Good morning
Halstead Open House Index members and supporters!
It is
Thursday, time to share my weekly open house recap with your sellers!
So, what happened last weekend?
The numbers are in and the average
attendance in all of NYC jumped to 4.85 parties per open house. (From
4.20 recorded the weekend prior.) A nice 15% uptick in traffic. Last
year, on February 10 weekend, we reported 4.50. We received 248
replies this week, which does not make me particularly happy. We used
to get 350-400 responses each week, what happened?
26 open
houses reported zero traffic, this is 10%. What are you guys doing at
such slow open houses? I recommend the book “Million Dollar Networking” from
Andrea Nirenberg. Superb advice on how to expand and nurture your
network. So you keep your pipeline full with referrals.
The most
visited open house this weekend broke all recent records. Dawn
Silverstein from Corcoran reported 91 parties at her first open
house at 231 Park Place in Park Slope
in Brooklyn. Yup, you read it right. She said there were probably
180 people at the open house! Here, in her own words: “We think
there are a few factors why we had such a large crowd. The
apartment is very charming and beautifully renovated. Our staging
and photos really captured the highlights of the apartment. From the
data we saw, we feel we priced it well. There were two of us and
there was a steady flow over the 2 hour window. Someone actually said
this will give her an idea of what it would be like to throw a party.
So far we have 1 offer, expecting more to come in.”
There were
5607 open houses held in NYC last weekend and roughly 7198
prospective buyers were hopping from one to another. Here is the dataset. Let’s check the
boroughs:
Manhattan – the average jumped to 4.20, from
3.79 the weekend earlier. Nice 10% uptick in Manhattan. East Village
(10.71) was through the roof, thanks to one open house by Rudi
Hanja of BHS, who reported 41 parties. Even without it, East
Village would have reported 5.66, better than average. UWS was
stronger than average (5.22) and so was Central & West Village
(4.73). Upper East Side was weak last weekend (3.73) and so was in
Harlem (3.00), Midtown East (3.26) and Midtown West (3.14). Manhattan
recorded 4.39 last year on February 10, 2019. See the rest
below.
Brooklyn – the average jumped to 8.22, from
6.92 the weekend before. But, primarily thanks to this one record
open house. Without it Brooklyn actually went down to 5.85. This
shows you how tricky statistics can be with small sample sizes. One
outlier result completely changes the direction of averages. See the
rest of the results below. We received 36 replies from Brooklyn, the
same as the weekend before. Brooklyn recorded 5.26 last year on this
weekend.
Bronx – the average jumped to 5.08, from
3.17 the weekend earlier. Busy in Riverdale with 5.33.
Queens – the average jumped to 4.63, from
3.33 the weekend earlier. Just 8 open houses reported from Queens.
Staten
Island – back on
the map with 9.00 visitors at one open house reported from the
Richmond County.
Size – JR4s did really well with 9.88,
then 4BR apartments with 6.75. The slowest was at studio and 4BR open
houses. See all the numbers below.
Price - $500K-$1M range was the best with
6.05. Even without that one OH with 91 parties, this price range
recorded 5.29, still the best. Very slow in $3M+ range (2.50).
Condition – for change, properties described
as “Mint, excellent condition” attracted the most parties: 5.59.
Wrecks were the slowest.
First Open
House – huge 285%
more traffic at first open house (10.84), vs. those “stale” ones
(3.80).
By
Appointment Only – just 59% more traffic at “normal” open houses
(5.01) vs. those advertised “by appointment only” (3.14).
This is all
for now, partners! Are you breathing the collective sigh of relief
with the judge ruling a stay on that crazy DOS ruling last week? This
was one of the craziest weeks in my career. Tell me more how to throw
the industry in chaos with irresponsible interpretation of the new,
really poorly written, rental laws. We received a number of requests
from rental customers demanding their fee refund, because they “read
it in the papers, hence it must be right!” Irresponsible journalism +
irresponsible DOS = lethal combination.
Also, did
you catch the news that StreetEasy now has a real estate broker
license in NY and they acquired the mortgage company? Aren’t you just
a bit worried, what their plans are in the near or semi-near future?
I received this comment from Aimee Becker from Sotheby’s and I
am printing it here with her permission:
“Hi Fritz,
Love your
reports! I didn’t have any new listings in January but I’m listing a
few things in the coming weeks and will certainly be participating
again.
As I’m sure
you saw this week as well, StreetEasy got their brokerage license,
thus solidifying what I always thought- they will eventually start to
charge referral fees for any traffic that comes through their site.
Either that or they’ll be hiring their own agents and taking all of
the leads for themselves. Because of this, I have decided to no
longer give my information out to them and will not be listing my
properties on StreetEasy. I assume eventually other people will do
the same. In the beginning I think this will affect Open House
turnout so I will make a note of it on my submissions. I have a bunch
of ideas on how to market the properties without StreetEasy and I’ll
let you know how it goes!! We have to cut the ties at some point so
I’ll just be the first in line! Hopefully REBNY or the big brokerages
can get together and do something non-profit. I'll keep you updated
on how it goes with my listings over the next few weeks. I am
planning to start an Instagram page called @notonstreeteasy
where I can list mine or anyone else’s listings/open houses if they
aren't on StreetEasy.
I'll let you
know so agents have another outlet to advertise Open Houses.”
I agree with
Aimee, anyone else? Idea: in the comment section of my Google Form
you can write if your exclusive was or wasn’t advertised on
StreetEasy. Deal? Feel free to write to me and if you’d like me
to share your thoughts here I will. And it is perfectly fine if you
want to remain anonymous. This weekly report is YOURS. It
reaches now over 2200 agents in NYC (plus there are some reporters
and developers lurking here). Share your ideas how to make this
report better, how to improve our services to consumers, how to
co-operate better between brokers, how to increase the
professionalism and values offered to consumers by real estate agents
and brokers. I am personally really interested in how I can get more
replies each week! :)
This is all
for today, folks. Best of luck at your open houses this weekend.
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