For a home on the market, a Sunday open house feels like a tradition to most home sellers, real estate agents and curious neighbors who love to peek inside properties on their street. If you’re a buyer attending an open house to consider making an offer, you have to be ready to move fast. Realtor.com reports that the inventory of homes for sale in April decreased by 53% over that past year. The average number of days on market in the U.S. was just 43 days in April, compared to 102 in 2019. So, if you want to take advantage of an opportunity to save some money and snag a good deal, we have 10 tips for open houses that can help you make home buying exciting! 10 Tips to Successfully Host an Open House During a Low Supply Time 1. Market Tools There are a variety of tools out there to make hosting your open house easier, from large memorabilia and photo booths to tablet devices and cloud-based programs that make it simple to post live updates and keep track of social media chatter. But having an open house with tools nearby is always a plus. While a cheap unlocked smartphone can also do the trick, most of the venues will allow you to input your own camera if it’s older than your smartphone.

While most realtors won’t do this, plenty of venues will. 

1. No Showing or Ostrich Have your buyers take your open house to the graveyard. It’s often cheaper to do this and save on your production costs. Why spend the money and resources on creating a beautiful home for someone else to live in, but keep your name out there on the Internet for other interested parties to see, if they decide to bid against you? Better yet, have someone with well over 100 home listings in your name resell it yourself or to a DIY buyer who you know will be relatively easy to work with in the future. 

2. Hold Everything You never know what buyer you’ll meet at an open house until you put out the welcome mat. There’s an opportunity to get people’s email addresses after they sign in and either leave a thank-you or call no later than the next day — so you want to make it simple for them to contact you if they have any questions about the home, want to offer to show it themselves or express any interest in further exploring the subject.

be at You may want to figure out how to get your house on the market as soon as possible—so make the best of this weekend open house season.

 The following list offers some hot tips that make the most of your open house opportunity: Discover what will sell quickly.Open House Experts suggests doing “benchmarking,” wherein you identify which homes are regularly selling for the highest amount. You can then aim to get that home in front of potential buyers on Sunday in hopes of having them snap up it for the discounted price. You can watch your local market for home selling trends.Realtor.com reports that certain cities—including Atlanta, Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Washington, D.C.—“have less inventory, which translates to higher prices.” Marketing is key.When it comes to marketing your shuttered home on the market, you may not need much convincing. Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Wall Street Oasis, writes that “people are selfish.” In a “very U.S. of A. thing,” putting hours on the home’s listing and social media marketing can drive a high price. 

Altogether, real estate investments have plenty of opportunity. During another “very U.S. of A. thing,” real estate assets are getting extremely cheap.

Lots of inventory means lots of opportunity. You have plenty of buying power if a home sells quickly. If the home does sell quickly, it means that it needs little or no work. If the home needs much work, it may help to increase the rents in order to make it appealing to a new buyer.