Who's actually walking through your house
An open house is, structurally, an invitation for anyone to walk through your home for a couple of hours. Most visitors are exactly who they say they are - a neighbor curious about the market, a genuine buyer, someone's parent tagging along. But "most" isn't "all," and the traditional way open houses have tracked who came through - a name on a clipboard - doesn't actually tell you anything. Nobody checks it. Nobody can.
That's not a reason to panic. It's a reason to ask a specific question: not "did visitors sign in," but "what happens to that information, and can anyone actually be reached from it."
The three things worth asking your agent
- Is the sign-in digital, and does anyone check it? A clipboard and a pen produce a list of names nobody can act on later - illegible handwriting, no way to reach anyone, no record beyond that afternoon. A digital sign-in on a visitor's own phone at least produces something typed and readable. The better question is whether the contact info itself is checked at the point of entry, not just collected.
- Does the agent get a record of who was in the house, or just a headcount? After the open house is over, you should be able to ask "who came through" and get a real answer - not "about fifteen people," but an actual list your agent can follow up with and, if you want it, share with you.
- Is there a way to confirm a visitor's phone actually belongs to them? This is the one most sign-in processes skip entirely. A visitor can type any phone number - real, wrong, made up - and nothing catches it. A stronger process texts the visitor a code they have to enter before their sign-in counts, which proves they actually control that number. It's a small extra step for the visitor, and it's the difference between "this looks like a real contact" and "I could actually reach this person if I needed to."
What this actually buys you
None of this is about assuming the worst of every visitor - the overwhelming majority of people at any open house are there for exactly the reason they say. It's about the process holding up in the case that isn't, and about your agent actually being able to follow up with the people who are genuinely interested, instead of a list padded with typos and dead numbers. A seller report that says "20 people signed in" means very little if a third of those entries can't be reached. One that says "20 people signed in, contact info verified for all of them" means your agent can actually work the list - and so can you, if you ever want to know who was in your home that day.
ShowSuite is built around exactly this - every visitor registers on their own phone with a QR code, their email and phone are checked automatically, and an agent can optionally require that phone-confirmation step for a given open house. If your Realtor is using it, the questions above are already answered.