I know many of you, Buyers and Sellers, are worried about the economy and the market and you may be wondering whether now is a good time to put your home up for sale.
Because fewer Sellers are putting their homes on the market due to the economy and winter season, there are fewer homes to compete with. It also means that if the home is not a distressed property, that the Buyers don’t have a lot of good homes to choose from.
A perfect example is our recent experience with a new listing in Arlington. We listed the home on a Monday in early December (between $250k and $300k) and had a contract negotiated by Wednesday for 93% of the original list price…and we closed it on New Year’s Eve.
We also had a home on the market for some time, during the busy summer season, prior to the financial crisis. On the day after Christmas, we received a contract and it’s closing at the end of January.
Yes, there are homes that have been on the market awhile, but it could be a pricing issue or a property condition issue. If the home is priced “right” and clutter cleaned up, with fresh paint and clean carpets, it should sell within the average time on market for that area.
For example, in Flower Mound, between December 1, 2008 and January 7, 2009, 55 homes were sold in all price ranges, from $103,500 to $1.3 mil. Thirty-one of those homes (56%) were under $300,000 . The average time on market was 79 days and almost 30% were sold in three weeks or less!
So, don’t panic! The DFW area was the top city in the US weathering the housing storm before we hit this unusual financial crisis and we should be one of the first cities to rebound as well.