“What is the best time to list my home? ”
I get this question a lot and even though many real estate agents consistently claim it’s a “great time to sell!” there has to be a BEST time, right? I believe there is a better time of the year to sell, and it might surprise you.
It’s less about green grass and bright flowers. It’s less about weather or the school year ending. It’s largely an inventory question, so let’s dig into the numbers.
This is kind of crazy, but in Bellingham, we have almost three times as many houses for sale right now than we did earlier this year!
A similar trend occurred in other areas across Whatcom County:
It’s not surprising that Days On Market (a metric we often track to assess the market we’re in) is also creeping up. Which means the window of opportunity for buyers to negotiate opens wider. Whether that negotiation is price-related, or inspection-related or other, it can translate into dollars lost for sellers.
But it’s also important to acknowledge that the real estate market is hyper local, and just ONE week can drastically change the inventory we see in the market. If three sellers go to market in the same neighborhood in the same week, you can almost guarantee that it will diffuse the market, making it less advantageous for those sellers. And how could you predict (other than having a broker who networks and often knows what’s coming)? ;)
This is one of the reasons that stats can be misleading. We have to draw big picture conclusions and commit to refreshing the strategy based on what’s going on around us at the time. But I still think the numbers are valuable— especially since this is a trend that has been around year after year.
So here it is, the golden nugget…free to all of you eager readers. I have had the busiest, most frenzied listings in February…right after buyers get out of the holiday zone and into an excited “spring is coming” mindset…and while most sellers are still waiting for their lawns to green up and their flowers to bloom. Sellers who beat the rush of inventory and list earlier in the year have tended to have more offers, higher escalations and fewer contigencies to navigate.
While hyper local market dynamics make it difficult to unequivocally state the best time to list your home, it's interesting to look at inventory trends to try to time new listings to minimize competition and maximize bottom line. In recent years it’s been a case of: the earlier in the year, the better!
