Pros and Cons of Listing Your Home in the “Winter”

Listing Home in Winter

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” to sell?

Winter can be a great time to sell your home. Especially since “winter” doesn’t typically get below 60 degrees here. Just like with any season, there are pros and cons to selling your home in the winter.

If you’ve been contemplating whether you should sell your home now or wait until the holidays wind down, we made a list of everything that you should take into consideration.

Pros

1. Buyers mean business

While more buyers are looking in the spring and summer, there are more serious buyers in the winter season. With our “winter” weather, it’s one of the most pleasurable times to be outside visiting open houses and showings. And if they are looking at homes instead of participating in holiday festivities, they probably need a home fast.

2. Less competition

Most people will wait until spring to list their home. This means the housing inventory is much lower in the winter, leaving less competition for sellers.

3. Online house hunting is year-round

As Dave Ramsey says, “the internet has no seasons.” Since most people are busy preparing for the holidays in the winter, making sure your home has a good online presence is important. Most buyers will start their search online before in person. In fact, 93% of people use the internet in their home search, according to NAR.

4. More time off = more time for buying

You might think that being the busiest time of the year that people would be too busy to stop by and look at your house. But, people tend to take more time off work around the holidays leaving more time to search for their new home. The three-day weekends in January are also popular weekends for open houses and showings.

Listing Home in Winter

Cons

1. Buyers have limited budgets

As we wrap up the end of the year, a lot of people are tied up with other financial obligations such as holiday gifts and traveling, paying taxes, and making sure their own houses and vehicles are winter-ready. This may cause a lot of buyers to not want to invest in a home at this time of year.

2. Fewer offers

Sellers tend to find themselves with multiple offers in spring and summer when buyers have more competition and need to be quick to make offers. In the winter, it’s less likely that sellers will have multiple offers.

3. More likely to reduce asking price

If your house is priced inaccurately and has been sitting on the market for a while, you may need to drop the price before spring. Or, if you wait until more homes come on the market, it may be even harder to sell at market value. If you start out at market value, you’ll have a better chance of selling for a decent price.

4. Negative connotation about listing in winter

For all of the reasons above and more, selling your home in the winter doesn’t have the best reputation and most buyers probably know this. Buyers may even think that winter sellers are desperate to sell, causing them to lowball their offers.

Whether you’re ready to list now or wait until after the holidays, we’ll be here when you’re ready. Give us a call!

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About the Author

Shannon Jones has been selling real estate since 1998 and specializes in listing and marketing homes. She has consistently been one of the top Realtors in the Long Beach area. Prior to her award-winning career in real estate with the Shannon jones Team, Shannon has had successful careers in journalism and public relations. She holds a bachelors degree from UC Irvine and a masters degree from UC Berkeley. Shannon holds E-Pro, CDPE (Certified Distressed Property Expert), and PSC (Pre-Foreclosure Specialist) certifications. Shannon is very personable and maintains a very strong moral compass, always putting the best interest of home buyers/sellers above monetary goals. A California native, Shannon enjoys gardening, travel, reading, cooking and poker when she’s not selling homes MY DESIGNATIONS Lic# 01247705 | CDPE (Certified Distressed Property Expert) | E-Pro | PSC (Pre-Foreclosure Specialist) MY SERVICE AREAS Anaheim Bellflower Buena Park Carson Cerritos Cypress Downey Fountain Valley Garden Grove Huntington Beach La Palma Lakewood Long Beach Los Alamitos Los Angeles County Norwalk Orange County Rossmoor San Pedro Seal Beach Signal Hill South Bay Westminster

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