When is the best time to list my home for sale?

When you should list your home depends on a lot of factors.

When you should list your home depends on a lot of factors. Most important is your own personal goal, lifestyle and timeframe. The answer is simpler than (admittedly) even I sometimes make it out to be. If you want to sell your home, the answer to “when” is always “now.” We are in an appreciating market but the anticipated pattern of the future is not gauranteed. So long as there are buyers in the market AND you are able to capture the attention of all of those buyers, the time to sell is always now. 

We sell year round because we cast a wide net 

I want you to use your imagination for a second. Imagine you are standing on the river bank and you're fishing. The water is clear and shallow so you're thinking that you'll see the fish coming from a mile away. As you stand and observe the river, searching for the right place to cast your line, you observe the differences in activity but it's tough to decide exactly when and where to cast.

Downstream you spot groups of fish but they are swimming out of reach. You'll watch these groups with envy. They are perfect in size and if you could only get your hook to them, they would be sure to bite. It's almost frustrating to watch. You'll say to yourself, "Why didn't I see those fish?! They must have swam right past me!"

You start to notice a similar but not exact pattern in the timing that the groups of fish appear downstream; just beyond your reach.  You notice that you can constantly see fish swimming downstream but every couple of minutes a big group of fish appear. The size of the group varies, but not by all that much. Even the smallest group would be more fish than you would ever need to catch. If you could just plan the perfect time to cast a line on one of those groups, you'd be set. 

You sit and wait for the right time to  cast your line into the water. The next big group is sure to pass by in a few minutes, right?

If you're like most us, you're asking, "When will the next big group of fish (buyers)  pass by and when is the best time for me to "cast the line" into that group?" When it comes to selling your home, you rely on your real estate professional to know the patterns and to put you in the best position to catch a buyer for your home. 

Let me tell you how we fish. We focus on casting a net. Of course we study the market. We know when the buyers are most likely to be out and about and swimming across your doorstep. But we care less about casting a single line in hopes that the perfect fish bites and more about capturing them all. Remember from earlier that every now and then big groups appeared but we know that we constantly see fish swimming downstream. There are always buyers looking to buy and so long as we cast a net, we are sure to catch at least a few.

“Let me tell you how we fish. We focus on casting a net”

We focus on marketing our listings to every possible buyer so that no matter what time of year, or what point in the typical buying pattern we are in, we are still able to make a catch. Sure, it's much easier to predict the timing, cast that line into the group and wait for the feeding frenzy to occur but none of that matters when you fish with a net. Our strategies cast a net over the buyers swimming by. 

Here's a perfect example of how we used our net casting skills to catch multiple buyers that loved this home, despite backing up to a busy street with road noise. The bottom line is that if you do everything you possibly can to cast a wide net, when you put your home onto the market doesn't matter quite so much.

“The bottom line is that if you do everything you possibly can to cast a wide net, when you put your home onto the market doesn't matter quite so much”