Potential home sellers: If you are waiting for the “right” time to list your property for sale, now is the time to do it.
If you start to think “if I just wait till the weather warms up a bit I will have more of an advantage,” you are making the wrong decision.
The snow has already melted and real estate agents’ phones are now ringing with anxious buyers looking to find that perfect suited home for themselves.
Just look at the statistics which illustrate the current mood in the market.
Residential sales have jumped from 154 transactions in March 2013 to 194 for March 2014—that’s a substantial leap of 25.97 per cent.
I recently had the chance to catch up with a few of our local realtors in the Central Okanagan, and they all had the same news to report—the market is hot.
They are encountering situations where multiple offer scenarios are taking place when a client puts their home up for sale.
Year to date sales for condominiums are facing a very similar optimism, as 171 units have sold this far in 2014, up from 136 for the same period last year, reflecting a 25.74 per cent increase.
Considering how over the last seven years the condo market has been saturated, this is great news for condo homeowners. There is light at the end of the tunnel for condo owners wanting to sell.
Coupled with high volume sales in the Central Okanagan, the market is also experiencing below average inventory in the first quarter of 2014, which is expected to continue well into the second quarter.
Single family homes currently on the market are still facing lower than normal. As of March 2014, there were 1,233 properties listed on the MLS. That’s a whopping decrease of nearly 18 per cent from 1,489 registered for the previous year.
Condominiums are continuing to follow suit as well, with a decrease in product on the market for the month of March. It was reported that there were only 675 units available on the MLS, that number is down from 2013, 778, reflecting a decline of roughly 14 per cent.
So one has to wonder, where are all the sellers? And what are they all waiting for? The market is hot, there are hungry qualified buyers out there shopping and not as much competition on the market has there has been normally in the past.
