Free Open House Sign-in Sheet Templates for Real Estate Agents
Kaylee specializes in real estate, B2B, and SaaS companies. You can find her expertise in sales and real estate content on Fit Small Business.
This article is part of a larger series on Real Estate Lead Generation and Marketing.
Open houses drive traffic among interested buyers to your active listings, and can also generate real estate leads to build your client base. To convert as many visitors as possible into real estate leads at your events, use an open house sign-in sheet to collect contact information. From basic to detailed and digital, here are four different types of open house sign-in sheets and free downloadable templates you can use for lead generation.
Download Our Free Open House Sign-in Sheet Templates
Most open house sign-in sheets ask for basic information like the visitor’s name, email address, and phone number. However, depending on how you intend to follow up with prospects (or their preferences), you may choose to also ask for a mailing address or additional details about their real estate needs. Download our open house sign-in sheet templates, which include PDF and both Google and MS Word document formats, and customize them for your brand and event.
Download All Open House Sign-in Sheet Templates
Try various types until you determine which sign-in sheet template helps you get the best results, and remember that each visitor may have their own preferences for follow-up. Some may prefer email follow-ups while others may want a phone call or text. After your open house event, don’t forget to add these contacts to your customer relationship management (CRM) for future lead nurturing and organization.
Here are four different types of real estate sign-in sheet formats:
1. The Essentials Open House Sign-in Sheet
Download: Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
Capture basic and essential information, including the visitor’s name, phone number, and email address. When you expect a large number of attendees or have a steady flow of open house visitors, this is probably the best option because it can be completed quickly.
What It Includes
Like all of our open house sign-in sheet templates, it includes space at the top for the property address. This helps you track each lead based on where you met them and which property they are interested in. At the bottom, include a brief notice that you’ll be sending real estate-related information in the future, reducing the chance that visitors will perceive follow-up emails as spam.
Add your logo to the top or bottom of the open house sign-in sheet for brand recognition. If you don’t already have a professionally designed logo, you can easily get one before your next event. With 99designs, you can view multiple logo concepts from professional graphic designers and choose the one that best fits your business. This is the best avenue to collaborate with a designer to create a professional logo that helps you stand out.
When You Should Use It
The Essentials open house sign-in sheet is best for real estate agents who want to capture basic contact information that can be easily added to a CRM. Agents who are successful in real estate have follow-up lead nurturing strategies in place and ready to go. The Essentials version is a great option if your open house follow-up marketing will be mostly done by email and you don’t plan to send out postcards, brochures, or other printed materials.
Some alternative templates you might use to gather the essential information from open house guests are:
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
2. The Physical Address Open House Sign-in Sheet
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
Capture basic information as well as the visitor’s mailing or physical home address. Remember that it will take longer for guests to complete, and some may choose not to provide all the information requested. However, getting the lead’s physical address can be incredibly useful.
What It Includes
The Physical Address open house sign-in sheet provides you with more ways to follow up with visitors. It can also give you more insight into the demographic makeup of each guest’s current neighborhood and the properties they’re interested in.
When You Should Use It
This sign-in sheet is most useful if you want to follow up using direct mail. Direct mail has been used by real estate agents for decades, and remains effective when done right. Choose from a huge variety of premade real estate mailer templates with Postcard Mania, including real estate postcard templates that target specific types of leads and have high conversion rates.
Here are some additional physical address open house sign-in sheets you can also download for free:
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
3. The Detailed Questionnaire
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
This detailed questionnaire provides valuable insights about each open house visitor and where they are on their homebuying journey. You can even add questions to target your niche market. Use this open house sign-in sheet when buyers are likely to be varied in type and if you have an advanced lead management and nurturing system for sending targeted, segmented marketing emails.
What It Includes
This open house sign-in sheet template asks for more information than other types of sheets, including the guest’s contact information and specific real estate preferences. Examples of other important questions which are commonly included are:
- What is your buying timeline?
- Are you pre-approved for a mortgage? (if yes, what amount or range of amounts)
- What types of properties are you interested in?
- How did you find out about this open house?
- How long have you been searching for a home?
- Do you currently own or rent?
- Are you a first-time homebuyer?
