What to look for at an open house
An open house is a marketing event, run by somebody who represents the seller, in a house that has been cleaned and lit and emptied of half its furniture for the occasion. None of that is a criticism. It is the job. It just means the useful things to do there are the things the presentation is not designed to answer.
Twenty minutes gets you six checks and four questions, and one rule about what you say out loud while you are inside. What an open house is for, from the seller's side, and whether it works, is a separate question with its own evidence: do open houses sell homes has that one.
Who the person at the door works for
The agent hosting is the listing agent or someone from their office, and they owe their duties to the seller. In Nevada those duties are statutory and they cannot be waived: NRS 645.254 and 645.255 set out what a licensee owes a client. If that same licensee ends up representing both sides, NRS 645.252 requires written consent from each party, stating that the parties have adverse interests, that confidential information stays confidential for a year after the agreement ends, and that a party is not required to consent at all.
Nothing you say in an open house is confidential. Not what you would pay, not how much you love it, not that your lease ends in June. The person listening is required to act in the seller's interest. Enthusiasm is free to feel and expensive to announce.
The sign-in sheet is a lead capture, not a legal requirement, and what you write on it is used to follow up with you. Giving a real name and an email you check is ordinary and fine. If you already have your own agent, say so at the door, which prevents an awkward conversation later about who introduced you to the property. How to choose a realtor covers what your own representation agreement says about that.
The six checks
| Check | How | Why it matters here |
|---|---|---|
| Run water and watch it drain | Both taps in a bathroom at once, then the shower. Watch the pressure drop and how fast the basin empties | Low pressure with two fixtures open, or slow drainage, is a plumbing conversation rather than a fixture one |
| Open the electrical panel door | Look at the label, the brand and whether the breakers are original. Photograph it | Certain older panels are difficult to insure and expensive to replace, and the answer is on a label anybody may read |
| Find the data plate on the air conditioner | Usually on the outdoor unit or on the roof package. The serial number carries a manufacture date | A fifteen year old system and a five year old one are two different houses at the same asking price |
| Look at the water heater | Date on the label, corrosion at the fittings, and whether there is a pan and a drain under it | In this valley the water is hard and tanks age faster than the national ranges suggest |
| Stand in the west-facing rooms | Note the glass area, whether there is exterior shade, and how the room feels in the afternoon | Afternoon solar gain through unshaded west glass is the largest single driver of a summer cooling bill here |
| Look up, in every room | Stains around vents and skylights, fresh paint on one ceiling only, ripples along a wall | A ceiling that has been repainted alone is the cheapest tell there is |
Everything above is visible without opening anything sealed, moving anything heavy or touching anything that is not yours. Ask before you photograph, and take the photographs anyway, because by the fourth house nobody remembers which one had the panel.
The check nobody else does
Pull the county record on your phone while you are standing there and compare it to the listing sheet. The assessor records what the house is: the year it was built, the floor area, the lot size and what it last recorded a sale for.
Most of the time they agree, and where they do not the gap is usually innocent: a permitted addition landed in one file and not the other, or somebody rounded. But price per square foot is only as good as the square footage under it, and square footage on a listing that the assessor has never heard of is square footage an appraiser may decline to count. Reading a county property record is the field guide, and every listing page on Kouzr carries the record beside the listing so the comparison takes a few seconds.
The four questions worth asking
How long has it actually been on the market, including any prior listing.
A withdrawn and relisted home shows a fresh count. Ask for the history rather than the current number, and how long houses stay on the market is the benchmark to judge it against.
Why are they selling, and by when.
The answer reorders everything about an offer, and asking it in a living room is cheaper than asking it through two agents later.
Have there been offers, and what happened.
A deal that fell apart at the inspection is a different house from one that has never had an offer.
What is excluded, and what conveys.
Appliances, the water softener, the shed, the mounted television. This is the most common source of a bad feeling at the walkthrough.
And one category not to ask about
Finding them, and when to go
The best open houses to visit are the ones held in the first weekend a home is listed, because the seller is still deciding what they believe and the agent is still gathering feedback. Here is how much of this market listed in the last week.
Go to more than you think you need to, early, before you are ready to buy anything. The point of the first ten is calibration: you cannot tell whether a kitchen is normal for a price band until you have seen ten of them, and calibration is free on a Sunday afternoon. Then take the list with you. The home buying checklist is the whole process, what to look for when buying a house is the general version of the six checks, and house hunting together is what to do when there are two of you and you keep disagreeing about which house it was.
Sources
- Nevada Revised Statutes chapter 645: 645.252 on a licensee acting for more than one party and the written consent required, and 645.254 and 645.255 on the duties owed to a client and that they may not be waived.
- HUD, Fair Housing Act, for why a licensee cannot answer questions about who lives in an area.
- Nevada Revised Statutes chapter 113: 113.130, the seller's written disclosure of known conditions, which is the document that should confirm or contradict anything you noticed.
General information about viewing homes, not legal advice and not a substitute for a professional inspection. Nothing here recommends any property or licensee. Listing counts are computed from our own daily snapshot of active listings. Kouzr Inc. is a research and marketing platform, not a brokerage.
