Hello everyone,

I've been digging around the web trying to find a way to map out open houses in my area. (Boston, MA) I feel like there are a lot of sites out there that offer this but they want you to sign up, which I don't want to do.

I am a beginner at all of this and I thought that something I should start doing is to go to open houses and start doing test runs and learning the lingo, learning "the numbers" and getting more and more comfortable with the process. I guess my question is, how can someone who is a complete beginner, gain access to where open houses are located? (Is this a stupid question, am I missing something?)

Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated!

Justin

I know you said that you don't want to sign up, but I recommend Redfin. I'm pretty sure Boston is one of their markets. I've been signed up with them here in LA for years before I got my RE license, and find their search and content very useful. You will find what you are looking for on their site and I can tell you they've never bothered me with anything that I didn't ask them to.

Hmm, I have heard of redfin, and I will look into them further. I didn't know that they could offer this information, which is cool. Thanks for the pointer Mirinda!

Hey Justin,

I know Trulia has a feature where they will email you open houses matching the criteria you set. You will need to sign up for an account, but it is free. This is how I first found some open houses in Boston.

You could also get friendly with a buyers agent and ask them to send you a list of some open houses in the areas your interested in.

Good luck with your search,

Clinton

Do you not want to pay for a service or do you really not want to get a free account on these sites?

You can always look around the papers online or print versions and look at Craigslist and stuff like that.

You can also just drive around on the weekend and follow the signs.

Hey Shaun, more of a issue about not knowing what I am signing up with. Don't want to be blasted with spam and such. I did get onto redfin and there are some properties that I was able to find with open houses this weekend which I am going to go check out.

Clinton,

I will also give Trulia a look, thanks.

The problem with Realtor, Redfin and Trulia, is that the information isn't always accurate (dates and times), and doesn't always give the whole picture (there are far more open houses then listed on those sites). The MLS in my area also has a search feature, but rarely shows a fraction of the open houses that are actually going on. It all depends on if the Realtor actually updated the information.

I have found that in my area, the best way is to just drive around on a Saturday or Sunday through an area I want to look at, and find the open house signs. It's rudimentary and kind of inefficient, but seems to produce the most results.

@Justin Schmitz , you can always set up an email through gmail, outlook.com or yahoo just for the purpose of signing up for lists. Then you can sign up all you want and not have spam in your regular real email, but still logon to the setup email for purposes of verifying that the email address belongs to you when needed.

And if you use gmail, it has a pretty good spam filter and a separate tab for promotional emails, so you have some pretty good controls over what you see.

@Ann Bellamy Yeah, I thought of doing that as well. There is normally a service I like to use called spaminator, which sets up basically throw away email accounts. A lot of people have been mentioning the MLS, but I thought you needed to be a Realtor or licensed to gain access, is that true?

I also like @Shaun and @Jason idea of just driving around the neighborhoods and seeing what is out there during the weekend.

To the best of my knowledge, you need to be a real estate agent or broker (or an admin for one of those) and pay for access for MLSpin in MA. However, for your purposes, realtor.com, trulia and zillow should give you most of what you need, I would think. If you are working a specific area, then I think I'd drive the signs.

If you know what neighborhoods you're looking in, it's probably best just to drive around on the weekends and look for the signs. In my experience, I usually find them to be held on Sundays with signs out on Friday afternoons and all day Saturday.

Hope that helps!

Try contacting a local realtor and see if they will email you a list of open houses off the MLS.

@Justin Schmitz Welcome. I agree with Cory, good local Broker.