In Columbus, open houses making comeback as tough market persists

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clipped from www.columbusdispatch.com Home shoppers can tour a home on their phone, schedule an appointment online and "virtually" visit a neighborhood on their computer. But with home sales at their lowest levels in years, buyers and sellers are dusting off a low-tech staple: the open house. Open houses started to decline in the early part of the decade, as the industry boomed and the Internet allowed prospective buyers to shop online. Last year, though, 59 percent of sellers hosted open houses -- up from 51 percent during the height of the housing boom in 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors. Open houses are also gaining in popularity among shoppers, the association says: 48 percent of buyers visited an open house last year, far above the 28 percent who did so in 2000. "We've been looking online, but there's only so much you can see from the Internet," said Bob Jennings, who has been visiting open houses to help his mother-in-law, Barbara Wood, pick a condominium.