Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Open House

We had our first open house last weekend and the turnout was...less than spectacular. We had one person come besides our realtor. One.

Granted, the one person was also a realtor, who had a client who was looking for a house in our neighborhood. All we need is one buyer. But still, after all our work lately to make sure the house was as good as it could be, it was disappointing.

I am not a market analyst, though I do have a few theories as to why we had such a low turnout:
  1. School starts this week. Most families who want to move either did it last month, or else are waiting until they get in the groove of fall. And our house is most likely to appeal to a family.
  2. Debt ceiling and stock market. The various and sundry news outlets have foretold the end of the world as we know it, therefore no one wants to buy a house. Best to wait until after the apocalypse to see which areas of the world are glowing with an eerie green and which are still habitable.
  3. We are overpriced. I don't actually believe this one as we are darned close to actually taking a loss on the house at our current price. By "taking a loss" I mean that should our house be destroyed by a tornado today, it would cost more to build another one exactly like it on the same lot than we are asking a buyer to pay for it. But, logic and math have never played a part in the real estate market, and I don't expect it to start now.
  4. We are flesh-eating monsters and there is Dark Mark permanently hanging over our roof, a la Voldemort. This is actually my favorite theory lately, as it explains many things (including our issues with flooring contractors). This theory would also conveniently explain why we recently sealed our garage floor (had to cover the fresh patch where we hid all the bodies...), that we own two black cats, and the assortment of dragon decorations...
  5. The house has been listed for all of two weeks, and there aren't a lot of people in a position to buy a house, especially one that is probably a move-up house compared to many nearby neighborhoods (and many of those people are probably wringing their hands wondering why no one is coming to their open houses either).
  6. Its too soon to tell.

1 comment:

Bethany said...

Well, it could be worse. At least the one person there was representing someone actually looking to buy a house. I frequently go to open houses to dream about the future. I'm pretty open about it with the realtors, but I have no intention of putting an end to my love of houses.

I'm sure your house will sell. It's a beautiful house in a nice neighborhood that has been well kept (and is now well-polished). Are you able to move into the other house in the mean time? I've heard many people like to look at houses that are either empty or staged. If nothing else you'd be able to avoid worrying about the house being clean everytime you step outside.