Selling your home successfully through the holiday season

By Matt Trudel

If you want to sell your house over the next few months and are serious about getting it done, here are several things for you to consider in order to achieve your goal. While some agents might suggest waiting until spring, that might not be the best option for you or your family. Selecting the right REALTOR® to work with should be priority number one. 

Experience and availability are two things you want to be sure your REALTOR® provides.  There are a lot of part time agents out there, and if your REALTOR® is working another job, how can they answer calls about your property when buyers have questions or want to set up a showing?

Pricing your home correctly and aggressively will give you the edge over other homes. Buyers are very knowledgeable about home values with all of the information available online.  Overpriced houses limit the number of buyers who will even look at it, and with fewer numbers of buyers in the winter you don’t want to lose any potential buyers.

Selling through the winter months is not easy for sellers and can be just as challenging for buyers. Keeping your house in showing condition is important. Keeping clutter and decorations to a minimum will help you achieve this. Shoveling of decks, walkways, and a path around the house should be maintained. This way buyers can walk around the property easily and safely.   The same applies to driveways and turn around areas. Keep them plowed out well so there is more than enough room to turn around easily. Salt and sand as needed so your driveway remains ice free and is easily navigated.

Turn up the temperature a little to a comfortable level on days when you have showings. A cold house is a complete turn off to buyers. You want to have all the lights on, a warm feeling, and there is the added touch of cooking just a few cookies prior to the showing so that the smell is still in the air. You can even leave the cookies out for the buyers with a note saying welcome.

Another nice touch is to have a photo album of the house during the summer months showing any gardens, pools, lawns, and other seasonal things that cannot been seen with snow covering the yard. Along with this you can have a list of things you have enjoyed about living in the area.  Add to that any recent improvements you have made to the property.

There are many more things you can do, but these are a few suggestions that have proven to help in assisting sellers getting their house sold during a time of year when inventory is low, and buyers are few and far between. 

If you would like a free market analysis of your property you can call us or most all the local agencies provide that service as well. 

This article was written by Matthew Trudel, Owner of Five Star Realty. 207-939-6971