The biggest shift in real estate over the past 20 years has been listing websites. Serious buyers now discover homes online almost immediately instead of stumbling across them through newspaper listings, yard signs, or weekend driving tours.
Motivated buyers who are ready to make a decision quickly are watching Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, MLS alerts, and brokerage apps daily.
This new way of buying and selling homes has made open houses feel like an antiquated approach to discovering new homes on the market.
Instant access to every local listing, combined with the trend of lockboxes and on-demand showings, has put buyers in the driver’s seat to the detriment of home sellers. However, sellers can take back control by embracing that bygone ritual, because open houses have a lot more potential as a sales tool than many people realize.
Many homes today are still sold using a process built around buyer convenience above everything else. Buyers request private showings whenever they want, sometimes over the course of several weeks or even months. Sellers, who are desperate for the attention of motivated buyers, often play along.
The process can quickly become exhausting:
Buying a home is a massive financial decision with long-term ramifications, so buyers instinctively take it slow and agonize over their options before making a decision. This modern, buyer-friendly approach where sellers bend over backwards to accommodate buyers doesn’t encourage urgency. It reinforces lethargy.
Open houses still work because they solve a problem that endless private showings often create: a lack of visible demand.
A buyer walking through a house alone on a random Tuesday afternoon has a very different experience than a buyer seeing multiple interested parties arriving during the same limited showing window.
During a busy open house, buyers can’t help but recognize that other people are seriously interested in the property. The 72SOLD process adds another seller-friendly twist: strict deadlines on offers. Buyers see the competition and understand they do not have unlimited time to overthink their decision.
Too many real estate agents have adopted an approach that allows buyers to control the pace to the detriment of sellers. Using open houses as a tool to encourage competition shifts the leverage back toward the seller.
Instead of relying on months of sporadic private showings, 72SOLD compresses buyer activity into tighter timelines designed to accelerate decision-making. This approach is particularly appealing to sellers who need to move quickly, but it can be beneficial for anyone selling their home, regardless of their schedule.
There’s a common misconception that home sellers trade value for speed. After all, the fastest way to sell a home is for cash to a buyer who will pay far less than its market value.
The 72SOLD process offers a third path, selling more quickly and for a better price. An independent study released in 2025 found that home sellers who used the 72SOLD process enjoyed a median sale price that was 5.8% higher than other homes in their local MLS.
Open houses and concentrated showing events, combined with deadlines to motivate homebuyers, are key components of the process.
Learn more about how 72SOLD generates urgency and competition by filling out the form on our website and getting our price on your home.
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