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.
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