5 Ways to Pick the Perfect Time to Sell
By (reprinted)
Choosing the right time to list your home can make all the difference.
There’s a season for everything — including real estate.
If
you’re gearing up to list your home for sale, you should connect with your
agent to discuss your home sale action plan. But there are also a
number of calendar-based factors you should be just as thoughtful about as you
put together your plan for selling.
Here
are five calendars that should be on every home seller’s radar.
1. The academic calendar
Families
with school-age children often find it less disruptive to house-hunt in late
spring/early summer with the aim of moving in before school starts. Of course,
we all know what they say about the best-laid plans, so by no means should you let
this stop you from listing your home at another time of year.
Demand
for homes with convenient proximity to strong schools can increase during
the summer school break and around other times of year when kids are not in
school.
2. The tax calendar
I
cannot count the number of relatively unmotivated looky-loo buyers I’ve worked
with over the years who became suddenly motivated from a massive, looming tax
bill. For instance, many new professionals will seek to close escrow on homes
between the time they graduate and the end of that same year, in an effort to
deduct their closing costs and mortgage interest from their new large incomes
and avoid a big tax bill the following April. Similarly, just after tax time in
April, a flood of newly motivated buyers come into the market, advised by their
CPAs that the mortgage interest deduction is their best bet for not having to write
as big a check to the IRS next year.
Fortunately
for sellers, more buyers and more motivation means more demand and can
translate into a faster sale at a higher price than at other times of the year.
3. The weather calendar
Many
sellers who live in cold-weather climates are aware that wintry conditions can
dramatically cut down the numbers of buyers who are out viewing properties.
This is why buyer searches for homes on Trulia peak in January in warm-weather states
like Hawaii and Florida —
and not until after the spring thaw in the Midwest, the South, the Northeast,
and most of the West.
The
combination of what’s happening with the weather and the specific features of
your home can interact to impact your home’s prospects for sale — and its
ultimate sale price. Behavioral economics researchers have found that homes
with swimming pools (and water slides, perhaps?) sell for more in the
summertime than they do in winter.
“When
it is sweltering outside, a swimming pool just looks attractive. There’s an
emotional connection because it reminds us of fun times we have in the summer,”
says Jaren Pope, assistant professor of economics at Brigham Young University.
So if
it’s summer and you’re selling a home with ski slope access, you might want to
paint the picture of a cozy, fun-filled winter by staging the place with ski
gear and other items that help prospective buyers visualize how much fun
they’ll have when winter comes. And vice versa: If it’s winter and you’re
selling a house with a pool, consider making sure it
is steamy and heated, if it has those features. Stage it with lounges, towels,
lights — anything that showcases the pool to offset a cold-weather buyer’s
psychological tendency to discount the appeal of a pool in the winter.
4. The holiday calendar
During
the holidays, many buyers simply prefer to spend their downtime celebrating
with family and friends versus. house hunting, especially in locales where the
winters are wet or cold. Nationwide, December is the slowest month of the year
for home searches, and November is the second-slowest.
Does
this mean the holidays are a bad time to have your house on the market? Not
necessarily. Some homes show beautifully when all lit up and tastefully dressed
up for the holidays. And the truth is that there is a hardy contingent of
buyers motivated to close by year’s end for tax purposes, every year in every
market. While buyers might be fewer in number, those who will brave rain,
sleet, and snow and forgo holiday parties to house-hunt can be some of the most
motivated buyers of all.
5. The Gregorian calendar
We’re
talking about the regular old January-through-December calendar here.
Home
buying tends to be a popular resolution among those with money on their minds
at the beginning of the year — and also among people looking forward to career
promotions, developing their love and family relationships, or relocating to a
new hometown. Make sure your home is well-represented on sites like Trulia at
the beginning of the year, when these life- and financial-change visionaries
start searching for their next nests.
Do you feel like the seasons or calendar had or would have an
impact on your home purchase or sale? Share your comments,
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