Spotlight: Open Houses

By Nick Church and Mary-Frances Makichen

The National Association of Realtors® has scheduled “National Open House Weekend” for April 28 and 29. This is a great opportunity for Realtors® to showcase the amazing properties currently on the market.

This event actually started in Washington State! For years, several Washington REALTOR^® Associations conducted open-house events. They were so successful that the first state-wide open house weekend was held in 2009. In 2010 the concept went national and nearly every state participated. Once again this year the National Association of REALTORS^® is helping to promote this event. 2012 will be bigger and better with hundreds of thousands of open houses across the nation and currently in 13 other countries! The event has gone global.

What you may not be aware of is that many real estate websites, including our public site www.rmls.com and the National Association of Realtors® site: www.realtor.com, display open house information. This information comes directly from properly entered open house information in RMLSweb.

We know many of you are going to join in on National Open House weekend and want to remind all subscribers to get the most out of your advertising by making sure your open house information is properly entered in RMLSweb. Check out our “How to Enter an Open House on RMLSweb” tutorial for clear instructions and help.

For some quick tips on holding an open house, check out these ideas from Realtor Magazine .