Are Open Houses Worth It?

Decide What Job the Open House Has

Decide what you need an open house to do before you book one. It's rarely how a buyer finds your house.

The National Association of Realtors' 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers surveyed people who bought a home to live in between July 2024 and June 2025. 52% of them found the home they bought on the internet, and 27% found it through a real estate agent. Only 5% found it through a yard sign or open house sign. In 2001, that share was 15%.

Buyers do use them. 48% of buyers in the same survey used open houses in their search, and 43% of the buyers who used them rated them very useful.

Our view: the in-person look is the job. Buyers walk away when the price doesn't fit the condition they see with their own eyes, and an open house is one place they see it. So plan yours for the buyers already watching your listing online.

Hold It While Your Listing Is New

Set your open house date before you list, and make it an early one.

In the National Association of Realtors' 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the median home was on the market four weeks. 9% of those homes sold in under a week, and 34% in one to two weeks. That's 43% sold within two weeks.

The same survey compared sale price with listing price: homes that sold within two weeks went for a median 100% of their listing price, while homes on the market 17 weeks or more went for 94%. NAR calls that a strong relationship. It describes those sales. It isn't a forecast for yours.

NAR's monthly survey has a newer number: a national median of 31 days on market in August 2026. In Florida, single-family homes that closed in August 2026 had gone from listing to contract in a median 44 days, against 51 days in August 2025, Florida Realtors reports. NAR's 31 days and Florida Realtors' 44 days are counted differently.

Our view: your count runs from the day you list to the day you sell. Treat it as a signal to act on. If you're holding an open house, hold it in those first weeks.

Know Your Next Move If Few Buyers Show Up

Before the open house, decide what you'll do if few buyers come and nobody follows up.

Our view: the market votes on your price with what buyers do. They save your listing or skip it, call or don't. The ones who walk through make an offer or move on. When there's no interest, we read it as a price that's too high next to the homes buyers do want, and the fix is the price.

When a price has to come down, our view is that the new number should come from homes that sold in as-is condition, and you should see those sales first.

Or weigh a different route. Cash Flow Deals makes two offers, and you choose:

1. Cash offer: our as-is number. Cash Flow Deals buys the house and closes. No listing. One walk-through by our team, with no listing commission to us.

2. Premium offer: a higher number, paid by a real FHA or conventional buyer through novation. You sign with us at a number you agree to and let us bring in a buyer in our place. During the 15 business days of inspection, your home may be listed. A licensed agent brings each buyer. Showings are scheduled ahead and take 10 to 15 minutes. That buyer signs a new contract directly with you. Their lender funds it. Title transfers once. We're paid as a separate line item on the closing statement. If the buyer's financing falls through, you can still take the Cash offer.

3. Inspection period: 15 business days on either offer.

4. Closing: 45 days or less on either offer, on a date you help pick.

In our view, the Premium offer's higher number comes from your house reaching buyers whose lenders fund the purchase.