- Preferred method of contact? (e.g., email, phone, or text)
For real estate agents, the benefits are obvious. However, visitors may feel overwhelmed or less inclined to provide a lot of personal details. If you use this longer form, you may need to explain its intent to visitors, offer them a place to sit down, and provide multiple sign-in sheets available to prevent a bottleneck. Also, make it as simple as possible—use check boxes for yes/no answers, property types, referral sources, and more so guests can quickly give you the most important details.
When You Should Use It
The additional information you can gather with the Detailed Questionnaire open house sign-in sheet template is best for real estate agents who have and use a customer relationship manager (CRM) to track, organize, follow up with, and nurture leads. The specific details about visitor home preferences and circumstances, buying timelines, and home loan pre-approval allow you to better segment your lists and more effectively customize marketing follow-ups.
After collecting visitor contact information and other details with an open house sign-in sheet, enter the information into a CRM like Pipedrive to quickly start crafting emails and more effectively automate follow-up drip campaigns. Pipedrive is an affordable and powerful CRM that shows you a visual pipeline and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the leads that may be close to converting.
For more download options, check out these additional detailed questionnaires:
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
Download:
Google Doc | Word Doc | PDF
4. The Digital Sign-in Sheet
We live in a digital age, and you may want to save time by using a digital sign-in sheet. Digital sign-in sheets can even connect directly to or be created in CRMs like Zoho CRM. With Zoho’s Online Form Builder, for example, you can quickly create digital open house sign-in sheets with custom colors, fields, and questions. This streamlines the process when open house visitors arrive and afterward, since the contacts will already be in your CRM.
Example Zoho digital open house sign-in sheet
(Source: Zoho)
If your real estate CRM doesn’t enable you to create custom open house sign-in sheets, use Spacio as an all-in-one digital solution for open houses. Spacio’s mobile app lets you customize sign-in sheets with the questions you want to ask. You can even create automated emails and texts to follow up with visitors directly through the app or your own CRM. Spacio integrates with Pipedrive, Real Geeks, and HubSpot (and you can even use HubSpot’s CRM for free).
(Source: Home Spotter)
What It Includes
Digital open house sign-in sheets are customizable so you can add as many or as few questions as you’d like. Since it usually takes visitors less time to complete forms on a mobile device than to do so manually, you may want to take advantage of the opportunity to gather additional information. You can also decide whether each field is required or optional, but try to strike a good balance so that visitors aren’t turned off by the amount of required information.
When You Should Use It
Digital open house sign-in sheets can be used for any type of event, but consider the type of visitors you’re most likely to see. If your open house is likely to attract millennials, for example, you’ll probably get more real estate leads by handing them an iPad instead of a clipboard or offering a way to check in digitally using their mobile device. On the other hand, if you’re expecting a less tech-savvy population, pen and paper, or options for both, may be most effective.
5 Tips to Get Visitors to Complete Open House Sign-in Sheets
Once your event is planned and your sign-in sheet is ready to roll, the next challenge is actually getting your guests to complete it. It’s surprisingly easy for them to miss it completely, so make sure you’re intentional about handing it to your guests or directing them to the sign-in station.
In addition, you should always have professional business cards ready for guests to take or for you to hand out so they can easily reach out to you after an open house. If you don’t have business cards, you can use ProspectsPLUS! to easily design a business card, or upload your own design and get the cards printed for a great price.
(Source: ProspectsPLUS!)
Tip 1. Ask Visitors to Sign In First
Don’t leave your sign-in sheet on a countertop or entry table and expect guests to sign in. People may avoid this if they feel like it’s optional because they are worried about getting added to real estate email marketing lists and don’t know you yet. You’ll find much better success by directly approaching guests, asking them to sign in, and letting them know how you’ll use the information.
Pro tip: Make extra copies of your open house sign-in sheets and carry them around on a clipboard. When you meet a new visitor, ask them “Did you get a chance to sign in?” If they did not, then hand them the clipboard to get their contact information.
Tip 2. Be Upfront, Honest & Ask for Permission
When you ask visitors to sign in, request permission to follow up with them. By asking for permission, they will be much more receptive to your follow-ups. You can also allay their fears of being added to lists by telling them exactly what kind of follow-up you’ll be sending, and asking their preferences, such as whether they would prefer to be called, emailed, or texted.
