Market house now or wait until September?

lessonlearned

tigsly wrote: »

Strange I just got told now is a 'dead' time...

On this forum?

Not quite dead yet......but yes in another few weeks activity will most likely tail off - usually around the time the schools break up around mid July.

This doesn't mean to say that you will never sell a house in August. Nothing is impossible.

Traditionally the Spring is the busiest time of the house buying/selling year, with March through to the end of May being the time of the real feeding frenzy.

Then you have a bit of a lull through the summer months and then another burst of activity in September and October when it tails off as you get nearer to Christmas.

January and February can go either way, depending on the weather, the state of the economy etc.

When I worked in new builds I once sold two houses on New Year's Day. In both cases the purchasers said the catalyst had been the Christmas holidays. Both sets of buyers said the same thing - that they had found their houses claustrophobic because of being cooped up indoors for 2 weeks. They just wanted more space........

ca55ie

As Clapton said - you only need one buyer. We saw our house in November and completed on 30th December. We needed to move for work commitments. Why wait?

joujou

Before you get your hopes up on the school place... Have you talked to the school? are they oversubscribed?

You may not so easily get the closest or best school you want this late in the year... most councils would have already more or less closed their primary lists by the first quarter for the September intake.

mrsmchapman

I think it depends on the area, where we are only ever seems slow from October to start of January.

I believe you have a good few weeks of marketing available, yes people may well go on holidays etc but if someone is looking to buy they will do so regardless of the time of year.

I see no point in hanging around, it may take days/weeks to sell but will still average 12 weeks completion, it may take months to sell, who knows it really also does depend on how attractive you are pricing the property!

yellowcrocus

I just wanted to give an update on this after all the good advice. After a few weeks of cleaning and tidying I put the house on the market mid July. We had a lot of viewings in July but no offers. Very little happened in August. Come the second week of September (just as I was considering dropping the asking price) things went crazy and we accepted an offer 5% over the asking price on the 17th.

The house that I really wanted to buy came and went in the meantime, as did several others. I used the extra 5% to pay stamp duty on a house just above threshold, and so managed to buy something much bigger and better than I had imagined. Currently we are waiting to exchange contracts...I couldn't be more excited!

Thanks MSExperts for all your wise words :T