Steven Hyman

Selling Your Home During the Holidays

Around this time of year, I usually get home sellers frequently asking me, 'Is it's a good idea to take a house off the market for the holidays?' Like so many things in life, there is no clear cut answer. While the winter holiday season is typically a slower period for home sales, it doesn't mean it's impossible to sell your home. But as a seller, you should seriously consider if you'll be able to handle the added stress.

Pros and cons of holiday home selling
Homes are at their prettiest during the holiday season. The lights are up. The trees are decorated with ornaments and presents. And the smell of pine trees, firewood burning and cookies baking in the oven, permeate throughout the entire house. Without really meaning to do it, your home is beautifully staged for prospective buyers.

Unfortunately, some external factors like guests and relatives have also descended upon your home making it difficult to entice potential buyers and retain your sanity.

Your college student just came home with a whole semester's worth of laundry. After months of burning the midnight oil (which I'm sure wasn't from studying), their tired bodies are in desperate need of sleep. You're lucky if they get up by 1 p.m.

While you are throwing tinsel on the tree, they're probably throwing their dirty jeans and sweatshirts all over their bedroom floor. Your sister, her couch potato husband and their two hyperactive children come to visit for a few too many days in your three-bedroom home. Three or four kids are staying in one cozy room, while the other relatives are sleeping on the foldout couch in the family room.

On Saturday night, you have an intimate Christmas party for 25 of your dearest friends. The revelry goes on untill 2:30 a.m.. The empty bottles of holiday cheer and hors d'oeuvres scattered all through the house are signs of the party's success.

Your beautifully decorated home has been quickly transformed into a war zone. If you're still planning on showing the home Sunday morning, there's no time to rest now. It's no wonder that many people find the holidays a very stressful time.

Modifying home showing schedule
With scenarios like this, it is not unusual for people to take their homes off the market or seek psychotherapy. If the above description sounds like your home, ask your Realtor to change the remarks in the MLS so that agents don't show your home during these stressful dates. Both you and your home need time to recover.

On the other hand, if your holiday schedule is more manageable, you should try and accommodate the serious buyers who want to see your home. After all, if these people are looking at homes during this time of year, they are serious potential buyers. To give yourself time to clean up from guests and parties, ask your Realtor to change the remarks in the MLS to give you 24 hours notice before a showing. And to accommodate your exhausted college student, don't show it before 1 p.m., or to be on the safe side, better make it 2 p.m.!

Steven Hyman is broker and owner of Century 21 Sunset Properties Half Moon Bay, CA.

Steven Hyman

Why Now is the Best Time to Buy

Here we are at the time of year I affectionately call 'white death' which goes from Thanksgiving until after the super bowl. This is traditionally when home sales slow down because of the holidays, family visits, shopping and the endless number of football games. With the volume of home sales at record lows, you'd have thought that this year's 'white death' had carried over from last year.

Between the holiday shopping and countless festivities, searching for the perfect dream home is not high on most people's priority list this time of year. But for the savvy buyer this is a great time to start your search. It's important to know and understand how the selling cycles work in each industry. This little bit of knowledge can help you negotiate your best deals during your purchase.

Consumer buying cycles
In retail, you'll get better bargain deals after Christmas. If you want to buy a car, wait until the end of the month when the dealer is trying to meet his monthly target. As for home purchases, our most active period for sales and listings is the late winter through spring. Families want to get settled when school lets out so their kids will have all summer to make new friends. Home sales typically slow down in the summer because of vacations and then pick back up after Labor Day and cools down again before Thanksgiving.

Which brings me back to 'white death.' In my opinion, the cool down periods are the best time to start your home search. For those home sellers who can't wait for the peek selling season to put their homes on the market, time is of the essence. If the sellers don't make a deal now, it may be a long, cold and lonely winter till another offer materializes. By then, their home may lose some of its appeal from being on the market too long. With limited competition during the slower months, home sellers will be more open to negotiate deals that could be favorable to the buyer.

