The FSBO Diaries (Week 14): The holiday question

By Kathy | June 23, 2010 - 12:38PM

The first comment I received on this site was: "So, the first two open houses are on Palm Sunday and Easter? Not sure of this strategy."

Oops. I hadn’t made the connection or realized how many spring holidays there were until we started showing our apartment at the end of March.

In fact, fully half of our open houses have taken place on holidays or holiday weekends.

We have held them on Palm Sunday/Passover, Easter, Mother's Day, Memorial Day weekend, Father's Day...and just around the corner is July 4th weekend.

Brokers told us that people don't go to open houses on holidays, but having accidentally begun by hosting open houses on holiday weekends, we realized people did come, even if in slightly fewer numbers.

On Father's Day, for instance, we had five people (two couples and one woman), versus 7-10 people on non-holiday weekends

Why do they come? Because this is New York. People here are goal-oriented and real-estate obsessed. If they're seriously looking for an apartment and they're in town, a holiday weekend is not going to stop them from going to open houses.

The question my husband and I ask ourselves is, “Would we do it?”

Would we go to open houses on Christmas Day? No. New Year's Day? Probably not. But that’s about it for us.

In fact, the only time no one came was on Memorial Day weekend. We had held our first and only Saturday open house, because we wanted to visit open houses in Brooklyn on Sunday (all of which turned out to be very well attended). But on Saturday it rained, and we no one came to ours.

Rain and holiday weekend aside, we observed that most Upper West Side open houses are held Sunday, and decided to stick to that day.

As far as July 4th? Don't look for us at the beach: We'll be wearing red, white and blue as we welcome you in and hand you a show sheet.

Hey, why not.

(After today, The FSBO Diaries will appear every other week. Kathy's next column will run on Wednesday, July 7th.)

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Kathy is in the market to buy (from an owner OR broker) the perfect prewar 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment in Brooklyn with private outdoor space that's near the subways (the good ones).

Click here for the complete FSBO Diaries.

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