Tip 3. Build Rapport
Simply getting contacts is not useful in and of itself. In order to get contacts who can potentially become clients, you need to build rapport with open house guests. Prospective buyers should feel comfortable, receive expert answers, and not experience pressure from the real estate agent. Without rapport and a mutual interest in continuing the conversation later, visitors are more likely to use junk email addresses and fake phone numbers.
Tip 4. Leverage Social Media
Before your open house, decide on a pre-planned hashtag and display it on a sign near the front door or somewhere in the home that would make a great selfie station. Prompt guests to check in and post a photo on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram using the hashtag in exchange for a small gift or to be entered to win a raffle or giveaway. You’ll be able to find and connect online with all of your guests through that hashtag on various social media channels. This is free advertising, and is supplemental to using a paper or digital sign-in sheet.
Tip 5. Offer an Incentive
An inexpensive, easy, and effective way to entice people to sign in is by offering them something in return. It can be any type of incentive, but to make your brand more memorable, keep it related to your real estate business. For example, raffle off a nice water bottle sporting your logo on it or give out $5 Starbucks gift cards along with your business cards.
Just by getting buyers to intentionally focus on the sign-in process, you’ll increase the chances of them completing it. Plus, if your guests have to leave before the open house ends, remind them that you can send their gift afterward via email or direct mail.
Follow Up With Open House Sign-in Sheet Contacts & Clients
Generating real estate leads doesn’t stop when you get someone’s contact information. If you don’t learn how to effectively follow up and nurture your leads, you won’t be able to convert them into clients. Use these five steps to follow up with your new open house leads:
Step 1. Add Open House Visitors to Your CRM
Follow-up marketing activities should kick in immediately after the open house. This doesn’t mean you need to spend a lot of precious time hunched over a keyboard—a CRM can do the job for you. Use a real estate industry-specific CRM like Top Producer to gather and track all your open house leads and automate follow-up activities.
With Top Producer, you can customize contacts and follow-up strategies, so your open house leads feel like you wrote personalized messages just for them. If you’re still learning how to effectively follow up with real estate leads, the platform even offers a personal Follow-up Coach.
Step 2. Email Leads Asking for Feedback
The day after the open house, send an email to your new leads to thank them for coming and ask what else you can do to help them in their real estate journey. Request feedback on the open house and the property generally, or make it even easier for them to reply by sending a survey.
If you were able to have a conversation with the visitor during the open house, personalize the message, such as, “I’d be happy to show you more three-bedroom condos.” For more ideas on how to follow up using email and more real estate email templates, check out our article on open house email follow-up templates.
Step 3. Use Custom Landing Pages
You can also add links to your real estate landing pages to offer additional value and gather insights in follow-up marketing emails. With an easy-to-use landing page builder like Placester, you can build custom landing pages that appeal to different types of leads.
For example, you can create landing pages where buyers can enter their contact information and then search active properties. Not only will this offer you more data about what your leads are looking for, but Placester can also retarget your leads through social media, and you can use your webforms to ask more questions.
Step 4. Follow Up With a Phone Call
If you don’t get a response through email or if leads prefer to be called, reach out directly by phone. A one-on-one conversation shows people you remember them and care about their individual real estate needs. Add any new details gleaned in calls to your CRM as well. For example, if a lead is unsure or has a loose time frame for when they want to buy a house, add them to a segmented list of incubating leads and set up CRM reminders to continue nurturing the relationship.
Step 5: Analyze Data & Provide Report to Your Client
After the open house, prepare a report for your seller. Some open house apps generate reports automatically. Otherwise, create a report with the number of attendees and general feedback visitors had about the listing. This gives you an opportunity to discuss any ways the home or property could be improved, the need to adjust pricing or offer buyer incentives (such as a paint or flooring allowance), or potential offers coming in—all of which your seller will appreciate.
For more details about what is needed to host a successful open house, check out our article and free open house checklist download. It walks you through essential to-do items for before, during, and after your open house events.
Bottom Line
Using open house sign-in sheets is a necessity for real estate lead generation using events, including open houses. Download our free open house sign-in sheet templates to get started and customize them for your brand and open house event. These templates are effective resources for gathering contact information, generating leads, and building a client base for a successful real estate business.