Buying a home is also the best present you can give yourself and your family. If you haven't decided on a holiday gift yet, let me suggest a beautiful home decorated with low interest rates and delicious tax benefits. It's a present that will be remembered for years to come. While it may be tough to top this present next year, it will supply you with an endless supply of ideas for future gifts. You can give a new kitchen next year followed by a new master bathroom the following year, and the list goes on and on.

Market trends
Nationwide housing inventory has dropped a little from the record levels at the end of the 3rd quarter, but remains historically high for this time period. The reason for the decline in inventory isn't because homes are selling more quickly, but because older listings are being taken off the market.

Now is also the time of year when many listings traditionally expire, so plenty of sellers are going to be talking about what to do with their home and their Realtor's performance. In a few cases, you may have picked an under performing Realtor. But more likely, you went through an extensive process and selected the best one in terms of qualifications and personality match.

It's also important to note that depending on trends and outside factors impacting your local housing market, changing Realtors may not get your home to sell faster — not that I wouldn't love your listing. But replacing your agent won't change much. Maybe you'll get a little more advertising or maybe you'll get less. You know the grass always looks greener until you get up close and start to notice it's got the same brown spots and weeds as yours.

Advice for home sellers
Changing agents can even backfire in a small community. When Realtors see homes listed several times with different agents, they develop negative feelings about the owner. This could even conceivably result in fewer showings because Realtors may not want to deal with someone who they think is difficult.

So if your home isn't selling, don't be too quick to blame your agent. The recent economic downturn isn't exactly helping consumer confidence right now either. In every buying cycle, things do slow down. Patience and flexibility can mean the difference between a sold home and one that sits on the market for over six months. Personally, if you're a seller and you have to lower your asking price, I'd wait until January to make an adjustment. Why lower the asking price during the holidays if there are less people looking at homes?

And for those of you who are too busy during this holiday season to look at homes, you can still wait until the spring. This way you can pay top dollar and compete with all the other buyers. You may even get lucky by finding yourself in a bidding war and pay above the asking price.

Steven Hyman is broker and owner of Century 21 Sunset Properties Half Moon Bay, CA.

Steven Hyman

Remember, Real Estate is Local

It's hard listening to the news without hearing all the gloom and doom about the demise of the housing market. There is a lot of truth to what is being said. But that's only part of the story. The important thing to keep in mind is what's happening in your neck of the woods.

No question that the mortgage market is going through some tough times. All the low down-payment loans made to marginally qualified buyers with adjustable-rate mortgages are at the root of today's problem. Loans for qualified borrowers, as a result, became harder to get with more documentation needed. The good news on the mortgage front is that rates peaked last year and have been declining, thanks to the Federal Reserve's multiple rate cuts. The conventional wisdom is that rates may have bottomed out for now.

This gorgeous 4-bed, 3-bath home located in Half Moon Bay, CA, is nestled in one of the area's most exclusive neighborhoods. The home is also near Half Moon Bay's famous costal trail overlooking the ocean. The property lists for $1,099,000.

Soon many lenders will start lightening up on the never-ending request for information as the sub-prime mess becomes a distant memory. That will make things easier for most people as we approach the key selling period next year. It will probably be a long time before those no-questions-asked loans will be available again to weak borrowers.

It is also true that foreclosures are up significantly this year in my state (California), as well as nationally. The bulk of foreclosures in California are heavily concentrated in the southern part and in the central valley.

The one thing you need to understand about real estate and this is the thing that really separates it from other industries, is that it truly is local. What's happening in San Diego or Miami or Sacramento has little bearing on our market. They all sort of move independently of each other. The only commonality is the mortgage market.

What's going on in the local market will impact housing. Things like new subdivisions, disasters or employment issues will greatly affect real estate in terms of inventory, sales volume or prices.

My area, for example, is one of the few counties in California where home prices are still actually rising. While the gains over the past two years have been modest, the good news is that they are up. And that's better than what most of the other counties in our state can say.

To find out what's happening where you are, ask your Realtor for the economic forecast from your state's Realtor association. They will break it out by county with their prediction for this year and next year.

So the next time you read about all the troubles in the housing market, just remember that it may not be happening where you live.

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Steven Hyman is broker and owner of Century 21 Sunset Properties Half Moon Bay, CA.