Selling A House Charleston SC: Sweet Spot For Sellers

 

It’s NCAA Tournament time, so what does that have to do with selling a house Charleston SC?

In a recent article by Catherine Sherman on AOL Real Estate titled “March Madness To The Masters: The Best Time To Sell A House”, explains that mid-March to mid-April is the sweet spot nationally for home owners to list their house for sale.

This information is based on research from a new book: “Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate,” by co-authors Spencer Rascoff and Stan Humphries, and the research finds that home owners that list in this “magic window” end up selling faster and for more money:

“The data shows homes sold from mid-March to mid-April sell around 15 percent faster and for 2 percent more than the average listing. That’s a national premium worth more than $4,000. And in hot markets like San Francisco, that could mean an extra $22,000 in your pocket.”

Why is this a “magic window”?

First, you leapfrog the competition. The majority of home shoppers are online, and they utilize many popular real estate listing sites like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com.

These sites refresh listings several times a day, and the more listings that are added mean more refreshes. This pushes existing listings further down the results page.

The biggest surge in listings occurs at the end of February and into early March. After this initial surge, newly added listings stand a better chance of showing up and staying near the top of the search results.

Another reason is that during this time frame, buyers are more serious. Prior to this, buyers are basically kicking the tires. However, as Spring heats up, so do buyers.

Signs that buyers are turning more serious about their home search is that they begin to contact real estate agents and mortgage lenders for pre approval. According to the article:

“Data shows agent and lender contacts build in early April, so this is a good time to put your home on the market if you want to attract serious buyers.”

The article also explains why this “magic window” allows home sellers to sell faster and for more money:
“After Jan. 1, the first significant drop in the time listings typically spend on the market is in late March. This is also when the difference between final sale prices and list prices is highest. Overall, listing during the magic window is your best bet for maximizing your satisfaction with your home sale.“

The article makes some good points, although I think there is a lot of information out there that suggests that serious buyers are already out there.

It’s no secret that buyer demand is strong right now, but we are short on inventory.

Smart sellers have already listed, but for those that haven’t the next few weeks are still prime time to get on the market.

Here’s an infographic I shared in previous posts, but it shows that buyer demand is strong:

This information comes from Google Trends and shows that the search term “buying a home” is a very popular search right now.

Then there are other indicators, such as Foot Traffic.

This is a measure of the amount of people actively out looking at houses. Here are the latest stats for Foot Traffic:

Those numbers were way up in December and January, and this is well before the typical April buyer coming out party.

In fact, buyer activity for January 2015 is three times greater over last January:

If you are thinking about selling your home, chances are you have done some research already.

You are probably aware that both nationally and locally housing inventory is needed to catch up to the hot buyer demand that already exists.

 

 

So How Does This Apply To Selling A House Charleston SC?

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons for the “magic window” mentioned in the article and see how they apply to the Charleston SC market.

First, here is a look at new listings over the last few years:

Right on cue, each January saw a big spike in new listings. It is interesting that for each year, the biggest month for new listings in Charleston has been March. There isn’t a large drop off in April, either.

Here’s a look at the Average Days On The Market (DOM):

As you can see, that number has been coming down over the last few years. In Charleston, the Average DOM has dropped in March each year, but that number basically kept dropping throughout the year.

Here’s a look at the Percentage of Original Price:

This number also has been on an upward trend, and mostly has gone up through March and April.

Based on the local Charleston data, it does appear that we are approaching our sweet spot for selling a house Charleston SC.

Of course, as I always preach, it is important to price your home right and to make sure your home is ready to sell. Do these simple things and you can take advantage of the market conditions to get your home sold fast–and for top dollar.

If you are thinking about selling your house, then bee sure to visit my Pam Marshall Realtor website. After all, another important factor in selling a house Charleston SC is hiring the right Realtor.