Driving through your favorite Billings neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon may be one way to find open houses you might want to visit, but it probably isn’t the most efficient, or the most fuel efficient. Here are a few places to check for open houses in Billings:
Billings Gazette
The Billings Gazette offers a list and map of open houses each week in its Sunday edition. They also publish a list on their website here(does this count towards the monthly pageview limit for free views?) I have noticed that most other agents I have talked with seem to refer to this as the holy grail of open house adverts but it certainly isn’t the end-all, be-all of open house ads.
Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com
If you read my post on finding listings online, then you know that I rank these three sites as being about equal after factoring in a few things I feel are important in online listings. However, Realtor.com probably has the other two beat when it comes to finding open houses. Our local MLS syncs any recorded open houses with Realtor.com, but does not seem to sync with Trulia or Zillow. I am not really sure why, but it likely has to do with the fact that Realtor.com has access to a better data feed overall. That said, it is probably still a good idea to at least check the other two sites for FSBO open houses or in case the listing agent added it manually to the site.
Craigslist
If you can overlook a few of the oddly named posts in the Billings REA Craigslist page, you will notice a few posts advertising open houses.
Billings Real Estate Facebook Group
I see a few posts on this group about open houses each week, but it is far from an exhaustive list. It’s probably a good idea to take a minute to check the day’s posts to see if anyone has added an open house post.
Weekly Real Estate Portfolio
The Weekly Real Estate Portfolio is a free weekly publication owned by the Billings Association of Realtors. As such, all open houses scheduled in the MLS for the week are usually included in a listing towards the middle of the publication. They also place the open house list on their website here.
If you know of any other great resources for Billings open houses, let me know in the comments below! Also feel free to tell me which one of the options I talked about is your go-to source.
Your a great resource Bill! Thanks for sharing with us all. I would like to add one local site. Our Billings Association of Realtors have a great site to check out all the Open Houses in Billings. This site recieves its feed directly from the Billings MLS (Multiple Listing Service). There are plenty of fields to choose from for you to narrow your search down to the location you want to search. Just go to http://www.Billings.org and select the “Open House” Icon on top. You can also view all current listings on this site, which are automatically updated once a Realtor makes their changes in the MLS. Thanks for allowing me to post and once again great job with your Blog.
FOR REALTORS on the Billiings MLS:
Log into your MLS, locate your listing, go to “edit” portion of your listing, select “Open House” This is where ALL Realtors can add their Open Houses, add the dates, time, even if they want to offer refreshments for their Open House. Damian Forrester of Keller Williams and Montana Home Hunters.
Nice blog here! Also your site loads up fast! What web host are you using? Can I get your affiliate link to your host? I wish my web site loaded up as quickly as yours lol