Lots of Realtors and their buyers use July and August as months to checkout, go on vacations and get their kids ready to go back to school. They figure they’ll wait until the market picks back up after Labor Day. However I routinely close escrows in July and August, and I believe this year in particular being disengaged in the market is a mistake. 30-year fixed mortgage interest rates have declined for the past four weeks in a row and are now solidly back under 7%. While it’s true they could drop more, the more they drop the more buyers we are going to see back in the market. If things keep going in this direction, buyers are going to be fighting over new listings by the time the fall hits.
I prefer not to advise my sellers to wait until September to put their homes on the market. There’s always more inventory in September, and there are only 10 weeks until the holidays hit. Sometimes there are delays and sellers can’t get their homes on the market until October, which really makes things tight. While I’ve put homes on the market during the holidays and executed successful sales strategies, if you are looking to time the market, we usually have more homes being withdrawn from the market between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve than we do have new listings.
There are exceptions to every rule of course. Three years ago, I put 564 Montecillo Rd on the market on December 16th for $999,000. It was very dated, right down to the groovy 1970’s shag carpet and needed plenty of TLC. In the middle of the Covid pandemic, we attracted a feeding frenzy of 15 offers and the house went $166,000 over the asking price! The buyers completely transformed the home, and it recently resold for $1,695,000. I don’t know how much money they put into the house, but whatever their profit margin if they lived there these past few years, their capital gains were likely not taxable.
Why do I like this time of year in real estate sales? Today I closed 853 Las Pavadas Avenue, which went $111,000 over the asking price with four offers. Earlier this week I got 611 Tanbark Terrace into contract, and earlier in June I also got an accepted offer, one of two, on 1004A Los Gamos Rd. Those listings were all in Terra Linda, but I don’t only sell where I live. On Tuesday I put cute as a button, and super convenient 708 Lamont Avenue in Novato on the market. The train keeps a rollin’!