PLEASE NOTE we are now brokered by eXp Realty. Call or text Alisha Collins, eXp Realty at 307-247-1806 or email at alisha@casperpowerhouse.com We are excited to talk with you!
Should I Sell During the Holidays? I am often asked by potential sellers if should put their home on the market during December and even January! Watch below to find out.
I have been asked by lots of people, if they should list their home during the holidays, they fear that maybe the market slowed down so that they shouldn’t list it, or nobody will look because it’s the holidays or maybe they have all their holiday decorations out and they shouldn’t list because of that. Well, I recently read an article and brought a lot of ideas from Inman online about why you should actually list right now during the holidays.
We are recording this video from a cute little setup that we’re going to use for photos, for our clients, Christmas pictures. And we’re doing that this weekend. So we’re super excited about it. So I thought I would use it for a video so we could get a little bit more out of it. So we’ll show it to you and you’ll love it too, but it was really fun to do and put together for our clients.
Okay. Thank you so much for watching us on YouTube. We love connecting with you and we’re just going to get right into why this is actually a great time to sell.
The first thing is that people who are looking during the holidays, they are much more serious. Think about all the things that we have to get done during the holidays. Shopping, wrapping, decorating our houses. We’re invited to parties. We have to cook all those things. So they’re busy with that, but they also want to look at your house. So that’s why it makes them serious. This really is the time of year that there are the most excuses not to house hunt. So they’re looking, we need to get them in there.
Number two, in the winter, there are less homes on the market, making it great because you don’t have as much competition. According to a national association of realtors study, there is a larger share of homeowners that will be putting their house on the market in the spring. So you want to take advantage of this hot sellers market right now. A sellers market means that there’s less than six months of inventory on the market. If we did not list one more house, that’s how long it would take to sell those homes. We are hovering around one month of inventory. So it is a very strong sellers market.
Also, there are less than 120 homes on the market in Casper. currently. Now this changes every day because we are putting some of their contracts and we are adding more that are active new listings to the market. So this is a great time to list your home. When there’s less inventory on the market, buyers have less choices. So if they have to buy a home, your home has less competition and we want your home to have less competition. This really is a supply and demand principle. So the demand is high. The supply is low. You end up getting more money for your home. Now I will say here, little caveat, that we still have to price your home competitively. It cannot be 50,000 over what the market bears and still sell. So I wanted to point that out.
Number three, your home shows better during the holidays. A lot of us live a little cluttered. We have things that, you know, we’re going to mend or wash or fold laying all over. In the holiday time, we don’t have that as much because we have just cleaned to put up our Christmas tree or cleaned the counter off to wrap our gifts. And so it’s a lot easier to get ready to sell your home during the holidays because of that. Also you’ve heard me say before. When you show your home, you want all the lights on, you want your house warm and inviting. And when we have Christmas lights leading the way up to your home, it is inviting. Then they opened the door and they see this gorgeous Christmas tree and the gifts around it.
It really pulls on their emotional heartstrings, which leads me to number four. Buyers are more connected with their emotions during the holiday time, home brings such an emotional connection in any way, especially since the pandemic and people are more attached to their homes than they ever have been before. Before the pandemic, 58% of people said that they were emotionally connected to their home. And after the pandemic, it’s now 70%. We spend a lot more time in our homes. Some of us are working from our houses. We’re exercising at our houses. We’re not going out to eat as much, all of those things. So that creates that emotional connection to our homes and buyers really feel that as they’re walking through your home. And like I said on the last one, because of that, because we have all of our decorations up, it just evokes so much emotion.
Number five during the holidays, it’s easier to restrict the time of showings because the buyers are more serious. Now you’ve all heard me say before that you don’t want to restrict times. I think this is the only time of the year that you can do it. And you can only do it a little bit please because we don’t want to lose that buyer. So we do want to make it. We do want to have attractive times for people to show it, but it is more acceptable to restrict those times.
Now, if you’re saying, Alisha, there is no way I’m selling right now, I have too much going on. Then at least start planning for when you are going to list your house. If there’s more competition in the spring, you want to make sure your house is in ship-shape condition. You don’t want any peeling paint. You want your floors to be in great condition. All the things that it takes to get your house, to stand out in a crowd of houses. And I would love to help you do that. One of my very favorite things in real estate is to come into someone’s house and help them decide what they’re going to do to increase the value or make it sell quicker and stand out in that crowd. So I would love to help you do that now. Also, I want to wish you the happiest of holidays. If you need anything from us, please reach out. Merry Christmas.