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

By Stephanie Cavanaugh
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, December 16, 2006

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."

Dangling a T-shirt, umbrella, split of champagne or drawings for gift certificates from Nordstrom or Saks doesn't hurt either. "In new construction, it's very common for gifts to be given to agents who come to see a property, especially condo projects," said Yolanda Mamone, senior vice president and director of residential sales for Randall Hagner.

Agents are also becoming more savvy about using technology to reach each other, she said.

In addition to corporate Web sites, there are agent Web sites, mass e-mailings, and brokers' open house announcements on the multiple listing service. Those last are particularly useful, Mamone said. "Agents can look at the MLS and quickly see what's open. If we're holding an open house ourselves [that weekend], we need to be able to tell clients where to go."

Ty Hreben, with Coldwell Banker's Georgetown office, is sold on sending broadcast e-mailings, even though many agents hate receiving them. Hreben's presentations resemble traditional postcards, with colorful backgrounds, fancy fonts and glitzy photos of his new listings. A service e-mails them to all the agents in the area.

"There's so much out there, it's hard to stay on top of it," he said. "It's a quick and easy way to see and say, 'Oh wait! A new condo in Dupont, what's this?' It allows my properties to reach more agents."

For Hreben, brokers' opens have been less successful. There are so many out there now that "I'll do a catered brunch or desserts from Whole Foods, and I won't get more than five to 10 people," he said. "Sometimes I end up eating it all myself. . . . Luncheons can be a total waste unless the agents who know the area know [the house] is well priced."

Mamone agreed. "You could have the most fabulous luncheon in the world, and if it isn't priced properly people are not going to go," she said. "Agents are going to look at properties their buyers will buy."

Occasionally a brokers' open will be held when a home has been languishing on the market long past the time it should have sold. Agents are invited in and asked for advice on pricing -- or fixing possible flaws -- and the collective wisdom of those experts is distilled and presented to the client along with a fresh plan of attack.

"Sometimes [a home] is taken off the market for a month and people have landscaping, painting, floors redone or add a new bathroom," Mamone said. "Things to enhance the home if it hasn't been prepared to the nth degree."

Or, based on the response, the price will be reduced, a touchy area for sellers still stuck in the glory days of 2005. "This is something we'll see more of," Abeillé said.

"It's ammunition that the listing agent can take to the seller: 'Listen, this is where they [the other agents] think the price should be.' "

For the most part, established agents are inclined to dismiss gimmicks and rely on old-fashioned networking, Mamone noted. "Top-tier agents call other top-tier agents to say, 'I hope you've seen my new listing. If you haven't, let me make it easy for you.' "

Picking up the phone and calling other agents "is probably as or more effective" than gifts, lunches and other costly marketing efforts, said Judi Seiden of Prudential Carruthers Realtors on Capitol Hill. However, she will also hold a brokers' open "when access to a property is difficult," she said.

Take the senator's home, which will never be open to the public. "Even with the best marketing in the world, if access is restricted it handicaps the sale," Seiden said.

For Seiden, the weapon of choice is the telephone. "Any good agent is actively scouring the market for homes that suit their clients' needs. I know who is working for the most part in what price range, and I've done my job if I bring homes to their attention."

She added, "This is Washington. We all lobby."