Twenty-two years in the real estate business and Debbie Zois of Keller Williams Las Vegas Realty has sold exactly two homes as a direct result of an open house.

Those aren’t good odds, even for Sin City.

But Zois still sees value in holding open houses for certain properties, and she says most of her colleagues espouse a similar view.

Opening your home to the public on a Sunday afternoon is more likely to find a buyer for your neighbor’s home a couple of blocks down the street. And vice versa. Her open house could produce a potential buyer for you.

“You’re just throwing a bigger net out there,” says Zois. “The more buyers can learn about the location and neighborhood, the easier it will be to get them interested in bidding on a property.”

And survey data supports that notion. According to a 2006 survey by the National Association of Realtors, half of all buyers use open houses as a source in their home search process.

Open houses tend not to result in direct sales because the buyers who walk through haven’t been vetted. A potential buyer may want four bedrooms instead of two, or he may qualify for a $150,000 home, whereas your place is listed for $225,000.

“Open houses are just so random, and the people who come through are random,” says Mindy Jackson, an agent with Coldwell Banker First Equity Realtors in Amarillo, Texas. “You have potential buyers [coming in], but also neighbors down the street and people driving by.”

Still, Jackson hosts an open house just about every week, and she says it remains a valuable marketing tool. At the very least, advertising the event online and in the newspaper generates exposure and interest.

Properties listed in price ranges attractive to first-time homebuyers tend to be the best candidates for open houses. In Amarillo, that’s a home priced from $80,000 to $130,000. A property without curb appeal in an out-of-the-way location, however, makes for a poorly attended open house.

“If you’ve got to make 17 turns to find it, it’s not going to be the right property for an open house,” advises Zois.

Because the pool of potential buyers is smaller, sellers of high-end homes are steered away from holding open houses. “You get a lot of lookers,” notes Jackson. “Do you want a lot of footprints or do you want serious marketing?”