What should we expect from our spring market in 2019? Specifically, what should sellers do to prepare for it?
We started 2019 with a great spike in activity, and my team and I sold a handful of properties that had been on the market for months. With that in mind, my advice for sellers as we move toward spring is to list your house as soon as possible.
While it’s true that the weather is better come springtime, buyers are out shopping for homes all year long. You may need to work around bouts of extreme cold, but it’s important for your home to be on the market even if the market isn’t great.
Buyers can be difficult, and they like to look at houses online before seeing them in person, so your first order of business should be to make your home’s online listing photos look perfect. Also, don’t go overboard with how many photos you use. When I take photos of a home, I usually don’t use more than 15 or 20 shots unless it’s a luxury home or a new construction home. Why? You don’t need to document every inch of your house, and if a buyer sees a bathroom that needs to be redone, they’ll count that as a reason not to look at the house in person.
“My advice for sellers as we move toward spring is to list your house as soon as possible.”
Another thing you can consider doing is virtual staging. I don’t always do this with my sellers because I find it to be a little deceptive, but it does help attract buyers. For example, one of my sellers has a house with carpeted floors, but underneath the carpet is hardwood, so that’s what we showed in the home’s pictures.
As with every other time of year, you also need to make sure you price your home correctly. If your home is still unsold when June or July rolls around because it’s priced too high, you might end up in a race to the bottom with other panicked home sellers who have to slash their prices and ride the market down. The trick is to get under the market—not ride it down.
Overall, I predict that we’ll see the same type of spring market this year that we saw last year. In the meantime, we’re off to a pretty good start and we’ll see how the rest of February goes.
If you have any more questions about our upcoming spring market or you’re thinking of buying or selling a home soon, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to help you.
