During the winter holidays, many sellers withdraw their homes from the market or wait until after the first of the year to sell. Most often, it’s because of family visits and holiday celebrations. However in today’s market, having your home up for sale during the winter holidays can give you a competitive edge.

Serious Buyers. Only serious buyers are looking for homes during the holidays. Think about it. Would you rather be attending holiday events and getting your shopping done, or driving around in the rain and cold looking at homes? For buyers, their dedication and commitment to the home buying process during this time makes them perhaps more serious buyers than the summer tire-kickers. Most buyers start their search on the internet and will spend their holiday break surfing the web looking for homes. With more free time, buyers and their families will spend more time dreaming about what they will do in 2013. Why not give them a great home website created by M Realty to fall in love with?

Less competition. As other sellers take their homes off the market, this creates less competition for those committed buyers. With fewer homes to consider, buyers will be more likely to spend time looking at your home. This will shift in January as more sellers trickle back into the market, slowly increasing back up to normal levels by the beginning of March.

Moving up before prices increase.  The market appears to have hit bottom in 2012.  From here, the market will likely begin to move back up as foreclosures decrease and normal houses return to the market.  Ask yourself, “what is the cost of waiting until I know for sure?”  Given a 3% annual increase in the market, a $250,000 house will gain $7,500 in value, while a $500,000 house will gain $15,000 in value.  Your leverage in buying up to the next level house is much higher in actual dollars.

Holiday decorations. If you are already moving furniture and personal times to put up holiday decorations, it’s also a great time to clean behind the couch or sideboard. And the temporary storage for your personal items is the same as it is when having your home professionally staged. Give me a call to have my professional stager help you with both your holiday decorations and staging your home for sale at the same time. Buyers are emotional during the holidays. Capitalize on their emotions by using high quality holiday decorations to showcase what your home has to offer—in turn letting buyers experience the dream of living in your home.

Higher appraisal values.  Recent strong sales support the rising appraisal values of homes. With the market increase in sales of normal homes, now is the best time to sell. The percentage of bank-owned and foreclosure homes has shrunk, giving appraisers more information on the sale of regular homes as they begin to increase in value for the first time in over five years.