An open house app lives or dies on the follow-up.
An open house app has two jobs, and the second one matters more. At the door it replaces the clipboard: a name, contact details, whether the visitor already has an agent, and permission to stay in touch. After the doors close it has to turn that sheet into a same-day thank-you, a report for the seller, and a call list for the morning. Most of the app examples on this site are about capturing a record. This one is about what happens to the record in the 48 hours after it is captured.
Below: the sign-in fields worth asking and the two that carry legal weight, the follow-up sequence hour by hour, the routing rules a team has to write down before the first Sunday, and where Curb Hero and Spacio stop and a custom-built app starts.
See what the sign-in sheet should askThe short version
Six questions at the door, and a clock that starts when they leave.
A good open house app asks for a name, an email, a mobile number, whether the visitor is already working with an agent, a buying timeline, and explicit permission to follow up. It then sends a thank-you the same day, a visitor report to the seller that evening, and puts the unrepresented, ready-to-buy visitors at the top of a call list for the next morning. Everything else in the open-house app category, QR codes, lender co-branding, CRM sync, is plumbing around that loop.
The sign-in sheet
What an open house app should ask at the door.
Sign-in is a trade. The visitor gives you contact details and you give them the disclosures, the price history, and a heads-up on similar homes. Ask for too much and they write a cartoon name or walk past the iPad; ask too little and the follow-up has nothing to work with. The working set looks like this:
The core fields
- Full name, as a single field so nobody argues about the order
- Email address, validated before the sheet saves
- Mobile number, on a phone keyboard
- Are you working with an agent? Then the agent's name if yes
- When are you looking to buy: 0 to 3 months, 3 to 6, just looking
- Permission to follow up, as a box the visitor ticks, not a footer they scroll past
Pre-approval, a home to sell first, how they heard about the open house, and a one-line reaction to the home are all worth having. They should be optional, and the app should keep working when they are skipped. What stays off the sheet entirely is anything that brushes a Fair Housing protected class: how many children they have, where they are from, whether they need a ground-floor unit. Those are not qualifying questions, they are complaints waiting to happen.
The question with legal weight: are you working with an agent?
Since August 17, 2024, under the practice changes in the NAR settlement, an MLS participant who is working with a buyer needs a written buyer agreement before touring a home with them. NAR's own settlement FAQ is explicit that hosting an open house on behalf of the seller does not count as working with a buyer, so nobody has to sign anything to walk through. The moment the host agent starts showing that visitor other homes, though, they are working with a buyer, and the agreement comes first.
That is why the sheet has to record the answer, and why the follow-up has to branch on it. A represented visitor gets a courtesy thank-you and their agent gets the feedback request. An unrepresented visitor gets the real follow-up, and the agent knows an agreement conversation comes before the second showing. An app that treats every name on the sheet the same way is setting the agent up to skip that step.
Consent is a field, not a footer
Email follow-up falls under CAN-SPAM. The FTC's compliance guide sets out the rules in plain language: no misleading header or subject line, tell recipients where you are located, tell them how to opt out, and honor the opt-out within 10 business days. Each email that breaks the rules can draw a penalty of up to $53,088. Read the FTC's CAN-SPAM guide.
Texting is stricter. The FCC's TCPA rules at 47 CFR 64.1200 require prior express written consent before automated marketing calls or texts go to a mobile number, and the rule defines that consent as a signed agreement, with a clear disclosure, that names the number. A general "OK to contact me" does not cover it.
In practice that means two separate boxes on the sheet, both unchecked by default: one for email, one for text with the disclosure printed under it, each stored with a timestamp and the device it was signed on. That record is what you produce if anyone ever asks.
Try it
Build your sign-in sheet
Switch questions on and off. The preview shows what a visitor sees at the door, and the list underneath shows which follow-ups the sheet can actually support.
