How do you make an open house stand out? Sometimes agents go to extremes, but the glitz doesn't always help.

Mayhood considers his private-dinner open houses to be essential sales tools for Turnberry. They're especially important, he said, because sales agents don't have a finished product to show.

The small dinner parties, which Mayhood's company began holding early this year, are a way to set the luxury tower apart from other buildings, Mayhood said. Representatives of Miele, the company supplying high-end appliances for Turnberry, fix a gourmet meal for guests in the sales office kitchen. Mayhood supplements the three- or four-course meal with wine from a local shop.

The guest list is made up of people who have already purchased units at Turnberry and those who are considering doing so. This gives potential buyers a chance to talk with people who have already invested, Mayhood said. The guest list also includes members of the sales team and the project's head of construction, all of whom are available to answer questions.

As of late October, Mayhood had held six dinners to promote Turnberry. Some of these guests have turned into buyers, he said.

"We have an average sales price of $1.5 million with this project," Mayhood said. "Buyers need to take a while to think about their purchase in this price range. This kind of event is designed to give them a feel of what they may be investing in."

Most local open houses aren't that elaborate.

Ilene Kessler, an agent with Re/Max Advantage Realty in Columbia, has long been a fan of open houses, holding them even when the residential market was booming and other agents had abandoned the events, labeling them old-fashioned and ineffective.

Today, Kessler posts her open-house listings on popular Internet sites, promotes them among her fellow brokers and, of course, sends out postcards to let neighbors know.

As she always does, Kessler makes sure to have cookies, fruit and beverages at her open houses. That's standard. But for holidays, Kessler adds some extra touches. Around Halloween, she'll decorate with witches, pumpkins and ghosts. On the Fourth of July, she'll plant U.S. flags around the property.

"I like to use the little props," she said. "I collect these things all year long. I think it helps people remember the homes. They don't look exactly like every other home they've seen. Sometimes the decorations jog their memories. I try to create an atmosphere for sellers that makes people want to buy their homes and feel positive when they're in them."

Kessler's Halloween ghosts may not seem to be in the same league as barbecue dinners or private dinner parties. But to the agents in the D.C. area, more "extreme" trimmings are sometimes little more than distractions to buyers.

"Sometimes we will do something a little unusual," said Laura Fall, owner of Fall Properties in Arlington. "But we don't do anything too extravagant."

For an example, Fall pointed to her Metro-themed event. In October, Fall held five interconnected open houses on a Sunday. Each of the homes was within walking distance of a Metrorail station, and Fall emphasized this connection in her ads for the five open houses. Fall called it "A Walk to Metro blitz."

But gourmet meals and fine wines? Guests won't find these at a Fall-hosted open house.

"We don't do the giveaways, the high-end food and drink as a practice," she said. "You wonder when you do those what people's motivation is for coming out. Are they coming for the property or the giveaways? This isn't a numbers game. You're not just interested in getting bodies to these events. You want to attract the type of buyer who is ultimately interested in the property. That is the goal, not just big numbers."

Fairweather adds another reason why agents in the region have not embraced the idea of extreme open houses: They cost too much.

"In the resale market, real estate agents don't have the money to do any crazy stuff. It's just not there," she said. "I don't think anyone in our market ever really did the razzle. You get people interested in the gimmicks as opposed to the house when you do that. We instead rely on our real estate colleagues to bring in qualified people. That's what works."