Going for Brokers

As Houses Linger on the Market, Agents Revive a Time-Honored Sales Tactic

The revival of brokers' opens means a steady supply of nibbles for interested agents. Other inducements include T-shirts, champagne and drawings for gift certificates. (Photos By Stephanie Cavanaugh For The Washington Post)

The chandelier glitters over the gleaming dining room table, where cheese trays are garnished with jolly bunches of red and green grapes. Laughter tinkles from the kitchen, where there's a jam-up at the granite service counter lined with bottles of wine and Perrier.

It could be an elegant holiday party at the Capitol Hill home of this recently defeated senator, but it's not. Observe the constant flow of well-dressed guests wandering through the house, snooping in medicine cabinets, peeking under rugs and checking out the shelves of videos in the master bedroom.

At a brokers' open house, a property preview held by a home seller's real estate agent for other real estate agents, that's perfectly kosher. The agents are expected to take it all in (well, maybe the videos are a little bonus) and, with luck, rush back with buyers.

In a market gone soft, with a glut of property available, agents are dusting off sometimes rusty marketing skills, honing new ones and making sure the word gets out to their peers.

"It's a home that we're showing by appointment only," said listing agent Dino Milanese of Coldwell Banker's Capitol Hill South office. "A brokers' open is a useful strategy, especially if you make it a bit of a party."

After all, the senator is asking $1.8 million for the three-story house with spectacular views of the Capitol, and he wants it without the usual Sunday afternoon crush of nosy neighbors. In the Olympics of real estate, that combination has about the difficulty of a reverse somersault with 3 1/2 twists.

The response was just what Milanese hoped for: "It's the busiest brokers' open I've ever had," he said. Agents from five different companies showed up, several with clients in tow, and the house hadn't even officially hit the market. There were no other opens in the area that evening, which helped attendance, as did the curiosity factor.

Although the property is still unsold several weeks after the bash, Milanese is pleased with the response. "It's being shown a lot," he stressed. "That there are no offers yet is not a surprise. Homes over a million on Capitol Hill can take one to three months to sell."

Time was, agents could nibble their way from Rockville to Reston each Tuesday (the most popular day for these events) on brunches and lunches and cocktail parties. But that was years ago.

More often now, a simple open house is held, with agents double-parking higgledy-piggledy, swarming in and out, and racing to the next house ahead of parking enforcement (which, in some District neighborhoods, has been known to follow the pack). This ritual can be repeated a dozen or more times on a given day.

"We just came out of a market where we didn't have to market to other agents," said Barbara Abeillé, a Coldwell Banker agent based in Bethesda. "It's so long now since we went to open houses -- six, seven, eight years. Before, when the market was crazy, you'd put a listing in for Sunday and be looking at contracts on Tuesday or Wednesday, and it was sold. You didn't have the time or need for a brokers' open. Now we're back to the old days."

Back then, she did lots of them. "I was the first person to serve sushi," she said with a laugh. "I may even have had dessert and champagne once. I'm going to have to start doing them again. We have to get the agents in to see the houses because we're all competing for these buyers."