Just as with any market, the real estate market has its periods of ups and downs. This means that it will be naturally more difficult to sell your home during certain times of the year. If you’re finding that it’s more difficult to sell your home during the wintertime, it could be for one of these reasons.
Curb Appeal Suffers
The first reason selling your home can become more difficult during the winter is that you have less curb appeal during this time. It’s incredible how much of your home selling success can depend on the first impression buyers receive of your home. If you have a lovely green lawn, and lots of shrubs and flowers in your front yard, this appeals to potential buyers and makes them want to explore further. However, during the winter, your yard is likely dead, trees are bare, and everything is a bit more drab and dull. Unfortunately, this means that your home’s first impression also suffers. To compensate for this, try keeping your front porch and home exterior as lovely as possible all year long.
Winter is the Off-Season
Another reason you may have trouble selling your home during the winter is that fewer people are looking to buy a home during this time. Most home sales happen in the spring and early summer. When it becomes winter, children are in school, people are integrated in their neighborhood, and the holidays are coming up. All of these factors make people less willing to look for and purchase a home. Moving and uprooting during this time is more difficult, so it’s usually avoided unless absolutely necessary. This means it may take longer for you to get showings, and even longer to get an offer. In fact, it may take so long, you could be better off waiting for the warmer season to try to sell your home again.
Weather Makes it More Difficult
The third reason that your home may be difficult to sell during the wintertime is that even the elements are against you. The weather itself can make a home more difficult to sell for a variety of reasons: Harsh weather can prevent buyers from being able to physically visit and assess your home. The weather can also hinder your efforts because the harsh winter climate exposes any issues in your home far more than the summer weather does. Repairs are harder to make when snow or rain make everything cold and slippery.
It can always be difficult to sell your home. The real estate market is constantly shifting and changing, and new problems are always presenting themselves. If you try to sell your home in the winter, these are the issues you may face.
Check out this article on the three stages to selling your home!