Traditionally speaking, the holiday season is a time for family, generosity, gift-giving, and certainly lots of indulgences. However, as it relates to real estate, the holidays aren’t necessarily a time when people are especially interested in making moves.
However, just because real estate isn’t always top-of-mind for most around the holidays doesn’t mean it isn’t an enticing and opportune time to act for those who are motivated to move. In fact, it can actually be one of the last best times to complete a transaction before the springtime.
So, if you’ve been waiting to sell your home and you’ve been wondering if listing during the holiday season is a good idea or not, here are a few reasons why it might be better for you to sell now rather than wait for spring when the market traditionally picks up again.
The Holiday Market: What To Expect
As we noted above, real estate isn’t necessarily front-of-mind for most around the holidays, and we completely understand why. Homeowners and ambitious future homeowners probably have a lot more going on around the holidays that are more pertinent than their immediate real estate plans.
However, that means that those who are still actively searching for a new home in the real estate market this time of year will have an added element of intent to their search. Although there may be fewer potential buyers actively looking for homes, those who are looking at listings over the holidays are usually much more serious about buying.
That means that if you’re a seller, you’ll know that any guests you welcome for a home showing will likely be easier to convert into concrete bidders if they like your home. And, the key thing to remember about the holiday season is, one thing everyone has more of this time of year is down-time.
If you’re thinking about selling your home over the holidays, there’s a good chance you’ll also be thinking about whether you should buy a new home first. To help you make a decision on what’s best for you, read our blog post “Planning A Move? Is It Better To Buy Or Sell First?” for our guidance.
When hopeful future buyers spend more time together in close quarters around the house, it usually doesn’t take long for the conversation to return to their upcoming real estate goals. From there, online listings pages tend to become one of the first things they turn to for inspiration and entertainment.
That’s why sellers who have their homes listed during the holidays generally receive quite a fair bit of traffic online, and specifically from buyers with free time and intent.
When you’re working on a specific selling schedule, being organized and efficient can make or break your sale. Find out more about what you need to do to prepare your home for sale this holiday season by reading through our informative guides here:
Preparing Your Home For Sale
Although your listing might have the advantage of receiving attention from a buyer audience with more time and intent on their hands than usual, you as a seller still need to put in the work required to prepare your home as best you can. Even though it might be the holiday season and you probably have a lot of personal plans yourself, the importance of preparing your home and bringing it to its best possible condition is even more imperative.
With a fewer concentration of homes listed for sale online, the opportunity to have yours stand out from the crowd and earn the most interest from potential buyers is there for the taking. And, knowing that most buyers will be browsing listings online to start out with while it’s cold outside, your digital marketing efforts will be even more influential to the success of your sale than usual.
In order to receive the highest possible return from your sale, you need to know what your home is worth in today’s market. And in order to do that, you’ll need to get an accurate assessment from a real estate professional. If you’re thinking about selling your home in the near future, Get A Free Home Evaluation here by our team of experienced real estate professionals.
However, digital marketing efforts can only take you so far when selling a home. It’s only once buyers are actually able to come and see your home in person that they’ll be able to make a confident decision about making an offer for your property.
Keeping your schedule as flexible as possible in order to host home showings is critical to any sale, but especially so for sellers during the holidays as showing times can vary when potential buyers have more free time on their hands.
This isn’t necessarily an inconvenience, however, because, like most other people, you’re also likely to have more free time around the holidays as well. Along with having more of an open schedule to host showings, there’ll also be more opportunities for you to lean on friends and family for help when you need to keep out of your house during showings.
With a bit of holiday hospitality from friends and family, you’ll be able to organize temporary accommodation for you and your family much easier than at a normal time of the year.
Are you considering listing your parent’s home for sale sometime soon? Make sure you’re ready to take on the task by reading our guide on How To Sell Your Parents’ Home here.
Holiday Decor
Just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean sellers can forget about other home preparations either — and that includes things like decluttering, cleaning, painting, and staging. That being said, however, sellers should always want their properties to feel ‘home-y’ and appealing to real buyers, especially around the holidays when households are usually in the full festive spirit.
When staging a home for sale during the holiday season, it’s important to keep in mind that typical seasonal decor tends to include more festive decorations this time of year. Don’t get us wrong though — we’re definitely not advocating for sellers to go full-on Santa’s Workshop with their staging.
This is where the conversation on classy vs trendy holiday decor becomes so important. We find it’s best to steer clear of any over-the-top, excessively showy holiday decorations like bright, sparkling rainbow lights, elaborate ornaments, or giant inflatable snowmen, for example.
Instead, adopt the holiday spirit around your home with more reserved, traditional, decorations like simple symmetrical white string lights, a classically-inspired bushy door wreath, or some professionally-arranged urns, planters, or pots from a florist’s.
The idea here is to keep things simple and classy, and definitely in no way overly religious. You want your listing to appeal to the widest audience of potential buyers possible. If you want to create an environment for visiting buyers where they can walk through your home and get excited about imagining their future lives there, you can’t display any controversial holiday decor that might detract from that experience.
Staging is just one of the several important preparatory tasks a listing needs if sellers want to sell their home for its highest possible value. Learn more about staging and everything else you need to do to get your home ready for a successful sale here:
Safety
Depending on where your home is located, chances are you’ll also have to deal with some less-than-ideal weather conditions when selling your home during the holiday season as well. While a beautiful blanket of snow on the ground is often welcome around the time of Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years’ Eve, winter weather isn’t so pretty when it gets in the way of regularly hosting visitors for home showings.
That’s why the element of safety is also vitally important when selling your home this time of year, though it only takes a few simple tasks to get your home up to showing-ready condition.
The first rule is rather straightforward — if you’ve got snow in areas of high visitor traffic like your driveway, sidewalk, or walkways, make sure you either shovel or plow it out of the way ahead of each showing. Ideally, you’ll also lay down a light sprinkling of salt or sand in these areas too to prevent ice from forming underfoot.
On the topic of ice, don’t forget to make sure there’s no risk of any falling from your roof or gutters around the house either, most importantly above or near any doorways. And finally, it’s also advisable to have a few towels on-hand near your main entrances. This way, visitors can wipe off their boots, coats, and any other wet and snow-ridden cold-weather apparel before walking through and creating any potentially slippery areas in your home.
With the holiday season right around the corner, there’s no time to waste before getting your home on the market. Take your sale to the next stage, Book A Seller’s Consultation here with our team today.
