Real Estate
Selling A Home Over Winter By Casey Margenau
At this time of year many people ask me, “Is it a good idea to try to sell my home over the winter?” Now, this year is very different. However, my answer is still very much as I might have said in years past. Over the winter months there are fewer buyers looking to buy but they tend to be more serious. In our market, as things stand this year, it is very much a seller’s market. Homes, especially those under $1.3 million, are selling in days, not weeks or months. Buyers are competing with others that may have lost deals, even when offering over the asking price. This is very frustrating, to find a great home, only to have someone else scoop it up right before your eyes. So, if you are a buyer, looking in the winter months may help you get the home you want, without as much competition. So this fall, winter, and early 2021, will probably be the last chance to get a lower price on any real estate that you might be looking for. As spring arrives prices will
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increase along with the competition. The fact is that there are not enough homes to satisfy the demand that has been created since the onset of COVID. You see, COVID has highlighted “The Home” as a much more important part of life. As I had said at the very beginning of the COVID crisis, “After people are stuck in their home for weeks on end, if they already don’t love their home, they will hate it.” The market boomed 2 months after the start of COVID-19. People want larger homes, larger lots, and more features. With that said, 2020 in Northern Virginia’s single-family home market has been its best market ever. This market has also played into the demographics of the homeowners. The last boom in the housing market was
driven when the Baby Boomers hit their prime home-buying years, there were 80 million of them. Now the Millennials are at their prime home-buying age and there are 90 million Millennials. Along with the Baby Boomers, who are now downsizing, this makes for the long road of demand for new housing. The market is at a point where there is so much demand and there just has not been enough home building to supply all that demand. So if you think it is time to sell, this fall has a lot of concerns and considerations that you need to look for, especially this year with the election. This is the suburb of Washington DC and that means many
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