By Holly Henbest, Realtor
Is your home for sale or are you listing your home for sale this holiday season? With all the hustle and bustle of the season, if you’re also marketing your home for sale, this may be a stressful time. While December is not typically the busiest sales month of the year, the buyers who are looking at this time of year are serious buyers. So, if you’re selling, this remains a great time.
There are a few things to be prepared for when selling at this time of year. Most importantly, buyers are also dealing with the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and may schedule their showings at the last minute or may be running late, so have your home ready to show on short notice and try to be flexible.
Here are some additional tips to consider while your home is for sale over the holiday season.
1. Home Safety
• Remove anything breakable that is at toddler level.
• Hide away any small packages that could slip into a pocket.
• Don’t leave out the “to be wrapped gifts” for visitors to see.
• Ensure all cords are neatly stowed away to prevent trip hazards.
2. What If you’re out of town?
• Have someone checking your front door for dropped packages or mail.
• Have someone turn on some lights prior to showings.
• Have your Realtor or someone check your home after showings to ensure all the doors were locked properly.
3. Holiday Home Staging Tips
• Keep the decorating simple so that buyers can focus on the home and not the decorations.
• We recommend you remove your sunshades and all window screens to let the light come through, since it’s typically darker during this time of year.
• Now is a good time to increase your lighting, since buyers love light and bright rooms.
• Christmas trees look best with the lights on, so if possible and safe it’s nice to have the tree lights on for showings.
• Exterior holiday lights don’t look as festive during the day, so it’s a good idea to keep exterior décor to a minimum.
• Ensure walkways, hallways, and traffic patterns in the home are free of holiday décor. You don’t want the home to feel smaller, crowded, or harder to navigate.
• Think about the temperature. If it’s chilly outside, perhaps turn the fireplace on or turn up the heat a bit. You want your home to be comfortable and complimentary to the temperature outside.
• Don’t leave candles burning while you’re away from home.
If you’re searching to buy a home right now and haven’t found “the one” yet, don’t despair. We typically see a surge of listings in mid-late January, so new inventory is coming soon.
If your home is listed for sale and you’re not seeing the type of buyer activity you had wished for, then hold on for a bit longer because with our fabulous winter weather, the Superbowl, and Phoenix Open on the horizon, we’ll be seeing new buyers coming to town soon.
In terms of overall market conditions, we continue to see longer days on market and price reductions are common. The mortgage interest rate increases have caused affordability issues for buyers and have caused home buyer budgets to be reduced. At the time of writing this article we’ve seen a bit of relief with a slight drop in rates, but they remain at over 6%.
While a rate of 6% or more seems high, let’s keep it in perspective that while we saw rates in the 2% to 3% over the last couple of years, the norm before that was in the mid 4% to 5% and a lot of people reading this article can probably remember a mortgage they once had at 10% or more (me included).
If you’re dreaming of a new home for the holidays, consider that prices have softened and although interest rates have gone up, if you buy now there is always a chance you can refinance the loan in the future for a better rate. I wouldn’t suggest anyone buy a home counting on refinancing, but you could have a nice gift in the future of a reduced rate and in the meantime you can be building equity in your home.
Do you have questions about your home’s value or buying? Give us a call at 480-266-8785. Happy holidays!
Holly has been a Desert Ridge resident since 2000 and has been a Realtor since 2006. She is the leader of The Henbest Team with Realty One Group. Holly is ranked in the top ½ of 1 percent of Realtors in Arizona and is a certified luxury marketing expert. She has been ranked #24 in the Top 50 Realtors by the “Phoenix Business Journal” for the past several years and recognized by “So Scottsdale!” magazine as a Real Estate Superstar for 2019, 2020 and 2021. She’s also been the #1 ranked realtor at Realty One Group/North Scottsdale for the past several years. Learn more at henbest.com.
