Halloween is the Witching Hour for Real Estate Sales

 Every year at this time I repost the same advice:  If you are looking to buy real estate, we are now approaching the very best time of the year to do so.  Buyers will get the lowest prices, and the lowest interest rates, between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

It's not rocket science.  Sellers who have had their homes on the market are more likely to do the expedient thing and accept an offer before the holiday season.  Often, that offer is lower than it would have been in the spring, where there is more competition for buyers.  When considering that lower offer, people who already have another home, be it a vacation/winter home or a relocation move, start factoring in the cost of keeping their current house through the winter.  Heating and plowing are two big concerns, and they both can take mental energy as well.  With the end of the tax year looming, they may also decide to take either their gains or their losses; as we know, any deadline will do, when someone is making a decision they find difficult.  December 31st is a clear finish line for many things, and home sales are no different.

Because the volume of unit sales is lower, and because most businesses plan for down time at the holidays, the closing process can progress more quickly at the end of the year, so don't be discouraged if you haven't bought yet.  There is still time!  But don't delay--not every offer goes through, not every inspection turns out well, and other obstacles can arise.  It helps to think of early November as the deadline for signing a contract.

Will COVID change this traditional pattern?  I doubt it.  With more time this year, due to fewer family gatherings and virtually no parties (that aren't virtual--pun intended), sellers can do what's necessary to close, more easily than in prior years. There are even homeowners who have used this pandemic to do major clearing out and decluttering--sadly for me, I am not among them, but I do have clean house envy.  In a telecommuting world, it's important to be able to work from your home, and you are certainly spending more time in it. 

And that's the final factor for this year's prediction--people will be willing to do more work on purchased homes, so that they can nest comfortably going forward.  Their biggest selection criterion will remain location, but that will include open space and distancing.  If a home has those elements, potential drawbacks may matter less. Plus, supply is lower, increasing the likelihood that inspections may loosen up.  All of this should convince possible sellers to go for it.  There's no time like the present!  

Quantifying the Qualitative

We spent time this morning in a sales meeting, talking about how to help buyers and sellers evaluate multiple bids or properties.  We are beginning to develop spreadsheets, which we can use to list all the factors important in choosing a property, as a way to help buyers decide when and on what property to make an offer.  There are obvious factors that matter in all real estate decisions, like location. 


So, here's the rub.  Location, which we would weigh very heavily in any purchase decision, is not a black and white criterion, as, say, town/city sewers would be.  It's influenced by a buyer's own opinion about what he/she would like to be near--open space, public transportation, good schools, or other factors.  Then why is it still useful, when someone is using opinion to come up with a weighted number for location?


Because it helps us, and ultimately the buyer, to begin to narrow his/her list of important considerations.  He/she may come in asking for something at a certain price, but decide that, in order to get other benefits, the price range has to increase.  Or, for instance, square footage could matter less than how that square footage is laid out.  Sometimes we even see cases where people end up choosing the exact opposite of what they came in saying that they wanted to buy.  Those people may just have a gut reaction (which is admittedly very hard to pin a number on), which is both persistent and consistent, and that may end up being the tiebreaker.


And what does the agent add to the process?  It ends up being very useful to have seen this played out many, many times.  We begin to develop a sense of what will ultimately prevail, and often long before the buyer sees it.  Also, in the same way that teaching something is the best way to learn it, it's helpful for the buyer to have to explain to us what he/she is thinking, and that explanation frequently crystallizes his/her thinking. 


Where are we going with this?  We're still working on templates for both residential and commercial buyers, plus ones for sellers in multi-offer situations.  Like as not, it will always be a work in process, but will become a valuable timesaving, clarifying tool for our clients.