Guide
Open house videos: one Saturday, three videos, and the recap does the real selling
Most agents treat an open house as one event and zero videos. It is actually three: an invite that fills the room, a footage bank filmed before the doors open, and a recap that shows every future seller what you do on a Saturday. This guide covers all three, including the one rule about filming visitors.
- Videos one open house produces
- 3
- Visitors who should ever appear on camera
- 0
- A finished 30 second video, batch plus export
- 110 CR
- Lite: 1,250 credits, about 11 of those a month
- $19.99
An open house is a content event, whether or not it sells the house
Start with the honest number: most open houses do not produce the buyer. The portals do. What an open house reliably produces is proof of work, and proof of work is what wins the next listing.
That proof only exists if you capture it. Three videos, each under a minute, each with a different audience: buyers before, your feed during the week, and sellers after.
None of them needs a crew. A phone, twenty minutes before the doors open, and one talking take after the last visitor leaves.
One open house, three videos
The invite fills the room, the bank feeds every later edit, the recap wins the next seller.
The invite
Filmed at staging, posted 3 days out
The b-roll bank
Ten clips before doors open
The recap take
In the car, numbers fresh
The sends
Your seller first, then the feed
The invite: thirty seconds, posted three days out
Film it at the property during staging or the photo shoot. One take, to camera, at the front door or in the best room.
The structure is an invitation, not a tour. The area, the day and time, one reason to come that a listing photo cannot show, and one line about who the house suits.
Post it Wednesday or Thursday for a Saturday open. The morning-of post reaches people who already had plans.
Then send it, do not just post it. To every inquiry on the listing, to buyers you are working with, to neighbors if your farm area overlaps. An invite that arrives in a message gets treated like one.
- Opener: [price] in [area], open Saturday 2 to 4. Here is why it is worth your Saturday.
- The one thing photos miss: the light at noon, the garden, the quiet of the street.
- Who it suits, in one line. Filtering makes an invitation credible.
- The ask: just come, no sign-up. Or message me for a private slot if Saturday fails.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Before the doors open: film the b-roll bank, never the visitors
The half hour before an open house is the best filming window the listing will ever have. The house is staged, lit and empty. Walk it and film ten clips, five to ten seconds each, one slow move per clip.
That bank feeds everything: the recap, the just sold debrief months later, and any listing video still to come.
Once visitors arrive, the camera goes away. Filming strangers in a house they are privately considering is how an agent ends up explaining themselves in the comments. Nobody's face, nobody's kids, nobody's license plate.
If you want a mid-event shot, film your own setup: the sign, the sheet, the open door. The story is that you ran it, not who came.
The recap: the video your seller forwards
Film one take in the car after the last visitor leaves, while the numbers are fresh. It is the easiest take of the week, because you are just reporting.
The structure: how many groups came through, what they kept saying, what happens next. Fourteen groups, half of them second visits, everyone asked about the garage conversion, two follow-up viewings booked for Tuesday.
The audience is not buyers. It is your seller, who gets sent it first, and every other homeowner deciding whether their own agent would work a Saturday like that.
A quiet open house still makes an honest recap. Four groups and consistent feedback about the price is a report a seller respects more than silence, and future sellers notice the honesty.
The mistakes that waste the Saturday
Each of these is common, and each one quietly deletes the value of the day.
- Filming the invite the morning of the open. Three days out or it is a diary entry, not an invitation.
- Pointing the camera at visitors. The comment section never forgives it, and neither do buyers.
- Posting the recap only to the feed. Its first job is a private send: your seller, then your farm area.
- Letting the b-roll bank die in the camera roll. Label the clips by room the same day, while you still know which listing they came from.
- Treating a quiet open as nothing to say. The honest report is the content.
The edit, priced honestly
Three videos per open house survives exactly as long as the edit stays cheap. The invite and the recap are each one talking take, and that is the shape software edits well now.
Cutroom takes the take, up to 3 minutes, transcribes every word, tightens the pauses, drops the ums and burns in captions. Highlight the phrase about the garden and your clip from the bank lands on exactly those words. A finished 9:16 MP4 comes back in about a minute.
A batch is 100 credits, export adds 20 credits per finished minute: a 30 second video is about 110 credits. The first 3 are free in your first 7 days, with 600 credits and no card, and carry a Cutroom mark. Lite is $19.99 a month for 1,250 credits, about 11 of those, takes the mark off, and cancels in one click.
The floor: the invite posted raw with the platform's own captions costs nothing and beats not posting. The three-video habit is what earns an editor.
Questions people ask
- Do open house videos bring buyers or sellers?
- Mostly sellers, and that is the point. The buyer usually comes from the portals. The invite adds a few genuine visitors; the recap shows your current seller and every future one what marketing effort looks like. Judge the habit on listing appointments over a quarter.
- Can I film visitors at an open house?
- Do not. People viewing a home are making a private decision, and a camera changes the visit. Film the empty house before doors open, film your own setup, and report the numbers to camera afterwards. The story survives without a single face in it.
- When should I post the open house invite?
- Three days out: Wednesday or Thursday for a Saturday open. Post it once, then send it directly to inquiries, active buyers and neighbors. The direct send does more than the post.
- What if the open house is quiet?
- Report it honestly and use it. Four groups and consistent feedback about price is real information, and delivering it on camera to your seller is the kind of thing that gets an agent recommended. Skip the spin. Quiet and honest beats busy and vague.
- Do I need the seller's permission to film?
- Yes, and get it when you take the listing, not the morning of. Film after staging, keep family photos and documents out of frame, and show the seller the recap before it posts. A seller who sees the effort becomes the referral.
- What does the editing cost?
- With Cutroom, about 110 credits per finished 30 second video: a 100 credit batch plus export at 20 credits per finished minute. Lite is $19.99 a month for 1,250 credits, about 11 of those, cancel in one click. The invite can also go out raw with native captions, which costs nothing.
Twenty minutes of filming before the doors open, one take in the car after. Three videos per Saturday, and the recap is the one that fills next month's listing appointments.