Contact
Qualifying
Consent
Open house sign-in
Sunday, 1 to 4 pm
Welcome in. Sign in to get the disclosures and price history.
Full name
Email address
Mobile number
Are you working with an agent?
When are you looking to buy?
6 questions
About right. Most visitors get through this in under a minute.
- Same-day thank-you email with the listing link
- Text follow-up to the mobile number
- Represented visitors routed to their own agent
- A ranked call list for the next morning
- Hot leads separated from window shoppers
- Listing-side leads flagged for the listing agent
- A seller report with more than a head count
- Marketing spend tied to where visitors came from
After the doors close
The follow-up workflow, hour by hour.
The difference between an open house app and a digital sign-in sheet is everything that happens after four o'clock. The sequence below is what a well-run team does by hand on a good week. An app does it every week, in the same order, without anyone remembering to.
- 1
Within the hour
The thank-you
One message per visitor, by name, with the listing link and whatever they asked for at the door: the disclosures, the price history, the HOA documents. Sent automatically the moment the sheet saves, not typed from the car.
- 2
Same evening
The seller report
How many people came through, how many were unrepresented, what they said about price and condition, and which ones asked for a second look. The seller is waiting for this, and it is the document that wins the next listing on the street.
- 3
Next morning
The call list
Ranked, not alphabetical. Unrepresented, buying in the next three months, pre-approved: top of the list. Represented visitors get a note to their agent with the feedback request instead of a call.
- 4
Day 3
The nudge
Anything that changed on the listing, a price adjustment or new photos, plus two similar homes. Short, and only to people who consented.
- 5
Day 7
Hand off or stop
Anyone still warm moves to the CRM drip with their sign-in answers attached. Anyone who opted out is out everywhere, not just in this app. The rest get nothing further, which is also a decision.
Channel by channel
What each channel needs from the sheet
Every follow-up channel depends on something captured at the door, and each one sits under a different rule. If the sheet did not capture it, the app should not offer the channel.
| Channel | What the sheet must capture | The rule that applies | Best used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email address plus an unchecked consent box | CAN-SPAM: honest subject line, your physical address in the message, an opt-out that is honored within 10 business days | The thank-you, the disclosures, the day 3 nudge | |
| Text | Mobile number plus a separate written-consent box with the disclosure text, timestamped | TCPA (47 CFR 64.1200): prior express written consent before automated marketing texts to a mobile number | The listing link on the spot, a showing confirmation |
| Phone call | Mobile number and the answers that rank the list | A person dialing a visitor who asked to be contacted; keep the sign-in record that shows they asked | The next-morning conversation with the top of the list |
| Handwritten note | A mailing address, which most sheets skip | None to speak of | The visitor who said they are selling first |
The shape will look familiar to anyone who has run a showroom. A car dealership mobile app runs the same walk-in-to-follow-up loop: twenty minutes on the lot, and the sale happens in the follow-up. The open house version just has a seller waiting for a report at the other end.
Teams and brokerages
Who owns the lead when someone else hosts your open house?
On a team the listing agent rarely hosts. A newer agent takes the Sunday, the listing agent keeps the seller relationship, and sometimes a lender partner co-brands the sign-in. The app has to record who hosted on every sign-in and route from there, because the argument about whose lead it is always happens on Monday, never on Sunday.
Rule 1
Buyer leads from the door belong to the host
Unless the visitor asked for the listing agent by name or came in through the listing agent's own marketing. Record which agent hosted on every sign-in, and the rule applies itself.
Rule 2
The neighbor who is thinking of selling is a listing lead
They go to the listing agent, not the host, and they get a different follow-up: a valuation conversation, not a list of similar homes.
Rule 3
The seller report goes to the listing agent, always
Whoever hosted, the seller's relationship is with the listing agent, and the report is sent in their name.
Rule 4
A represented visitor is nobody's lead
Their agent gets the feedback request. The visitor gets a courtesy thank-you and no drip. Writing this down stops the argument before it starts.
