How Holidays, Home Improvements, and Open Houses Affect Home Sales

With the holidays quickly approaching you might be wondering if this is a good time to sell your house. And what about home improvements and open houses? Here are some tips and advice from a real estate expert on how all of these things affect home sales.

If your home has been for sale for a few months, should you take it off the market for the holidays? Do people buy homes betwee
Thanksgiving and Christmas?

This is a question that gets asked a lot at this time of year because people are rather tired of "fighting the battle" so to speak. But for anybody who is serious about selling their home, I highly recommend that you keep your house on the market. You will have less competition and more serious buyers. People that are out there looking at houses in this weather are not just "kicking tires" they are seriously looking for a home and a lot of people have taken their homes off the market. I have sold homes on Thanksgiving and Easter and I have shown homes on Christmas. It is actually a very good time to sell a home simply because of the competition factor.

Do people have more time to go around and look at homes because they are off of work?

Yes, and what a lot of people forget is that many times someone may be visiting family in the area. They say, "Let's go out and look at some property" and the next thing they know they are moving to be closer to family.

Is it true that certain types of improvements do not increase your home's value?

Yes, it is true that not all home improvement projects will increase the value of your home. I recently had someone ask me about a $5,000 investment they had made to improve their garage floor. One of the things that you need to remember with this kind of improvement - the garage floor surface, a pool, a sun room, or things like this - is that they don't necessarily add value, but they do increase your ability to sell the property. In other words, if a buyer has narrowed their search down to yours and one other home, and your house has this additional factor, then that's probably how they would go if the homes are equal.

Unfortunately, so many times when a sales person is selling a particular item to someone, they are making claims that they'll get their money back for it and that doesn't always happen; sometimes you only get 10-20% on the dollar. So remember when you make that kind of improvement to do it for your own benefit and the added personal value.

What can you do if you have an open house once a month for 6 months or more and your home still has not sold?

First of all, it's important to understand that open houses don't sell homes. Unfortunately many people think that they do because there are so many going on all the time. In fact, an open house is truly an outside effort on the agent's behalf to look they are doing something proactive to sell your home. According to the National Association of Realtors, there is a 99% chance that someone walking into an open house will not buy that house. Hopefully they are not just a nosey neighbor and they are really a buyer; that's why agents are doing open houses. I hear frustration on behalf of the seller, and really what it comes down to is a price issue.

It's also a good idea to get a second set of experienced eyes to determine if something is missing from your listing information. A lot of times someone can inadvertently miss something in a listing that can keep it from being visible or apparent to the consumer out there. Find an agent that is not trying to solicit another agent's listings, but that will provide an additional set of eyes to help you get your home sold.