How to Market an Open House: The 7-Day Timeline & Checklist

An open house with no marketing plan is just a Saturday spent in someone else's kitchen. The difference between three visitors and thirty is almost entirely what happens in the seven days before — and most of it takes minutes if your assets are generated instead of designed. Here's the timeline.

7 days out — lock the details

• Confirm date and time with the seller; check for conflicting neighborhood events.
• Generate the open house kit — with TourKit the date and time render directly on the banner of every graphic, and the re-run on an existing listing is free.
• Add the open house to the MLS, Zillow, and Realtor.com so the portals' own audiences see it.

5 days out — the announcement post

• Post the Open House feed graphic to Instagram and Facebook with when-where-why caption.
• Share it to local Facebook groups where the rules allow — neighborhood groups out-traffic your page for hyperlocal events.
• Email it to your buyer list segmented by price range. Subject line: the address, not "Open House!"

3 days out — the video push

• Post the listing reel with trending audio and an "open Saturday" text overlay or caption line.
• Story with countdown sticker — subscribers get an automatic reminder when it hits zero.
• Invite the neighbors: a quick story or post framed as "neighbors welcome — come pick your new neighbors." Neighbors talk, and some are quietly planning their own sale.

1 day out — print and prep

• Print the flyer — the QR code means visitors leave with the listing saved on their phone, not a paper they'll recycle.
• Charge the signs, plan the route, prep a sign-in method (and test the QR code yourself).

Morning of — the last-touch story

• Post the story graphic by 8 AM: "TODAY 1–3 PM." The morning-of story is the single highest-converting post of the whole cycle — it catches people deciding what to do with their Saturday.
• Signs out by mid-morning: corners first, then the walk-up.

During — capture, don't just host

• Greet with the flyer; let the QR code do the follow-up work.
• Post one story from the open house ("the line at 1:15 👀") — live proof of demand reaches buyers who didn't come.

After — the 48-hour follow-up

• Same evening: thank-you story with a "missed it? DM for the video" line — then send the listing video, which is the next-best thing to a showing.
• Next morning: personal follow-up to every sign-in. Question beats pitch: "What did you think of the layout?"
• Send the seller a recap with visitor count and the marketing you ran. Sellers who see the machine refer the machine.

The checklist

Run this once and it becomes muscle memory — especially when the assets cost you two minutes instead of an evening in a design app. Generate your first open house kit free.