What Most Agents Get Wrong About Open Houses

By David Lewis

David is the Partner, Principal Owner, and CEO of TLG ATL, powered by LPT Realty in Atlanta, Georgia. This premier real estate team has served 1000+ families since 2014.

If you’re an agent who’s been told to “go hold open houses” without much guidance beyond that, this conversation is for you. I sat down with my friend Chrissy Valentine, an Arizona-based agent and open house conversion coach, to talk about what it actually takes to run an open house that produces real business.

Chrissy spent 15 years as a social worker before getting into real estate, and she figured out quickly that real estate school doesn’t teach you how to sell real estate. So she started holding open houses three to five days a week and learned, through trial and error, that there’s a whole conversion system behind them that nobody teaches.

She’s now packaged those lessons into a four-week course where she teaches agents the frameworks behind that conversion process. Not scripts. Frameworks. Because scripts don’t sound like you. Frameworks let you take the structure and make it yours.

Prep starts Monday, not Friday. A great open house doesn’t start the day of. Chrissy’s system begins on Monday. Find your listing, get it set up with the agent, then start marketing on Tuesday with help from your title company. By Wednesday, you’re visiting the house, shooting a video tour, and door-knocking in the neighborhood to invite the neighbors. By the time the weekend hits, you’ve already been generating leads before a single person walks through the door.

I’ve always had a similar approach. My rule was to preview five houses in the same area for every open house I held. That way, when someone walks in, you can say with confidence that there’s not a home for sale in that neighborhood you haven’t walked through. That knowledge changes everything about how you show up.

Earn the right to contact information. One of the biggest mistakes Chrissy sees is agents shoving a sign-in sheet in someone’s face the moment they walk in. Her take is simple: no seller ever needs you to sign in. If you haven’t earned the right to someone’s contact information, you’re going to get bad information. She still remembers the day she looked down at her sign-in sheet and saw “Donald Duck.” That was the moment she redefined what a successful open house actually looks like. For her, it’s not 10 names on a sheet. It’s one solid lead who’s going to work with you moving forward.

Ask better questions. The fastest way to kill a conversation at an open house is to lead with “Are you working with an agent?” Chrissy avoids yes-or-no questions entirely because they have one answer, and then the conversation dies. She also avoids “why” questions because they put people on defense.

Instead, she asks things like “How are you looking at homes lately?” which opens the door to understanding the depth of their relationship with any current agent. The goal is to get them talking more than you’re talking. Build rapport first, qualify second. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Handle volume by attracting, not chasing. When multiple people walk in at once, Chrissy doesn’t chase. She raises her voice slightly while talking to whoever she’s engaged with. When people hear valuable information about the neighborhood or school district, they naturally gravitate over. She draws people in with knowledge instead of running around trying to greet everyone individually.

And when the chatty neighbor shows up who just wants to talk, her exit strategy is simple: ask for the appointment. “I’d love to set some time to continue this conversation. How does that sound?” It either moves forward or it frees you up. Either way, you’re back to work.

Frameworks over scripts. The one thing that ties everything Chrissy teaches together is that scripts are outdated. She joined a team of bearded, tall guys, and their scripts didn’t sound like hers. So she memorized them, internalized the logic, and personalized the delivery into something that felt natural. That’s the framework approach: learn the structure, then make it yours.

If you want to learn more about Chrissy’s four-week open house mastery course, visit chrissyvalentine.com. She also has an interactive open-house diagnostic tool on the site that lets you identify gaps in your current approach.

And if you’re looking for more training, strategy, and coaching to take your business to the next level, reach out to me. Call or text me at 404-867-0792, email me at success@youragentpulse.com, or visit win.youragentpulse.com.