Trying to Sell Your Home? Be Flexible

While working on an evaluation yesterday, Sheldon thought it would be interesting to compare the absorption rate of vacant properties with seller and tenant occupied properties. The absorption rate shows how long it will take for the existing listings to sell.

In general, a vacant property does not show as well as an occupied property, but in this case the vacant properties were actually selling better. In fact, in the area we looked at the vacant absorption rate was 4 months while the occupied rate was over 8 months.

At least in part this must be due to the accessibility of the homes; it is simply easier to show a vacant home than one that is occupied, especially one that is occupied with tenants, and so I assume the vacant homes on the market are getting shown more. Now there are likely other factors at play, such as pricing, but our experience of late is our vacant properties are getting more showings.

So how can you compete if you’re living in your home while trying to sell?

First, make it as easy to show as possible. If you’re not home during the day, make sure you’re Realtor knows they can go ahead and arrange showings during certain hours without appointments – we can then communicate that to other Realtors through our MLS database so they know it’s easy to show.

Second, always be prepared for showings including short notice showings.  It may seem like more work but it may make the difference in getting that buyer through who might not otherwise come back.

While you’re on the market, try to keep life simple; don’t plan big events at your home. Be prepared to eat a few meals out since many buyers will want to look after work.  Have some pre-planned family activities for those emergency showings.  A trip to the park, the river valley or some grocery shopping.  Making it as fun as possible and being prepared will make the intrusions less stressful.

Keep in mind the average time on market is currently almost two months, so you need to be prepared for a couple months worth of regular home invasions.

Comments

[bunny]

Sara, how do you calculate the "absorption rate?"

[Sara MacLennan]

Absorption rate = # of active listings divided by # of sold listings in past 30 days.

[buff_butler]

When a house goes on sale it is listed under MLS. Is their a time delay between when it is listed by the realtor and when it shows up?

Similarly for if a property is sold?

***To answer your question... if the brokerage loads directly to the Edmonton database there should be no delay. However, that just gets it to Edmonton - there will be a delay before it gets to the national database and onto mls.ca, up to 1-2 days. If the brokerage sends listings in on paper there will be a delay getting into the Edmonton database (at least 1 business day), and a further 1-2 days getting onto mls.ca.

[Rhettro]

Vacant homes are more popular because savvy buyers perceive this as an opportunity to take advantage of a seller who is 'bleeding' on 2 mortgages....

My $.02 anyways...

[buff_butler]

Perhaps immediate demand as well? I know when I about my last car i wanted it NOW :P

****Exactly. So if I'm out with buyers showing a number of properties, and we drive by one that wasn't on our list and they want to see it....if it's vacant and the showing instructions are to go ahead and show it, we go ahead and show it. If not, we may not have time to make an appointment and it will likely be forgotten. Sara.***

[Brent]

Rhettro,

Agree ! Seller may be more willing to accept a low ball offer.

[Brent]

A lot of vacant homes don't start out vacant but end up that way because the seller has set his asking price to high right from the beginning and it doesn't sell before he takes possesion of his new dream home with twice the size of mortgage on it. He's now bleeding like a stuck pig!

[Brent]

I don't know if that exact situation is the majority. There are a lot of for sale signs (Usually ComFree) on new townhouse's. You know then that it's a spec boy trying to get his downpayment back.

[Mike]

"Vacant homes are more popular because savvy buyers perceive this as an opportunity to take advantage of a seller who is 'bleeding' on 2 mortgages...."

These are the flippers who caused all the havoc in the market. If they have any sense of investment awareness, they should have rented their homes in such a strong rental market and cover the mortgage. Once all are cleaned up, we should see a healthy price appreciation.

[Mike]

"There are a lot of for sale signs (Usually ComFree) on new townhouse's"

Brent, I thought that you live in the States. Are you talking about homes in Arizona?

[MoneyMan]

Rented homes can be very messy and the tenants like to point out all troubles, defects to buyers and limit showings. Some owner occupied homes can be messy as well. A vacant house hides few flaws and makes for a quick possession if thats what a purchaser needs. IMHO

[Brent]

Mike,

I work in the south east U.S. and Caribbean but live in Edmonton.
No, those were ComFree signs right here in Edmonton, oodles of them.

