Photo and Story By Joe Zlomek

The invitation sounds hard to pass up. "View a charming home and enjoy great food," it teases.

That appeal appears today (May 9, 2007) on the Broker-Only Open Houses message board at the website of the Greater Manchester-Nashua NH Board of Realtors. Agent Rachel McMeen of The Bean Group in Nashua is showing a 3-bedroom, 2-bath listing on Charlotte Avenue in the city. The tour and party for her licensed sales colleagues starts tomorrow afternoon at 12:30; by the time you read this, you'll have missed it.

Broker open houses are known throughout the real estate industry as a perk of the business, and McMeen's event is just one of hundreds conducted every week by licensees across the country. In defiance of the old adage, they literally are a "free lunch" ... or dinner or pre-dinner snack, depending on when scheduled.

Offering a complimentary feed is meant to make a strong first impression. It attracts agents to see a listed property in person, rather than via the multiple listing service (MLS). The best way to a buyer's heart, the theory goes, is through an agent's stomach.

Does a broker's open house accomplish its goal? Realty Times columnist and Knoxville TN broker Jim Lee says the answer is a resounding 'yes.'

"Owners are best served by having the property shown to a wide array of possible purchasers," Lee contends. To do that he uses a broker open house to entice any and all representatives. For his clients' benefit he even puts a price tag on the event, about $400, when he makes a listing presentation. The amount, he says, covers the cost of refreshments, promotion, and four hours of his time in preparation, hosting, and clean-up. Pricing this and other activities, he says, also helps justify his commission compensation.

Ronald C. "Clendon" Smith, a Mauldin SC licensee who writes for his wife Esther's website, The Permanent Venture, notes that a broker open house may accomplish something an MLS cannot. Getting agents inside properties increases their salability, and a party often does the trick. "It's particularly important," he reports, if the seller has a home "with an exceptional interior but poor or uninviting street appeal."

Real estate researchers also have learned that agents think a broker open house is valuable. Almost all licensees who responded to a survey conducted in 1998 by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University acknowledge they had held broker open houses. More than half (59 percent) considered them effective, and 65 percent said they were even more effective than open house events to which the general public was invited. The latter usually draws gawkers, not buyers.

Fellow agents, and the opinions they form about a property, are so important to the sale of a listing that a home shown to them had better be pristine, according to Los Angeles-based real estate reporter Marcie Geffner. Be aware, too, that real estate peers may publicly review and rate the quality of a broker open house compared to others they've attended. PropertyGrunt, a blog authored by a Manhattan real estate agent, is among the websites known for this.