“I mean, give me any tool and I’m in trouble. I have yet to learn the mysteries of a screwdriver. My wife and daughter would go hide when I’d start to hang a painting.” –Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones, most popularly known for his creation of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, astutely judged his ability with hammer and nail.  Turns out most people are in the same league with Chuck when it comes to hanging paintings on a wall.  I don’t know how many open houses I’ve walked into that I immediately knew at least one person of at least 6′ in height must live there.  Every painting, picture, and poster seemed as if it was personally hung to accentuate the fact that my mere 5′2″ puts me forehead height with the bottom of the frame.  What should have been a complement to the home became an Alice in Wonderland-esque distraction. 

Don’t think, though, that because I’m short I am immune to this problem.  In 1995, when it can time to sell our first home, a quaint cape in the South Hull District in Montgomery, Alabama, Wilson and I contacted Sandra Nickel, one of the top producing agents in Montgomery.  She deployed her staging assistant, who took one look at our walls, and said “where’s your hammer?”  She lowered every one of our pictures by six inches.  The house sold in three weeks!

How To Hang ‘Em

Art galleries hang paintings such that the viewer is slightly looking down at them.  Generally, hanging pictures at a 57-inch centerline should be appropriate.  To do this, measure 57 inches straight up the length of the wall from the floor and mark this point.  Hang your painting so that the centerline of the painting is aligned with this mark.  Measure from the middle of the picture to the top of the stretched picture wire or the picture hooks and add this measurement to the 57 inches to come up with the total distance from the floor at which you should hammer the nail.  That’s it.

Beyond that, get creative…  Michael’s Arts and Crafts provides nice suggestions for clustering paintings and other artwork.

Well hung paintings won’t sell a house; but they will help prospective buyers focus on the what’s really important–the house itself!

Joyce Munro is co-owner, with her husband Wilson, of The Open Look a free tool to post and search open houses in Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, and the Triangle area of North Carolina. They formed their company in 2006 following their inability to efficiently identify and locate open houses in the Triangle area when they relocated from Lexington, MA. They reside in Cary, NC.

Tongue-Tied at Thursday’s Technology Trade Show

Phew! This past Thursday was a whirlwind for our business. We participated in the Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors’ Technology Trade Show and premiered our website: TheOpenLook.com, a unique way to search open houses in the Raleigh, Durham and Triangle area. We had more than 400 people from the local real estate industry stop by our booth and chat. That’s a lot of talking in the course of one day. By the time 4 pm rolled around, I was mixing up “free on-line open house listing service” with “open on-line listing free service.” It was exhilarating and exhausting all at the same time.

Free is Free

It amazed me that regardless of how many times we would initate a discussion with “we are a free on-line open house listing service for the Triangle area,” inevitably, after showing the many features of the site, the broker would ask, “Now how much are you charging for this service?”

We would reiterate, “It’s free.”

A common response would be, “Well how do you make money?”

Ahhh, now they’re getting to the crux of the business plan–we need the brokers to list their open houses and home buyers and sellers to come here looking for open houses in order for us to be able to sell ad space to businesses providing services to agents, home buyers, and home sellers. One big symbiotic relationship. We just need to get them to believe us–that free is free. All they have to do is use our service and use it religiously and we can bring in the advertisers to financially support their ability to continue to place free open house listings.

Eventually we followed the advice of one agent who said, “Realtor’s love free.” to duct tape small signs to our banner proclaims “Why Not? It’s Free.”

That helped… a bit.

Unintended Consequences

Since the trade show we’ve kept a constant vigil over the site, watching as more and more open houses have been posted. We’ve noticed a significant number of new home communities advertising on the site. While we don’t want to exclude them, we want to make sure that resale houses, staffed with actual agents have prominence on the site, so we’ve created a separate category for listings to distinguish new construction (agent on site at model home or office) from resale properties. This will provide a good level os transparency for buyers–so that they know when they drive to a property whether to expect a “lived in” house with an agent in the house ready to answer questions.

Let Us Know What You Think

Please let us know what you think about the site, by contacting us via our site or my providing comments to this blog below.

Happy Open Housing!

Joyce Munro is co-owner, with her husband Wilson, of The Open Look a free tool to post and search open houses in the Raleigh, Durham, Cary, and Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. They formed their company in 2006 following their inability to efficiently identify and locate open houses in the Triangle area when they relocated from Lexington, MA. They reside in Cary, NC.

Open House–The Next Generation of Home Buyers

I recently attended a presentation by John Ansbach, a real estate professional who has a “lecture circuit” of sorts spouting the latest on generational real estate sales. He posits that Gen X and Gen Y home buyers (approximately 80% of first time home buyers) and sellers will radically influence the world of real estate.

Specifically he illustrates how Generation X’ers (those born between 1965 and 1976) are some of the most fiercely independent and self-reliant of all living generations, having been the latchkey children of baby boomers who had the tools to do for themselves–think microwaves, email, Internet. In fact, he notes that this generation believes they can figure out how to do just about anything themselves. Saying, “You can’t do it by yourself,” is the worst thing that can be said to these folks! They’ll turn around and say, “Watch me!”

Generation Y’ers (those born between between 1977 and 1994) are similar to their Gen X brethren, but for two primary differences. Instead of being merely technology literate, they are technology infused and would never be caught dead without their BlackBerry or iPOD. Gen Y children were raised by doting parents who made them feel special in everything thing they did. While they are as technology capable as their Gen X counterparts (if not more so), they want to feel special and unique in doing so.

Both Gen X and Gen Y believe in their own ability to get the information they need about anything they want. The Internet has helped make this belief a near reality. At the same time, these individuals remain wary of developing any relationship with real estate agents until they have thoroughly researched the local real estate market. Before they even establish first contact with an agent, they already have checked out local government property data websites, house listings (on both traditional agency and non-traditional sites such as Craigslist.org), and local community resources. They have also likely engaged in on-line forums where the local real estate market is discussed. Finally, they have also driven themselves around the communities they are interested in order and visited a number of open houses to get a sense for themselves of the areas they may be interested in.

So how does a real estate agent establish contact with a prospective home seller or home buyer? Open Houses. I know. I know. Again and again real estate professionals say that open houses don’t sell houses. This may be true, but they do bring people through the door. And, if these people are under 40 years of age, this may be the perfect opportunity for first contact by a real estate professional. If approached properly during open houses in a non-threatening way, these “do-it-yourselfers” may find a partner in their home selling or home buying endeavors.

If you are interested, you can find publications and presentations by John Ansbach and RECON Intelligence Services (online, of course).

Joyce Munro is co-owner, with her husband Wilson, of The Open Look a website that provides free open house listings and links to other resources of interest to buyers and sellers of residential real estate in the Raleigh, Durham, Cary, and Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. They formed their company in 2006 following their inability to efficiently identify and locate open houses in the area in their relocation from Lexington, MA. They reside in Cary, NC.