The people you see at open for inspections

Any weekend, on any street, you may see a red “Open” banner outside a house or apartment which means you’re allowed to just walk into the place even though you don’t know the people who live there. You can touch all their stuff, laugh at their family photos on the mantelpiece, rifle through their laundry basket and just hang out until closing time – it’s a very pleasant way to spend an hour. Anyone can do it: you could just rock up in a latex gimp suit holding a pillowcase stuffed with excrement and the real estate agent would greet you at the door, hand you a floor plan, and say, “Come in, have a look around. Here, I’ll hold your pillowcase, take your time”.

The first visitors at most open homes are The Over-Keen Desperate-Eyed House-Hunting Family. They usually arrive 10 minutes early and park out the front in one of those big people-movers that look like a wombat on wheels, with five grubby kids jammed in the back, one of them possibly a dog. Once inside, they pester the real estate agent with school zone questions, check the bathroom water pressure 15 times, discuss whether a kitchen pantry can be converted into a bedroom and make their toddler run up and down the hallways – if she veers off to one side, they know the house needs restumping.

Next to show up are the highly-amusing Clueless Parent And First-Home-Buying Kid Vaudeville Duo. They get up to their antics immediately, the parent pulling up a whole section of carpet to check the floorboards, the kid saying “uhhh, you only needed to pull up a corner”, the parent saying, “I know what I’m doing, okay, leave me to it!”, then going into another room and breaking off bits of skirting to look for white ant.

At the half-hour mark, The Three Snoopy Neighbours will slink in. They don’t want to buy the house: they just want to poke around, see what the home owners have, look inside the medicine cabinet, then duck into the study for a quick peek at the tax files. Afterwards, you’ll see them huddled out the front, whispering, “my kitchen’s newer/my garden’s nicer/my block of land is 12.89 percent bigger…”

At some point, a ute will pull up, driven by A Builder Guy Named Steve Or Graham. He has no time to muck around, he’s in and out fast, then he sits in his ute and talks on the phone. “Yeah, we could redevelop … maybe subdivide … probably fit in 12 mock-Georgians … yeah, stacked, obviously…”

Many more types will visit the open home. There will be at least one Smarmy Real Estate Investor – you can hear them coming by the tambourine jingle of their Audi car-keys – it’s the cheery sound of astute property portfolio management strategies. In rare cases, there may be a Sinister Passing Opportunist – this is the person walking out with their head down, holding a stereo system and a bowl of display pears. And of course, there will always be The Happy Open Home Hobbyist, who just enjoys visiting open homes. Although after the first 15, they tend to get a bit puffed out. They couldn’t bring themselves to rifle through another laundry basket.

Danny Katz is a newspaper columnist, a Modern Guru, and the author of the Little Lunch books for kids, now a new TV series on ABC3.