Is winter the best time to prepare a home for sale?
Or is it simply that winter is typically a poor time to sell a home?
Actually, it’s both. And when you consider just how important preparation is in the Toronto market in today’s day-and-age, these two timelines go hand-in-hand.
The real estate calendar is two things: cyclical and predictable.
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Why is the Real Estate Market Predictable?
A market that is cyclical in nature can often cause problems for those that attempt to time it, but when you have predictability in that same market, all of a sudden, the problem becomes an opportunity.
Not every seller has the benefit of listing their property whenever they want. Sometimes, a home owner sells because he or she has purchased a house, and thus needs to sell, in order to close on the purchase. Other times, the home owner sells because he or she is moving for work, thus the sale would take place immediately.
But when a seller does have the opportunity to time the market, we recommend that the seller work backwards from the desired list date and consider when the preparation must begin.
A savvy seller understands just how high the stakes are in today’s Toronto real estate market and therefore why preparation is so important.
Just how cyclical is the market? What can you expect when selling your home? Here are a few more posts you might find interesting:
- How Often Does the Real Estate Market Change?
- Is Seasonality Over in Real Estate?
- Do You Need an Open House to Sell Your Home?
A Tale of Two Neighbours
Consider for a moment, two neighbours who live across the street from one another, each of whom plans to list their home in the spring.
The first neighbour makes her decision in December or January and works toward the spring.
The second neighbour makes his decision in March and decides to list immediately.
When the Home Preparation Starts
The first neighbour takes stock of her home in the winter and decides that, in order to maximize her potential sale price, she’s going to do some work on the home.
The second neighbour believes, “A house sells itself in this market,” and doesn’t plan to do anything to the house, save for take some photos, and put it up for sale.
How much work is it really to sell a home in Toronto? We’ve got a post for that! Read more here.
Decluttering, Painting, and Minor Repairs
The first neighbour begins her preparation by heading to Home Depot and buying a lot of cardboard boxes and plastic totes. She rents a storage locker and begins to fill her boxes and bins with all the wares she has accumulated over the years, but that she does not need on a daily basis. These items are taking up a lot of space in the home, and her goal is to de-clutter so that she can make the home look more spacious and allow for a professional stager to add a designer look and feel to the home.
The second neighbour continues to purchase wares on Amazon and have packages delivered daily, as does much of the world, but he thinks nothing of the sheer amount of “stuff and things” in his home and believes that buyers will look past any of his personal effects.
The first neighbour, after removing about 80% of the items in her home, then decides to add a fresh coat of paint to most of the rooms in the home, as well as update some of the older, yellowing light fixtures with something more modern and stylish. She was told by her real estate agent that painting and lighting are the two most impactful investments when preparing a home for sale. “Cheap and cheerful,” her stager said.
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The second neighbour thinks nothing of the old paint cans stacked to the ceiling in the basement furnace room, but he does change a couple of light bulbs. So that’s something.
The first neighbour, after de-cluttering, painting, and adding some more light to the home, decides to conduct some very minor repairs around the home. She finally replaces the broken side door, which has been on her to-do list for years, re-drywalls a hole in the living room wall that was made by a falling bookshelf two years ago, re-caulks all the sinks, bathtubs, and showers in the house, as they were have been moldy for longer than she wants to admit, and checks another half-dozen items off her “punch list.”
The second neighbour accidentally cracks a kitchen floor tile one day when he drops his panini-press, but he decides to purchase one of those thick kitchen mats and simply cover the damage. Nobody will know, and if they find out, it’ll be after the house has sold – and by then, it’s their problem.
Should you renovate your home before selling it? Read this blog to find out.
A Little Investment Goes a Long Way
The first neighbour, after de-cluttering, packing and moving items to storage, painting, adding lighting, and doing minor repairs, hires a deep-cleaning team to do a thorough, top-to-bottom overhaul of the house, the day that she moves out of the home in order to have the property staged.
The second neighbour has a cleaning lady that comes once per month, but that probably won’t coincide with his listing. He won’t leave dirty dishes in the sink or anything, but again, he expects buyers will look at the size of his home and the location and not care about the condition of his hardwood flooring or the cleanliness of his kitchen counter.
The Results
The first neighbour is delighted to see the photos and video of her fully-staged home as she stays with friends for the one week that her agent chooses to expose the property to the market, before the scheduled offer date.
The second neighbour lists his house for sale with “Photos Coming Soon” on the MLS listing because he didn’t have his pictures in time, and since he often works from home, he chooses to simply “step outside for a bit” when buyers come to view the property with their agent.
So.
Which property do you think will achieve a higher sale price?
Results matter. Selling your biggest asset is something you should take seriously. If you’re curious about how the real estate team you work with impacts the results of your sale, read these posts next:
- Are Discount Real Estate Agents Worth It?
- What Does Full-Service in Real Estate Mean?
- Client Success Story: The TRG Difference
What’s Right For You?
Time and time again, I remain amazed by people who take chances with the sale of their largest asset.
There is a right way to list and sell real estate and then there is every other way, and unfortunately, we see the latter play out in today’s market, far more often than not.
Over my twenty years in the real estate industry, I have only seen a handful of homes that really, truly, require zero preparation, and those homes have been owned by designers and/or very wealthy individuals who spend a couple of months per year in the property, and can afford to have it looking like a museum.
For everybody else, myself included – having sold my primary residence twice, the preparation can take weeks or in some cases, months.
Any home owner who is considering a spring sale must start their preparation in the winter.
And as I said at the onset, the winter is not the time when you want to list, so all the more reason to use those slow-market months to prepare for the upcoming sale.
We routinely work with our clients for months in order to prepare their homes for sale, and we often meet prospective home sellers 6-12 months before they’re contemplating a sale.
We believe the only way to sell a house or condo in today’s market is to maximize its value, and every property that we list and sell is professionally staged.
We have a whole section on our website about the staging process, with more case studies and a cool slider that lets you scroll across the screen to check out the “Before & After” in real-time here.
Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”
While he likely wasn’t talking about the Toronto real estate market in the 21st century, he very well could have been…
Give us a call at 416.642.2660 or email admin@torontorealtygroup.com if you’re ready to get started!
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