The open house playbook

A good open house is won in the week before it and the evening after it. The two hours in the middle matter, but they are the easy part. What separates a productive open house from a busy afternoon is whether every guest was captured, every conversation was noted, and the seller heard real numbers that night. This is the full playbook, start to finish.

Before: promotion, signage, and the sign-in decision

Promotion starts the moment the open house is booked. Enter the date and time in your board's system first, because Realtor.ca and the portals syndicate open houses from the MLS and buyers filter their searches by them. Everything else layers on top of that entry.

• • Post to social three or four days out, then again the morning of. Lead with the strongest room, not the front lawn.
• • Email your buyer list and past clients nearby. A three-line note with the date, time, and one photo does the job.
• • Invite the immediate neighbours with a knock or a mail drop. They come anyway; an invitation turns nosiness into goodwill, and neighbours often know the buyer.
• • Place directional signs the morning of, working back from the nearest main intersection. Check the municipal sign bylaw first; many Ontario municipalities restrict where and how long open house signs can sit on road allowances.

Staging touches on the day are a fifteen-minute routine: every light on, blinds open, pets out of the house, counters cleared. Ask the seller to lock away valuables, prescriptions, and mail. You are inviting strangers in; treat that seriously.

Then the piece most agents improvise: the sign-in. Decide before the day exactly what you will ask every guest. Name, email, and phone are the baseline. Add two qualifying questions: are you working with an agent, and what is your buying timeline. A tablet or QR-code sign-in beats a paper sheet, because a paper sheet produces one illegible column of emails that never gets typed in.

During: greet, let them walk, qualify

Greet at the door, ask for the sign-in before the tour, and give one line of orientation, such as which floor the primary bedroom is on. Then let people walk. Hovering suppresses honest reactions, and honest reactions are half of what you are there to collect.

The qualifying conversation is two questions worked in naturally, not an interrogation. "Have you seen much else in the neighbourhood?" surfaces the timeline. "Is your agent booking you showings, or are you looking on your own?" surfaces representation. Both answers change what your follow-up should say.

Capture every guest, no exceptions. Frame it as the house rule rather than your preference: the sellers ask that everyone signs in. That framing is true, it matters for security, and it removes the awkwardness. Between conversations, jot what individual guests reacted to; two words beside a name is enough to personalize a follow-up.

After: follow up the same day

Follow-up decays by the hour. The guest who loved the kitchen at 3 p.m. has seen four more listings by Tuesday. Send each guest a short thank-you the same evening or the next morning, in your own voice, referencing the one thing they responded to. One good note, not a drip campaign they never asked for.

In Canada, that email is a commercial electronic message, so CASL applies. Put plain consent language on the sign-in itself, along the lines of agreeing to receive follow-up about this property and similar listings, and keep the records. A guest who signed in expecting one thank-you did not consent to a newsletter.

The seller debrief, with real numbers

The debrief is the highest-leverage twenty minutes of the weekend, and most sellers never get one. Call or email the same night with real numbers: how many groups came through, how that compares to a typical open house, how many were working with an agent, and the spread of buying timelines. Then the qualitative pattern: what people praised, what they questioned, and whether price came up more than once.

This is the step software helps most, because the numbers only exist if the door captured them. Listing Launchpad, for example, runs a QR sign-in kiosk from the listing's public page, files every guest as a lead with their timeline and representation answers, sends your thank-you note in your own words on the schedule you choose, and emails you and the seller a same-night turnout recap. However you assemble it, the standard is the same: the seller hears specifics before they go to bed.

Run the identical playbook every time and it compounds. Guests become buyer clients, neighbours become future sellers, and your current seller becomes a referral, because they watched you treat two hours on a Sunday like the appointment it is.