally entertaining and, once in a great while, supremely exhilarating. There may be at least two reasons for this broad range of outcomes. Call me a cynic, but I've always had the nagging suspicion that the open house is as much lounge act as legitimate marketing tool. The agent sings, dances, tells a few jokes. The audience scores him on his "energy", while the agent scans the audience for a friendly face.
Nothing good can come from this.
But mainly it's because the open house showcases the uneasy relationship between the real estate industry and the public as much as it showcases the home. Call me a cynic, but I think the problem starts with the premise, at least as both parties understand it. The agent is there, so the public believes and as so many agents seem to believe, to pick up badly-needed business. The public is there to see the house without getting picked up as badly-needed business, and without getting hosed too badly.
Given these conflicting motives, it's a testament to the essential goodness of humankind that the brief interactions between agents and civilians at open houses are as cordial, innocuous and superficial as they so often are. But recently I had two experiences where the sub-text rose to the forefront. In both cases, no buyers or agents were harmed (at least by each other), and in at least one case both parties came out with a greater appreciation of the other. Both experiences reminded me that young and old alike, sophisticated and not-so-sophisticated alike, share a deep suspicion of the real estate industry.
In the first case, a very young couple comes up to me at an open house to ask a few questions. By itself, this isn't remarkable. What is remarkable is that the man grimly refuses to make eye contact with me. In fact, he makes a point of not making eye contact, even though he's standing right in front of me. His message is clear: It is only with the greatest reluctance that I approach you. And never will you steal my spirit i.e. convert me into a client.
It turns out that their "agent" is a code-writing cubicle-mate with a real estate license who, no doubt for a reduced commission (and with the competence that comes only from pretending to be an agent once or twice a year) is willing to guide them through what's almost certainly the most complicated and expensive transaction they'll ever have. It's times like these (and they don't happen very often) when I wonder if maybe the bubble-heads were right.
But not for long. Because right after this I had another open house experience that started with frank suspicion bordering on hostility and ended, if I'm not mistaken, in mutual esteem.
I'm talking to a group of buyers, and out of the corner of my eye I see an older, well-dressed man and his wife stroll slowly up to the house. The wife looks friendly enough, but the man looks like he expects to be lied to. The man looks like he expects a full-strength open house hosing with all the trimmings. After a while he comes over and starts asking me questions with barely concealed skepticism.
But the thing is, they're great questions. For example, the road to the house is private, owned and maintained not by the city or county but by the maybe sixty homeowners it serves. He wants to know if there's anything in the road agreement that allows a particular homeowner to block the road.
Great question!
I answer his questions as best I can—and that's one question I can't answer—letting him know what I know and what I don't know, giving him guidance as to where he can find the answers I don't have. And I'm having fun. Because there's something in his challenging manner, in the intelligence of his questions, that brings out the best in me. Gradually he thaws, his skepticism subsides.
After he's done with me, I ask with what's probably frank admiration, "What do you do for a living?" He answers, "I run an investment fund". Of course! Asking tough penetrating questions is his job, or at least that's what Wall Street tells me.
It's times like these (and they don't happen very often) when I wonder what it's like selling homes to the ultra-rich. Could be fun.