[house]

Isn't Brent the same Brent who posts at the bubble site and describes Edmonton as a tundra wasteland where one can buy an overpriced shoebox?
I am confused...

Anyway, I would like to know if there is an actual "spring rush" right now?

[Nate]

Sales are pretty good if you consider that most of the speculators have moved east to buy up everything with 4 walls in Saskatchewan/Manitoba.

Back to pre-boom sales levels.

[Mike]

"Back to pre-boom sales levels."
You are right, the speculators are out of the market. As inter-provice migration kicks in again, the inventory will start to get chewed up and we will be back to 5- 10% yearly appreciation. Bear in mind is that Saskatchewan has peaked and it does not have the mega project like Alberta, so I guess Saskatchewan will go on its plateau pretty soon here. I started to see license plates from Manitoba and Saskatchewan again as well as Ontario. Add to that the fact that builders has cut back big time on Single family home building. In Fort Saskatchewan where I live, builder only built 15 homes in the first 3 months of this year compared to 200 homes the same time last year.

[Mike]

Brent, you work in the US and live in Edmonton. Sounds like lots of Travel. What's going on man, you can't find a job in Edmonton, you must have burnt too many bridges lol.

[Ken]

I don't think I've sat in Timmy's once this past month without overhearing a conversation about real estate. Usually it's somebody explaining that they're "waiting to buy until prices go down". The other common conversation is the guy who is telling his friend that he is low balling every property and is sure that a seller will soon bite.
I feel that we're at the turning point. There is simply too much interest in real estate and plenty of qualified buyers. The door is now shut when it comes to cashing out of the 400K Edmonton house and living mortgage free back home in Saskatoon. The market is really efficient at closing loopholes like that very quickly.

[Pete]

Ken,

I couldn't agree more. I see the market activity picking up a bit in the short-term but prices moving down to meet these peoples price points. I beleive the activity we've seen over the last 6-12 months has mostly been people "trading up" not new entries in the market.

This market simply can't sustain the 400k SFD for much longer.

[Brent]

Mike,

No, it's just there's no work for a telecom engineer in Canada let alone Edmonton. With the U.S. having 10 times the population and 10 times the amount of carriers it's a totally different situation. Plus it's nicer weather and a lot cheaper and the pay is better.

[Nate]

Mike said
"As inter-provice migration kicks in again, the inventory will start to get chewed up and we will be back to 5- 10% yearly appreciation."

You're nuts if you think that we'll see a rush like we had in 2005/2006 again.

The Alberta Advantage that we had in 2005 is gone. People from down east aren't going to stampede into Edmonton when it costs them an extra 200k to trade up into a new home. Don't count on a new rush of workers in Fort McMurray where a trailer costs 500k either.

We also had massive amounts of speculation on housing over the last 2 years. Without speculators to create the bidding wars and buy up every pre-sale, you'll see that Alberta has enough inventory to sustain new immigrants.

Don't forget that Newfoundland is now a "Have" province. They experienced more growth than Alberta last year. You think that all the maritimers are going to continue to flock to Fort Mac when they can hop on the ferry to NFLD for work now?

And lets not forget that continued 5-10% appreciation here would mean that we would be living high with prices above Vancouver before too long. We would just be setting ourselves up for a huge fall if anything ever happened to the oilsands (read about the US regulations that are being fought in court).

This has become an extremely expensive place to do business. Don't be suprised if the new cost of doing business in Alberta slows down the growth a bit and allows things to come back into line.

[Rhettro]

Nate,

I think your last sentence completely agrees with Mike's statements. Growth will return to normal levels.... 10% IMHO is a little heavy but 3-8% YOY growth I think will be sustainable for at least the next 5 years....

[Nate]

****Comment edited***Nate, you've been here long enough to know the rules. I don't have time to clean up after everyone all the time.

[Nate]

Wow, touchy. Asking about having a comment deleted warrants a full edit as well?

For not having the time to edit, you sure are doing a lot of cleaning up of posts that don't violate your code of conduct.

[karl]

I hope you all noticed that the average price for a SFH for the first 29 days of April is over $400,000 ( $ 401,042 )
on Bob's site.

[Nate]

Karl,

Apr 2007 Average $438,154

Sweet, so only down $37,000.