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 thats 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 its also a great way to collect leads. Even if buyers arent interested in the property youre showing, they might be interested in something else nearby. But just setting out a paper and pen near the front door wont do. Guests may either only include ir>

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 youre hosting a two-part open house as you can use photos to advertise for your next showing.

Have Resources at Your Fingertips

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 itll 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 youve taken and resources youve 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.