Byron Lazine and Nicole White are two agents in Connecticut who give us their thoughts on the week’s news every Friday in “The Real Word,” a weekly video column on Inman.
This week, Byron and Nicole reacted to Jay Thompson’s Inman article, in which he called for an end to open houses after a Keller Williams agent was recently attacked at an open house in Virginia. They weighed the pros and cons of conducting open houses and what they really bring to the table for both sellers and buyers.
They also discussed how using surveillance cameras to record open houses might potentially stop threats — plus other safety measures agents can take when showing homes.
“Do I think we should completely, 100 percent call an end to open houses?” Byron said. “No, I don’t. But I do think, as agents and brokerage community, we should be more strategic. We should do open houses when it’s an event, when there’s going to be multiple agents there.”
Marketeer of the week
The Real Word’s second racket is also the marketeer of the week, and it goes out to the Houston Association of Realtors. The association is calling for change to the term “master bedrooms,” in an effort to evolve the language to become more inclusive and respectful from a historical perspective.
Byron and Nicole also discussed how there are so many other real problems that the Houston Association of Realtors needs to address, as musician John Legend pointed out in a recent tweet.
Want to nominate a “marketeer of the week”? Drop your thoughts in the comments section below, or shoot us an email.
