Should You List Your Home Winter? | Tristan and his WHITEBOARD LIVE!

Should You List Your Home in Winter? 

Tristan and his WHITEBOARD - LIVE!

 
Should you list your home in the winter?  Or keep it active through the Holiday Season?

Hi everybody!  This is Tristan Emond with Mindful Living Realty.

Welcome back to Tristan and his WHITEBOARD - LIVE!

Today we're going to talk about something that's pretty important as we're getting close to the holiday season and winter. And that question is: should you keep your home on the market or should you list your property through the holidays and the winter time?  And the answer actually is - it depends!  (of course, right?)

Less Competition

My first point for the reason that you should keep your home on the market or still list your property is there is less competition.  You've got people that are like "You know, I'm just gonna wait till spring to list my home because it's the busy season...  blah blah blah.”

But there people that are coming into town and they need to buy home in December. So, if yours is only one of the “X” number that are available, you have a better chance of getting yours sold…because you didn't take it off the market and wait until spring to sell.

That might give you the best reason right there for keeping your home on the market.

If your home isn't on the market, you're not going to be able to sell the thing right?

Now, I don't want to be the one to say this is definitely going to happen for you.  Some Decemebers are great.  We've had great Januarys where we sold a lot of homes. But there have also been Januarys and Decembers where home sales are really, really slow.

Now typically, it does tend to slow down and the market will pick back up again in Spring. But if you list in the Spring with everybody else, then your competition is a lot higher, so you may not sell your home at that time either.

If your property is one that's been sitting on the market for awhile and you might just need that extra amount of time frame to get that buyer to come along at the right time.

Holiday Cheer

The other point to consider is Holiday Cheer.

If it's a very festive year - people are busy partying and having a good time going to people's houses and doing that kind of thing, real estate has a tendency to slow.  People are out doing other things that they enjoy more. However, if it's kind of one of those bah humbug sort of years, people are out buying, people are out selling, things happen in business a little more in those type of years.  Now of course that's kind of hard to judge, but it is a good point to realize how that happens.

Time Frame

And the third point of course is your time frame.  How soon do you need to sell? Where you at in your life as far as getting the property sold.

If it's something like "Well, you know, I can still next year, no big deal." Then you might consider not wanting to move during the winter and list in the Spring.  Certainly, up to you and how that works for you.

But if you need to sell and you really looking forward to get that property gone, you probably should keep it listed on the market because, as I said before, you can't sell if it isn't listed.

So those are my three points for selling during the winter for you to think about and for you determine what you might want to do.

If you have any questions please get a hold of us. We can look at the numbers and give you some ideas on how things work for where you are at in your neighborhood and how things have been selling.

Thanks again for watching Tristan and his WHITEBOARD. We will talk to you next time!

Tristan and his WHITEBOARD - LIVE! | Seller's Personal Property | 2018 [video]

Tristan and his WHITEBOARD - LIVE!

 

Seller's Personal Property...a "Please Do" Episode!

Hello everybody. Welcome to Tristan and his WHITEBOARD - LIVE! Today we're gonna talk about personal property - a "Please Do" topic!

And we'll talk more about that after, of course, we get to the joke of the day.:

Why didn't the melons get married?

Simple, they cantaloupe.  Can't elope...

So let's talk a little bit about personal property.  The reason I'm bringing this up is I've had a few scenarios the past few deals, the past few months, where we've had to deal with personal property, especially as it relates to sellers removing said personal property.

First of all, what is personal property?

Personal property is anything that is not attached to the property.  Normally your refrigerator, your stove, your washer and dryer, those things will be transferred via bill of sale.

But then, you also have your furniture and your clothes and your stuff inside. Of course, you're like, “Yeah, I'm moving that stuff, don't worry about that!”

I’m talking today more about here is the stuff outside the home. In the garage, in the shed, around the shed, behind the shed....those paver blocks that you bought way back when and didn't quite finish the patio. That wood that you used to fix the deck and never got around to fixing the deck…(I'm talking about me here.) All these things that are outside that you need to make sure are removed.

Purchase Agreement Says...

The Purchase Agreement that will be in place will state: You must remove all personal property from the property.

I state again, ALL.  That means all of the lumber, all of the bricks, everything that's there on the property should be removed prior to closing.

Now, you're going to say, “Well this is some good stuff here. I've got paint, I've got shingles, I've got this…” Here’s what I recommend to you:  take a picture of it, send it to me and I'll ask the buyers if they want it. If they want it, great! Score!  If not, you can use that same picture, post it on Facebook, post it on Craigslist - say “free come and get it” or put a price on it, and it will be gone in no time. That shouldn't be any problem as long is it’s decent stuff.

Now - We need to talk about then how to get rid of said stuff.

Tip number one, start early.

Trust me, you've got more stuff outside and in the garage and in the shed than you think you do. It's going to take longer to get rid of some of that stuff than you imagine.  So start the process before you list or right after you start the listing.

Definitely start before you get a purchase agreement, because it's all going to have to go. Even if it doesn't sell, hey - you've cleaned up all the junk out of your property. It's a win-win, right?

It doesn't matter what happens, it's good to start early, get working through your stuff, seeing what's there and get rid of it.

Tip number two.  Resources.

I've got a couple of resources for you. One of them is an app. It's called the “My Waste App”. You download this app on android or iPhone, and you can put in Rapid City, and there's a cool little button, it's called “Where Does This Go”.   You can determine from there where you need to deposit trash or otherwise get rid of certain items.

For instance, if you put in there "refrigerator", it'll tell you, you can't take this to the dump because it's got Freon in it, but you can go to this place, this place, or this place and they'll take care of them for you. Electronics, paints, stains, all those kinds of things, you can find out from this app where you should take the stuff that you have and get rid of it.

The other resource is Habitat For Humanity Restore. They'll take a lot of your good construction items. They also now have a latex paint recycling center, which I didn't realize, so you can take your latex paint there.  Small electronics, scrap metal, that kind of stuff can go there.

Cornerstone Rescue Mission, the thrift center, they will take your household goods, your clothing and that kind of stuff. You can take that stuff there.

Black Hills Works also has a small electronics recycling center.

Those are three good avenues you can take stuff to and get rid of stuff as well as, of course, throw it in the truck and take it on its way.

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Take Responsibility

The key here is take responsibility for what's on your property. I don't care if the previous seller left it or the seller before that left it or the neighbor just threw it over on your property before close. It's your responsibility to get all that stuff off of your property for your buyers.

Of course, the reason we're doing all of this, not only is it because it's in the purchase agreement, but because you'd want the same thing done if you were buying the property. You'd want to walk in and not have to worry about, “Oh, now I got to get rid of this refrigerator, well crap, what am I going do about that?” Make sure it's taken care of for your buyers.

Leave me any comments or thoughts or questions about this episode below. See you next week on Tristan and his WHITEBOARD - LIVE!

 

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