If you’ve been thinking about selling soon, you’re probably leaning toward doing so when the spring market rolls around since it’s often considered the best time of year to sell a house. However, you might want to reconsider what constitutes the “best” time for you to sell your home.
It’s hard to qualify any specific time of year as the best time to sell, but spring probably gets ranked highest because more people tend to list their homes, and more buyers look for a home. But that doesn’t mean it’s the most strategic time to sell yours.
Listing your house well ahead of the official start of the spring market could be the most strategic thing you do in any market, but even more so given the current market conditions. Let’s take a look at five reasons you should seriously consider listing your house in January 2023:
Spring Market Actually Unofficially Begins in January
First, even defining when the spring market begins is a moving target, but March, April, and May probably sound suitable to most people.
Unless you’re in the real estate business, the chances are you wouldn’t lump January into the mix of months to describe the spring market. However, March comes pretty quickly, and agents see a lot of activity from buyers who want to buy in the spring market but start looking in January. Some of them just want to get a head start, while others want to beat their competition… and some simply want to be in their new home by spring.
Less Competition
Like early bird buyers jump into action in January to avoid competition from other buyers, homeowners who list their houses in January capitalise on less competition from other sellers waiting for spring.
Over the past couple of years, that probably didn’t matter quite as much since there weren’t enough houses for sale to keep up with the number of buyers in the market. But now that the market is shifting—and fewer buyers are competing for more listings in many areas—listing before more sellers add to the number of buyers' choices might be a wise move.
Prices Are Still Historically High
While there’s a lot of chatter about real estate prices coming down, home prices are still higher than they were last year, when costs were considered historically high. However, it also speculates that a price drop could happen depending on what happens with mortgage rates moving forward.
Whether or not home prices are actually higher, lower, or about the same depends a lot upon your area and price range. But overall, prices haven’t dived off of a cliff… yet.
Seasonally Pent Up Demand
There’s often pent-up demand from buyers after the holiday season since many of them take time off from searching during the last couple of months of the year. So when January rolls around, they can be anxious to start their search back up and find some new options on the market.
The Buyers Are More Serious
There are typically more active buyers during the official spring season, but they’re not all serious buyers. However, buyers looking at houses in January tend to be highly motivated to buy a house. So, you’re not dealing with as many lookie-loos waltzing through your home like they’re auditioning for an HGTV show.
VillaMia would love to sell your home and offers a complete and free no, obligation valuation service. For more information, contact sales@villamia.net or call 96 5794139
