Open houses are a great opportunity for real estate agents to not only market their listings but also market themselves.

Some agents crush open houses as a major lead generation and real estate marketing strategy.

It doesn’t work, though, if you fail to capture a potential buyer or seller’s basic contact information!

Download and Customize!

I’ve created a simple real estate open house sign-in sheet template. The sign-in sheet includes columns soliciting basic information like phone number and email address.

You can take the Google Sheets or Microsoft Word version and quickly customize it with your own logo or colors if you like.

They should be easy to print in their current configurations!

Take your Sign-In Sheet Digital

There are some useful open house software options available for agents.

Some CRMs like Wise Agent include landing pages you can use as open-house sign-in forms, sending leads straight into your CRM!

If you’re going the techy route, you may want to consider getting a cheap tablet you can use for your open houses. You want something cheap because there’s always a risk someone walks off with it or it’s damaged by a runaway child visitor.

Open houses are a great use for older, refurbished iPads or Android tablets you can get for less than $50 on Amazon.

Amazon Fire tablets are not ideal for business use. In my experience, they can be modified to work for these purposes by downloading the Google Play Store, but that was a bit of a pain for me and I would stick to Android and iOS tablets when possible.

Don’t spend money on tablets unless you are already an accomplished Open House master and are trying to elevate your game. You don’t need one to be successful and agents already spend too much.

What Info to Collect: Detailed or Simple?

Some sign-in sheets are detailed with numerous questions to prequalify buyers. They ask questions about current address, whether the visitor owns or rents, whether they’re looking to buy or sell, and it gets unwieldy pretty quickly.

I prefer a simple sign-in sheet. You are less likely to turn people off and less likely to cause a gaggle at the sign-in sheet and miss folks when the traffic gets busy.

All you need is their phone number and email so you can reach out to them again! You should be making notes of conversations you are having with prospects. You can then add those notes to the new entries in your CRM and set a time to follow up.

Also, don’t ask for feedback.

Some sheets also ask for home feedback. Solicit feedback separately on a different form or notecards. Feedback is for the end of the tour. You want them signing in as soon as they come in the door both for accountability and to ensure you are most likely to get their information before they slip away.

Open House Follow Up

Signing into an open house is not giving consent to your email marketing. I would be very careful about just slapping open house visitors onto a drip campaign. Instead, use their contact information and the conversations you have to make meaningful and authentic connections after the open house.

Also, never forget who the open house is really for: the seller.

They Don’t Like The House

I found it was always tempting to try to learn more about the visitor. Very quickly, I would learn that perhaps the home was not a good fit for them. I was in an awkward spot. Sell them on something that is not ideal, or begin earning trust and their business by offering to send them other listings?

It’s an ethical dilemma. My interpretation of the code of ethics is you have a fiduciary obligation to try to sell your seller’s home first. If it’s clearly not a fit for your visitors, you can then perhaps explore presenting them with other opportunities.

I’m also not a fan of intermediary or dual agency. If you are the listing agent, my preference was to stay in my role as the listing agent and refer open house visitors to a buyer’s agent for a referral fee.

Conclusion

The open house is a cornerstone skill for the average real estate agent. Some sellers expect it, and it’s a great opportunity to get your real estate marketing on.

Just don’t turn it into a waste of time by letting your visitors escape without getting their phone numbers!

If prospecting via open house is a pillar of your own lead generation, read more about my tips and training on open houses.

Updated March 27, 2024; Originally published August 31, 2020