As a Seller of real estate in Boston (or any city for that matter), one of the most effective mechanisms to get your home sold is exposure. Given that 85%+ of consumers start their real estate search online, it makes a lot of sense that a property has maximum exposure online, however, good old fashioned open houses still have their place.
“Knowing that people can walk through my condo, in addition to seeing it on the web is important to me,” says one South End condo Seller. Open houses, typically held on Sundays in the early afternoon, give potential Buyers an opportunity to touch and feel a property first hand, something that can’t be accomplished online.
So how do Buyers find out about open houses? Through websites like this one, through word of mouth, and also, Boston Homes Newspaper and the relatively new Boston Courant Real Estate Guide, both of which are published and distributed on Saturdays in preparation for open houses that will take place over the next several days, but most oftentimes, on that Sunday. The Boston Courant edition went through a significant overhaul in outward appearance during the new year, and now looks eerily similar to Boston Homes.
However, open houses don’t magically appear in these print editions, a Boston Listing Agent must feed information into two separate property databases in order to push information into Boston Homes and Boston Courant (LINK and MLSPIN respectively). As a Seller, you want your open house to be listed in both print editions to garner the most exposure possible. That said, a Listing Agent must know that they need to submit open house information to LINK and MLSPIN by Thursday at Noon for an open house that will take place on the following Sunday, or the open house will not make it into the print editions.
The two property systems (unfortunately) carry different information and are not always congruent, notably, LINK boasts approximately 300 open houses this weekend (at the time of writing), while MLSPIN shows that there will be approximately 295.
Keith Munsell 
LINK is missing as much as 33% of the condo listings in the city, according to an analysis I did, last night. Yes, LINK has the Open House data, but if you’re a buyer looking for a condo in Boston, you have to use an agent who has access to MLSPIN.
That’s interesting about LINK not having all the listings. I’ve heard that, but didn’t realize there was such a difference.