How Sellers Can Make The Most Of A Hot Real Estate Market
Toronto is experiencing an incredibly hot seller’s market both in the housing and condo segments. This hot market proves to be quite a wonderful opportunity for sellers to capitalize on a great deal of equity growth in their property. On the buyer side, it can prove more challenging to secure the house of your dreams – though it is possible with the correct advice when it comes to multiple offers, aka bidding wars.
Market Timing
As with any marketplace, timing is essential. In a hot seller’s market, timing is imperative. However, there can be more flexibility on the timing of listing your home. An extra week or two may prove to be more financially beneficial to the seller in some cases. The most robust time of year for Toronto real estate sales is from late January to late June (what we in real estate call the “Spring” market). This is when we see the most transactions and typically a spike in values. The second most robust home sales season is the Fall real estate market which typically kicks off after the first week of September and runs until early December. Due to individual home seller’s specific needs and circumstances, there may not be the ability to wait out for a later date. I.e., perhaps the seller has purchased another property that is closing in the coming months, or the seller has decided to move to another city or country entirely, thereby needing to offload the property and access funds for the next stage of life.
Key takeaway: a highly skilled professional realtor will walk you through your options regarding timing and your ultimate goal when selling your Toronto home.
Pricing Strategy
During a red hot sellers market, pricing is equally as important as a down or flat real estate market. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that selling in a sellers market is simple and straightforward to list a condo or house. We see real estate agents and sellers alike make these assumptions all the time. These inexperienced errors in judgement lead to faulty strategies and, ultimately, the seller experiencing needless stress and far less money in the pockets at the end of the day. Why? Price too high, and you miss your buyer budget. Price too low, and you once again miss the proper buyers who can actually afford your home. Price at market value, and you won’t drive the demand from buyers to get the highest value. See what we mean? We are talking about razor-thin margins of success. We strongly believe that a well-considered and executed go-to-market pricing strategy makes all the difference in the world to our client’s bottom line, even in a seller’s market!
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Marketing Strategy
Gone are the days of a listing agent taking photos with their point-and-shoot camera or BlackBerry (though we do see this from time to time!) We would also like to say that realtor remembers to put the toilet seat down for photos, but alas, this seems to be overlooked more frequently than you would like to know! As you can imagine, after reading these previous lines, marketing is paramount. Not just marketing, but premier marketing, a skill set that differentiates your home from the hundreds if not thousands of options on the real estate market. The minimum requirement that a professional realtor offers in their marketing strategy is to have professional magazine quality images, a digital tour, and floor plans. But a great realtor doesn’t stop there. We stage the home or condo, leverage social media, online advertisements, flyer the neighbourhood, target the property buyer demographic, utilize our international contacts and websites. All this to say that a marketing strategy is never done. In fact, excellent communication skills are required throughout the listing process to maximize the seller’s sale price – whether that is dealing with the buyer agents, buyers, or general public – it’s our job to communicate the benefits of the property and handle objections further to increase the chances of a higher selling price.
Each step of the marketing strategy needs to be just right. Once the listing is in motion, there is no going back – so when you do it the first time, you must do it right; otherwise, you lose the attention of buyer agents and their clients…not to mention the frustration that the sellers will experience!
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Hire The Best Realtor
without a great realtor, you are leaving money on the table. We see this all the time. How do we see this? When we bring a buyer to a house, we deal with the listing agent. If the listing agent isn’t exceptionally skilled at communicating, the knowledge and capability of handling higher levels of stress their sellers lose. Their sellers may not realize this fact, but we see it regularly. Trusting a highly skilled, experienced and professional realtor is worth their weight in gold. Every time. Just because it’s a hot seller’s market doesn’t mean that nothing will go wrong. If something does go wrong, you want the best of the best real estate agent to pick up the pieces and save the day for you. Only bright, experienced, seasoned pros can do this.
