5 Reasons to Keep Your Home Listed During the Holidays

December 12th, 2009 by Anne West
Categories: Selling a home

house with wreath

You’re busy, you’re stressed, you’re way behind on your holiday shopping. Keeping the house neat 24/7 is taking its toll. The last thing you want to be bothered with is keeping the house show-ready for potential buyers when you’re trying to cook, clean, decorate, entertain, shop and wrap for the holidays.

“Can’t we just take a break for a couple of weeks?” clients always ask me. “Surely no one is actually looking at real estate in December. Do I really need to keep my home on the market over the holidays?”

The answer I always give is: “How badly do you want to sell?” Because here’s the thing. It’s true there are fewer buyers at this time of year. No one in their right mind wants to look for real estate during the holidays. Unless, that is, they HAVE to buy, and buy SOON. So that brings me to reason #1 for keeping your house on the market:

If people are looking at real estate in December, they are SERIOUS buyers and not the lookie-loos who have been traipsing through your house for the last few months. If you can gut it out for the next few weeks you might actually get an offer when you least expect it. Wouldn’t that be a nice Christmas present?
The corollary to reason #1 is that many sellers do go ahead and take their homes off the market over the holidays, which means there is less inventory on the market. Which means you have less competition for those few SERIOUS BUYERS.
Although it’s stressful for you to keep the house tidy with so much else going on, the fact is that your house will probably show better now, with holiday decorations up, than it will during the bleak months of January, February and March. Plus, all the warmth and cheer evoked by (appropriate) holiday decorating can strike an emotional chord with your buyer, subliminally conveying the wonderful lifestyle they will enjoy in this home. Just make sure you decorate the right way to evoke those positive emotions.
Think about this: if you are able to sell your home now and plan to buy another, you’ll be able to take your pick of the vast inventory of homes that will hit the MLS in the spring. In all likelihood, interest rates will still be low early in the year so you’ll win on the financing end too.
If the first four reasons didn’t convince you, just remember: It won’t sell if it’s not on.

Tags: home selling tips, Real estate, selling my home over the holidays

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 11:39 am and is filed under Selling a home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.