When is the best time to sell?

Short answer… Whenever you’re ready.

Long answer… That depends.

At the risk of stating the obvious the best time to sell is when demand for your type of property is high and supply of competing properties is low.

On the demand side, the conditions couldn’t be stronger than we are seeing right now:

A low interest rate environment with fairly easy access to lending, government stimulus, positive sentiment and media hype, high clearance rates, changing demographic trends (e.g. a sea changer frenzy if you’re lucky to own on the Peninsula), ex-pats returning home, etc.

The supply side is a bit stickier. Volume is slowly increasing as uncertainty surrounding COVID eases and strong results entice vendors to market. Overall we are still down on previous volumes seen in 2015 / 2016.

Many of these (economic) factors are outside of our control. Even the timing can be outside of our control if you happen to list your home and seven competing properties in neighbouring streets also come to make at the same time.

But there are still a few things you can do to help your chances of maximising your sale price.

Firstly, you can avoid the busiest auction weekends of the year (e.g. the Saturday before the Melbourne Cup weekend).

You can buck the trend and sell in February or August, when we routinely have some of our strongest results of the year.

As long as you don’t auction on a long weekend or in the middle of January most of your buyers will be around, or at least able to send someone to bid on their behalf if they are interested.

If I had to choose between my garden looking at its best but competing with 10 other houses, or my garden looking average but being the only double fronted Victorian on the market, I know which option I would choose (the latter).

If you’re forward thinking you can always take some nice photos when the garden is in full bloom to show buyers during your future campaign in autumn or winter.

Either way, there’s no point rushing to make a certain deadline, or waiting for Spring, if the timing doesn’t suit you.

The key to a successful sale is getting the presentation right, selecting the right agent (me), getting the marketing and pricing strategy right, and then running your own race.

The rest should take care of itself.

David.