Real Estate Broker Eric Andrews explains the timing of selling a house. Historically, listing a house in December is not a good idea. However, in 2020, homes in most of North Carolina are in extremely high demand. Even in December, real estate is selling extremely fast. It’s just a very hot market, especially in Pittsboro and throughout Chatham County. There is very little inventory and tremendous demand.
Speaker 1: Is December a good or a bad time to sell a house?
Speaker 2: Well, that’s a good question. Historically, December has not been a good time to sell houses. Historically, December and January, and July and August have been slow months. We used to sell half of our residential real estate in March, April, May. And we probably did half of our land sales in September, October, November. But things have certainly changed.
First of all, there’s a lot of kids that are year round school. So the school calendar doesn’t mean as much as it used to. So that used to be a big motivation. “I’m not going to sell until my daughter graduates, or I want to sell now so I can get my kid into school before next year.” So that used to be more of a factor. With a year round school, not so much. And just as a society, as Americans right now, we’re a lot more transitional. We’re moving around a lot more. And it doesn’t really matter when we’re moving or what month we’re moving.
And lastly, you have to know what the real estate market is now. So I will tell you that it’s become less bad to sell real estate in December over the years. But right now, this December is a great time to sell real estate.
Speaker 1: Is it December right now?
Speaker 2: It is December right now. It is December right now. The shortage of inventory at the end of 2020 is the worst I’ve ever seen it in 20, 21 years. Sellers are able to get sometimes 10, 15% more than they normally would get on a property just because there’s such shortage of inventory. I’ve listed two residentials here in the last couple weeks. Both were a stretch. I went beyond the comps and both sold in less than 30 days. I mean, one sold in 48 hours, one sold in 10 days. And I knew I was pushing the market. So maybe next December won’t be so great. But right now with the shortage of inventory, if you’re looking to sell something, this could be a really good, the real estate market is so hot right now.
