Sellers don’t have to let open houses daunt them

Some houses — you know, b-i-g houses — rarely are open. (Tim Pearce took this flickr photo at Alcatraz.)

Thanks to TV reality shows, some sellers may well be daunted by new takes on open houses.

That needn’t be the case.

The first thing that sellers must keep in mind is that they must not be present at an open house.

Not only does their presence tend to intimidate buyers into keeping closet doors shut, it also tends to cause mouths to shut as well.  Buyers at open houses don’t get to think out loud with a seller in their orbit, notes San Francisco broker Tara-Nicholle Nelson in one of her characteristically good posts on Trulia’s site.

Other of her tips include the following:

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Why aren’t real estate brokers like travel agents?

Brad Stone

You would think the Internet would have doomed the real estate industry by now.  Or, as it has done with the travel industry, at least wounded its denizens.

A long piece on the Bloomberg Businessweek site explores the phenomenon, which has defied most expectations.

Headlined “Why Redfin, Zillow and Trulia Haven’t Killed Off Real Estate Brokers,” the article by Brad Stone notes that the kind of electronic marketplace that has decimated classified ads and taken the swagger out of car dealers “hasn’t dented the fortunes of real estate brokers.”  He continues:

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Strongest sellers’ markets in

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Johnny

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