This post is republished. It was written in response to a question on my blog about Open Houses.
There are a few things about Open Houses. Many years ago the New York Times was the gospel in terms of Real Estate advertising in the New York Metropolitan area. The Internet has changed all things about real estate quite a bit.
You can not assume that all new listings and that all Open Houses will be advertised in the New York Times. While more and more brokerage do advertise on the Times, not all do. Some houses are advertised in the Journal News, one large franchise has something called "Open House Sundays" which I believe is the second Sunday of each month. You may or may not see their homes advertised independently of the Open House ad that is run (full page).
Office and Individual web sites are all different. Some of the larger agency's have Open Houses on their sites but only for their own listings not a full list of all open houses, confused, yet? And what can you do?
There really isn't one place you can go to now where you can get all of the Open Houses being held. To the right on this blog there is a blue bottom which is a link to the Westchester Putnam Multiple Listing Service Open Houses for the public web site. A lot of Open Houses are posted on the MLS but again not all.
If you are working with a real estate agent/broker they can send you listings and let you know if there will be an open house for a property that you are interested in. An agent is really the only way to insure that you don't miss a house you might be interested in. There are believe it or not houses that come on the market that never have a public open house. They can also call ahead and give the listing agent a head's up that you will attend and they will save some discussion that you might not want to have when you get there. Without an agent - good luck!