Timing is everything

Harriet Island

Last month I was working with a home buyer who wanted to relocate to Minnesota. He is living here now and closed on his condo last week. He made an offer the day that it was put on the market in the middle of November. The unit is perfect for him and exactly what he was looking for.

Last week I listed a downtown condo. It got an offer after just two days on the market. The owner wasn’t too sure about listing it ten days before Christmas but I told him the same thing I always tell sellers who want or need to sell and that is that their home will sell much faster if it is listed as being for sale than it will if it is kept off the market.

Every year I sell homes between Thanksgiving and Christmas. When I posted information about the condo for sale on our Facebook page it got far more traffic than anything else on the page has gotten this month.

Sometimes people want to wait until spring but what they don’t realize is that the spring market starts in January. There are buyers standing by and waiting for homes to start coming on the market. Traditionally the biggest month for real estate closings is April. Those homes are getting offers in the winter not in the spring.

Right now the inventory of homes for sale is again at an all time low in St. Paul with a couple hundred fewer homes on the market than there were in December of 2015.