Two neighboring jobs are worth keeping out of this app. If the property is a rental and the visitor becomes a tenant, the relationship moves into a tenant portal app, and the sign-in record is the wrong place to keep rent and maintenance history. And this page is deliberately narrow, the sign-in and follow-up workflow for agents; listing search, valuations and property management are the wider category of real estate and property apps.
Curb Hero, Spacio, or your own
Where the off-the-shelf open house apps stop.
Two products dominate the category. The Curb Hero open house app is free for solo agents and sells team plans priced per team, with QR sign-in, listing microsites and a sync to what it describes as 6,000-plus CRMs. Spacio, now sold as Lone Wolf Spacio, does digital sign-in, automated follow-up emails and seller reports, and is sold per agent through Lone Wolf's online store with teams and brokerages quoted by demo. Both handle the door well. The table is what each approach gives you after it.
| Approach | Sign-in at the door | Automatic follow-up | Team routing | Price, checked 21 September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper sheet | a clipboard and hope | No | No | Free, plus an evening of retyping |
| Spreadsheet or form link | a QR code to a form | No | No | Free |
| Curb Hero | Yes | email follow-up, CRM sync | team plans, agents host for each other | Free for solo agents. Teams: $50 a month for up to 10 agents, $100 for 25, $150 for 50; $42, $84 and $125 a month billed annually; 30-day trial |
| Lone Wolf Spacio | Yes | automated follow-up emails, CRM sync, seller reports | teams and brokerages by demo | Per agent through Lone Wolf's online store; the subscription price is not printed on the product page. Custom sign-in branding is a one-time $150 setup fee |
| Custom-built open house app | whatever you ask | whatever sequence you run | your rules, written once | Your build time, then a platform subscription |
Curb Hero prices from its team pricing page; Spacio details from Lone Wolf's product page, which sends individual agents to a store rather than printing a subscription price. Both checked on 21 September 2026.
The fit problem
When a team outgrows them
It is never the door. It is the routing rules that do not match how your team splits leads, a follow-up sequence that needs to differ for represented visitors, a seller report the brokerage wants in its own format, or a lender partner whose co-branding has to change by state. Each of those is a setting the vendor may or may not have, and a team that has written its own rules ends up bending them to fit the app.
The case for building your own is never price. Even a build-it-yourself platform like Newly is $25 a month with no free plan, against a category where the best-known product is free for a solo agent. The case is that the sheet, the branching and the sequence are yours, written once, and applied the same way every Sunday.
When to build your own
Building an open house app around your own rules.
Newly is an AI app builder, not a real estate platform: you describe the sign-in sheet, the rules that branch on the agent question, the follow-up sequence and who gets the seller report, and it builds a real native app around them. The iOS build goes up through App Store Connect and TestFlight; the current version does not produce Android release builds, which matters if half the team is on Android.
The sheet and the sequence are worth nailing down on paper first, since they are cheap to change before anything is built. The one piece to keep separate from the start is the two kinds of sign-in: the agent's own login, and the visitor-facing sheet that must never expose the agent's account or the previous visitor's details. That is implementation detail, and it is covered in adding user login and sign-in sheets.
Sources
Where the specifics came from.
Four things on this page come from a primary source rather than general industry practice:
The text-message consent rule is 47 CFR 64.1200, the FCC's rule under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
FAQ
Open house apps, answered.
Six things: full name, email, mobile number, whether the visitor is already working with an agent (and who), a buying timeline, and explicit permission to follow up. Pre-approval, whether they have a home to sell, how they heard about the open house, and a one-line reaction to the home are useful but should stay optional. Anything that touches a Fair Housing protected class, such as whether they have children, stays off the sheet.
Start with the sheet, then the sequence.
Six questions at the door, two consent boxes, a branch on the agent question, and a follow-up that runs itself by Monday morning. Write those down, then build the app around them in Newly.