5 Reasons To Sell Your Home In Winter
Most people think of spring and summer as the best time to sell a home, but this can actually work to your advantage if you want to list your home in the winter instead. Here are five great reasons to sell your home this winter instead of holding off:
Fewer Listings
Since spring and summer are the most popular times of year to list a house, you will most likely have much less competition in the winter months. A prospective buyer who may not have bought your home in the summer when they had many more homes to choose from is more likely to buy it in the winter.
Sell Faster
Because there are fewer homes to choose from, your home may sell much faster than when it's on the market with many more homes. In addition, everyone from real estate agents to title specialists are likely to be less busy in the winter, leaving them more time to work on your home sale. This can make for an especially fast and efficient home selling process.
Sell For More Money
Studies have shown that homes tend to sell for more during the cold winter months than in the spring and summer. When there are fewer homes to choose from, buyers may feel as though they have less bargaining power. In addition, many people who have to move during the winter just want to get into a new home quickly and therefore do not want to spend time negotiating for lower prices.
Landscaping Not as Time-Consuming
In the summer, staging a home involves a heavy emphasis on landscaping, including frequent mowing and watering, planting new flower beds, and other time-consuming tasks. In the winter in most areas of the country, no one is expecting to see tons of greenery and flowers, and in fact your whole yard may be covered by snow anyway. Simply keep the front of your house tidy, shovel and deice the driveway and sidewalk, sweep the porch, and hang a festive wreath on the front door.
More Serious Buyers
Most people are very busy over the holidays, and seeing a bunch of houses in the winter can be inconvenient and uncomfortable due to weather conditions. This means that the prospective buyers who come to see your home are less likely to casually "window shop" and more likely to have serious intentions of buying a home quickly.
By listing your home in winter, you will be going against conventional wisdom, but you may benefit from doing so. For more information, talk to a real estate agent.