Selling Your Home During the Holidays

Selling your home can be difficult in even the most promising of markets, so having to do this daunting task during the holidays can turn anyone into a real grinch. However, the holiday market can be encouraging if you know how to market your home appropriately, and how to target homebuyers that are genuinely looking to buy.

If you need some holiday selling help this season, see below for some great tips on how to stage, how to market and who to target as a potential buyer.

Deck the halls appropriately. Holiday decor can make a home look its best, but overdoing it can hide the best features of your home or appear overwhelming. Also, to appeal to the most general population when staging with holiday decor, try to stick with more seasonal themes about the winter or fall, and not specific decorations for religious or special holidays.

Find a genuinely reliable real estate agent. The holidays are when a lot of people take vacations, but the smartest real estate agents know that there’s business to be had if they are available. Talk to your real estate agent about your expectations from them, and lay some ground rules about schedules and availability for both you during the busy social season. Be sure always to keep communication open as this market can mean that you need to act faster than the normal season.

Make it cozy. If you live in an unusually chilly area, it’s a great idea to not skimp on the cozy upgrades when showing the house. Keep the heat up, or the fireplace going, and offer a warm cup of coffee, hot chocolate or cider with a fresh cookie from the oven when you know a potential buyer is coming to see the house. You want to make your home seem very inviting, even in the coldest of months.

Reel in those motivated buyers. Most people who are house hunting during the winter months are doing so because they need to secure a new home quickly. Your real estate agent can work with you to help find serious buyers who are on a clear deadline such as job relocations or a new school start. You can help each other by providing them with a new home when they need it most, and getting you out of yours before the ground thaws.

Holidays Be prepared with other options. No matter how well you stage or how many people come to see the home, winter is just a harder time to sell a home. It’s smart to be prepared to have to move on without the sale of your old home complete or even close. One way of doing this is to look into a hard money lender that can offer you a bridge loan to help get you into a new home without having to sell your old one first. With a hard money lender, the property value is what matters, not credit or paperwork, and they can often get you the funding in weeks instead of months.