So you started thinking about selling your Gulf Shores real estate, and you figure: Let's wait until the spring or early summer before listing. The yard will look its best and potential buyers will be out in force. And everybody knows that winter is dead time for Gulf Shores real estate. Right?
Well, that's the widely held belief. But national statistical studies suggest it's not necessarily the case.
Advantages of Buying Gulf Shores Real Estate During Winter
Winter — officially Dec. 21 through March 20 for the current season — can be a surprisingly advantageous time to list, shop, negotiate and buy Gulf Shores real estate. Consider some findings by researchers at Redfin, the online realty brokerage.
Redfin studied home listing, sales price and time-on-market data from 2010 through this past October from around the country, updating a two-year analysis it completed last year. It concluded that if you want to sell for more than your asking price, listing in December, January, February and March gives you a better chance, on average, than if you list any time after June through November.
During the past three years, listing during these four months has produced higher percentages of above-asking price sales than any months other than April and May. In 2012, at the inception of the housing rebound, December listings produced the highest percentage of above-asking sales for the entire year: 17 percent.
Researchers are quick to note that the advantages of listing their Gulf Shores real estate in winter compared with other seasons are not huge. But the fact that winter produces at least competitive or better results by some measures should encourage some potential sellers to get into the game sooner rather than later.
For potential buyers of Gulf Shores real estate, the winter season may find some sellers more flexible about negotiations over prices and terms than they would during the middle of the spring.
In its two-year study completed last December, researchers found that sellers of Gulf Shores real estate were better off listing their homes in the winter than during any other season.
Bottom line: Gulf Shores real estate does not hibernate from December through March. More than 5 million homes typically are resold annually in the United States, and many of them are listed and sold during the winter months. In strong local housing markets such as Gulf Shores , the likelihood of selling your home within 180 days is higher when you list during the winter months compared with any other season, according to Redfin's 2013 study.
With the forecast of higher mortgage rates on the horizon, there may never be a more affordable time to buy Gulf Shores real estate than right now. Talk to us about rates, and where prices are for Gulf Shores real estate. We're here to help you in any way that we can.
We have more articles about buying and selling Gulf Shores real estate in the sections on Gulf Shores Home Buying Tips and Gulf Shores Home Selling Tips under our Gulf Shores Real Estate Categories to your right.
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