Botox and a brownstone? Boston-area real estate agents are hosting lavish open houses.

Thinly sliced mortadella covered the dining room table at an open house for a penthouse condo in a modern, six-unit East Boston building.

After rolling out craft paper, Alexis Cervasio, owner of East Boston Oysters, draped about 10 pounds of the meat across the table. On top, she placed shells filled with bright green Castelvetrano olives. Her new thing is adding dollops of burrata and laying fresh baguettes diagonally. From a distance, the layout resembles a pale pink tablecloth.

“The host feels so good because the guests are saying, ‘Oh my God, this is the best showing we’ve ever been to,’” said Cervasio.

She was hired to turn a realtor’s open house into a curated event. During the COVID pandemic, agents couldn’t host open houses for about two years. That happened at the beginning of a cycle of volatility in the real estate market that continues to shift due to everything from wars and oil prices to elections and housing shortages.

“It’s been an uphill battle, at least on the sales side,” said Sarah Maguire, principal of the Aronson Maguire Group at Compass. “So we started to have to get very creative.”

Throughout Boston, real estate agents are getting savvier when it comes to getting potential buyers and their agents through the doors of open houses. But a free glass of cheap wine and a cheese board doesn’t pull the weight that it used to. As a result, agents are going to tremendous lengths to curate custom events that engage the community, attract unlikely guests, and satisfy builders who want to see a successful return on their investment.

Realizing that free beers and a gift certificate weren’t going to do the trick, Maguire’s team leaned into special events. To highlight a new build in Dorchester, it hired Red Oyster to walk around the open house shucking oysters with pails of empty shells hanging from their matching aprons. The event was a hit.

“They were running around literally shoving oysters down people’s throats with all the accouterments,” said Maguire. “People loved it.”

For another listing that went up between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Maguire needed to drum up interest for three units in a Jamaica Plain development.

“It’s the absolute worst time to sell anything,” said Maguire. “We’re like, what the hell are we going to do? No one’s buying anything. Rates are through the roof.”

Maguire and her team came up with the idea of hosting a holiday market inside the development featuring local makers from Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, and Roslindale. Vendors sold everything from knitted hats to homemade dog treats throughout the three units. Ultimately, the sale of the units set price records.

“Our sellers need to see that we’re trying to do everything we possibly can to get people through the door,” said Maguire, who has also hosted open houses featuring bouquet-making bars, Botox, a gelato stand, and a tarot card reader.

When the builder of Diana Lannon’s listing told her they wanted the open house for a recently constructed $2.8 million home to be “something like the ones on ‘Million Dollar Listing,’” the popular Bravo real estate show, she knew she had her work cut out for her.

“The reason 100 people show up to an open house on ‘Million Dollar Listing’ is that they’re going to be on TV,” said Lannon, an agent with Gibson Sotheby’s Realty. “I needed to get the most attention on this property.”

But the $2.8 million listing was on the pricier side for Sudbury, and it was in the middle of January, when getting people to leave their homes is tough. Lannon knew she’d have to come up with an unusual idea to reel in attention from people in neighboring suburbs and the city. Knowing a new medspa was opening in town, she came up with the idea for a “Botox and Bubbles” event. She paid for the first few units of Botox and asked interested people — who were invited to the open house on Paperless Post invitations — to sign up ahead of time.

“People from the local area were going to come, but I needed people from the city,” Lannon said. “I needed agents who have higher-end buyers that are selling their $1.5 million or $2 million condo in the city, and want to come to the suburbs, but they want something brand new and luxury.”

There were a few negative reactions. Lannon even received a few “nasty” emails. But on the day of the event, attendees were greeted by champagne and a spread of food from Baker’s Best in Needham. The fireplace glowed, and music played in the background. The medspa was set up in the home office, so guests could get injections in privacy. For a broker open house that typically yields eight agents, around 40 people came through the door, including agents from nearby towns like Wellesley and Lexington.

“They never would have come if I didn’t do that,” she said.

So is investing the time — and significant money — in turning an open house into a custom event worth it?

“It depends on what it is that you’re trying to sell,” said Maguire. “What’s the product? What’s the price point? Where’s the location? Sometimes we have to do these things to appease our sellers. The potential commission that we’re making from it has to be enough for us to cover the cost. These things cost thousands of dollars. The risk has to be worth it.”

Megan Johnson

Correspondent

Megan Johnson is a Boston-based writer and reporter whose work appears in People, Architectural Digest, The Boston Globe, and more.