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Our real estate agent tells me the worst month for looking for a home to buy in our community is December. Many people who want to sell their homes have pulled the house off the market thinking it will not sell over the holiday period. But we want to move from our rental now. But just can't find the house we are looking for at the specific price we can pay.
What month will the selection of homes for sale be at it's best in your community?
Our real estate agent tells me the worst month for looking for a home to buy in our community is December. Many people who want to sell their homes have pulled the house off the market thinking it will not sell over the holiday period. But we want to move from our rental now. But just can't find the house we are looking for at the specific price we can pay.
What month will the selection of homes for sale be at it's best in your community?
Probably in June, but be ready to pay, as there will be as much or more competition for inventory.
This is a great post, though, to alert people to the fact that buyers DO buy in winter. Higher percentage of buyers than tire-kickers.
It would be interesting to know the main reasons people list their homes in Dec/Jan and the main reasons people need to move into a new home in Dec/Jan. The only reason I can think of would be a new job requiring a move. Otherwise it seems like you are just getting homes that had been on the market a long time. Of course I'm not thinking the southern tier where winter might be the most comfortable time to be looking and packing, etc.
I've been tracking the market in my own neighborhood carefully and I can tell you that June - Sept were good for closings here, and then everything came to a stop, but now things seem to be picking up again.
June - 5 closings
July - 3 closings
August - 4 closings
Sept - 3 closings
Oct - 0
Nov - 0
Dec - probably 3 based on 3 currently pending (including us)
Our buyers want to close on Dec 30 because they are in a lease that expires 12/31 that they don't want to renew. We want to sell now because we are building a house and that is when it will be finished.
I think more people like to move in summer, especially families with kids in school, but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. People still move in other seasons. My kids will not have to change schools with our move. I don't know the ages of our buyers' kids, but maybe they aren't school-age yet, or maybe they will just deal with it.
We ultimately decided to list our home during the first week of February. We live in Texas and the winter was relatively mild, so that helped. We listed in the winter because the competition factor would also be low. I can say firsthand that there are buyers who are looking in the winter..maybe not a horde, but all it takes is one. Our home was pending at the end of the weekend, the listing barely 48 hours old. We purchased our current home at around the same time. If we had waited until the summer, we would have paid more and would not have gotten all of what we wanted. The inventory in our neighborhood is the lowest it has ever been, so even looking in the summer wouldn't have improved things.
Your agent should be able to show you inventory history going back for several years. If they can't, you need a new agent.
Out here in Vegas the best time to list is in January when we have the fewest homes on the market. The best time to buy is in May when we have the largest amount of inventory. This is year over year going back to 2009 for our market.
This year in my community the most inventory was weirdly in September. It seems a couple of homes sold in days in July/Aug so anyone who wanted to sell rushed to get their home on the market and they all hit at almost the same time in September. It took a couple of weeks to work itself out and get the inventory under contract.
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