I had a homeowner from Pound Hill email me the other day. She said she
had been following my blog (the Crawley
Property Market Blog) for a while and wanted to pick my brain on when is
the best time of the year to sell a property. Trying to calculate the best time
to put your Crawley property on the market can often seem something akin to witchcraft
and, whilst I would agree that there are particular times of the year that can
prove more productive than others, there are plenty of factors that need to be
taken into consideration.
Even if you are putting your property on the market,
you don’t know how long it will take to find a buyer - no crystal ball to help
with that one. At the moment, the latest set of figures for all 25 estate
agents in Crawley, show the average length of time it takes to find a buyer for
any Crawley property is as follows ..
Detached 106 days
Semi
68 days
Terraced 64 days
Flat
77 days
Overall average
82 days
If we roll the clock back to January 2016, the overall
average time it took to find a buyer (again using data from all of the 25 Crawley
Estate Agents) was 110 days.
So, on the face of it, things have vastly improved
over the last six months or so. Well, when I looked at the data going back to
2008, the average length of time it takes to sell a property usually drops
between January and the Summer months, for it to rise on the run up to
Christmas. For example ..
Winter
2008 - 128 days Summer 2008 - 98 days
and in more recent times …
Winter 2013 - 129 days Summer
2013 - 118 days
Winter
2014 - 101 days Summer 2014 - 84
days
Winter
2015 - 94 days Summer 2015 - 80 days
Coming back to the present, even if you placed your
property on the market today in Crawley, if it takes you on average a little under
twelve weeks to find a buyer, then you can expect solicitors and the chain to
take an additional eight and twelve weeks after that, before you move. It comes
down to personal choice as to when you place your property on the market. Children
often affect the decision. On one side you might delay putting that for sale
board in your front garden so you can move in the summer school holidays, but
on the other side, you might want to move sooner to be in the catchment area of a preferred school, in
plenty of time for the next academic year?
There are times
of the year when it's better to sell, and times when waiting a little longer
can pay off in the long run. In a nutshell, I would say this is the way of the
seasons ..
WHEN
THE MARKET?
Spring: Customarily there are more house-buyers as the
Daffodils show themselves
Summer: Sellers may miss out on house-buyers being on holiday
Autumn: The enthusiasm for buying homes returns
Winter: Interest diminishes as festive period looms
What this means to
buyers and landlord investors is that they often pick up a bargain in later
months of the year, as there is less competition from owner occupiers. So,
whilst there are better months to achieve a quicker sale, the only piece of
advice I can give to every home owner
and landlord in Crawley, is do the right thing for yourself, do your homework
and buy (and sell) with both your head as well as your heart
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