The Rainy-Day Open House in Claremont

The instinct when rain is forecast is to cancel. Sometimes that is right. More often it is a reflex, and it forfeits a day that has some genuine advantages hiding inside the inconvenience.

Southern California rain arrives in a handful of concentrated stretches, so a wet listing weekend is not a small annoyance to be waited out. It may be the weekend you have.

What rain does to the visitor mix

Fewer people come. That is certain and it should be expected rather than treated as a failure.

What is less obvious is who those fewer people are. Casual weekend browsers, the neighbors on a walk, the family filling a Sunday, mostly stay home. The person who drove across town in the rain to see a house came because they wanted to see that house.

So the room is smaller and the average visitor is more serious. For a seller this is not necessarily worse. It is a different kind of afternoon, and it is a bad day to judge the property by attendance.

The genuine advantages

A wet house shows its behavior. Every roof, every window seal, every drain, every grading decision is being tested while people stand in it. A house that is dry, quiet, and warm in real weather makes an argument that no dry-day showing can make.

Interiors get their moment. On a bright day buyers look out the windows at the garden. In the rain they look at the room they are in, at the fireplace, at the light, at whether the space feels good to be inside. Homes with strong interiors do relatively better.

Nobody else is open. Competing listings cancel. A buyer determined to look at houses that day has a short list, and you can be on it.

People stay longer. Nobody hurries out into a downpour. Visitors linger, look properly, and talk to the agent, which is how conversations that matter start.

The honesty question, in reverse

The twilight open house raises the worry that flattering conditions hide problems. Rain raises the opposite question, and it deserves a straight answer too.

If your house has a leak, a wet crawlspace, a drainage problem, or standing water in the yard, rain will show it, and the honest response is to disclose it rather than to schedule around it. Material facts about the property have to be disclosed regardless of the weather on the day someone visits, and a seller who cancels every wet weekend to keep a known problem out of view is not managing a calendar.

The flip side is fair and worth saying to buyers: one storm is not a survey. A puddle in a low corner of a yard during a heavy hour is not proof of a defect, and a bit of moisture at a threshold may be a door sweep rather than a foundation. Buyers should note what they see and have it inspected, not conclude from it. That is the same discipline as spotting anything else during a tour, covered in red flags to spot at a Claremont open house.

Running it so it works

Almost all of the failure in a wet open house is operational, and all of it is preventable.

• Absorbent matting outside and inside the door, and more than you think. One small mat is instantly saturated.
• A place for umbrellas at the entry, so they are not carried through the house dripping.
• Towels at the door, visible, for shoes and for the floor.
• Decide about shoes and make it easy. If shoes come off, provide seating and a place to put them. Asking people to balance on one foot in a doorway is how the entry becomes a bottleneck.
• Someone mopping. The entry floor needs attention every twenty minutes, not once at the end.
• Every light on. Storm light is dim and flat, and an unlit house on a grey day looks miserable.
• Heat on, and slightly warmer than usual. Walking from cold rain into a warm house is a genuinely persuasive experience.
• Protect the floors that matter. Runners over wood and light carpet along the main route.

Wet floors are the safety issue, and they are the most likely cause of a fall at any open house. That, plus dim light, makes the accessibility questions sharper rather than softer, and they are worth reviewing in accessibility at a Claremont open house.

Outside is not optional

Wet exteriors get neglected because nobody wants to be out there, and it shows.

Clear the walkways of standing water and wet leaves, which are slippery and unattractive in equal measure. Check that the downspouts are actually discharging where they should. Move the sign to somewhere it will not fall over. And if the yard is genuinely unwalkable, say so and have good photographs of it, rather than letting people squelch across a lawn and form an opinion of the drainage from one bad hour.

When to actually cancel

Cancel when it stops being about comfort and becomes about safety or access: a storm severe enough that driving is unwise, standing water on the approach, a power outage, or wind that makes the yard hazardous.

If you cancel, do it early and communicate clearly on the listing and to anyone who asked, and reschedule immediately rather than leaving it vague. A cancellation nobody hears about produces people standing in the rain outside a dark house, which is worse than any open house you could have held.

The short version

Expect fewer visitors and better ones. Take the day, because a house that is warm and dry in real weather sells itself. Mat the entry heavily, mop constantly, turn on every light, warm the place up, and keep the walkways clear. Disclose what the rain reveals rather than scheduling around it. And cancel only for safety, loudly and early.

More on choosing and running formats is on the Claremont open houses hub. Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.