Not many people flock to their local estate agent to bag themselves a ‘For Sale’ board near Christmas time. But, despite popular belief that December is a bad time to sell, the start of winter can be a great opportunity for sellers.
From less competition to better buyers in the market, you could actually see a quicker sale during the festive season than if you wait until spring.
If you’re considering selling your London home, here are four reasons to sell it at Christmas and not wait until the New Year.
There may be fewer buyers in December. But the ones that are searching for a new home are often much more serious. Most of the time, winter buyers are highly motivated. They either want to get things moving before Christmas or be in their new home as early as possible in the New Year.
Some end-of-year buyers will be looking for a good deal, while others will just be looking for a quick one. Either way, if you want to sell your house, putting it on the market in December could be well worthwhile.
Many people choose to wait for spring to arrive before selling their homes. While the flowering season is a peak time to buy and sell, it can leave your home lost in a crowd.
With less competition at Christmas, the searching buyers will be browsing a smaller pool of properties. When you couple this with the fact that the December buyers are more serious, your property could be in high demand.
Since the New Year brings us all an opportunity to reflect, it’s no surprise that Rightmove record some of its busiest days in early January. Even Boxing Day sees many property portals recording record-breaking traffic[1].
Contacting an estate agent in January means you’ll already have missed the first wave of New Year buyers. If your property is listed before Christmas, you can beat the crowds and be ahead of the game.
A quicker sale is definitely on the cards when selling your home in December – not just for the reasons we’ve already mentioned.
Since the property industry is generally quieter at the end of the year, your mortgage valuations, searches, and solicitor responses could all be much quicker than usual. Plus, since your estate agent may not have as many clients in December, they could dedicate almost all their time to selling your home.
While many people put off selling their home near Christmas, our team at Properly believe in doing things differently! We know there are lots of benefits to getting your home on the market early to beat the January crowds.
If you’re selling your London home, give our friendly team a call today on 0207 459 4400 or email us at mariel@properly.space to learn more about our services and how we can help.
London Youth work to improve the lives of young people in London, challenging them to become the best they can, and last year helped over 27,000 young people through their sports development, youth action and involvement, arts and outdoor education programmes and employment prospects. We feel strongly that all young people should have an opportunity to develop themselves, and so are delighted to be able to support London Youth in their work, providing young people with access to opportunities they might not otherwise have had, to learn new skills, to make a positive change in their communities and to shape the city they live in.
Glass Door helps homeless men and women in London through their large network of emergency shelters and support services. These winter shelters provide a warm welcome, food, safety and shelter for up to 170 people every night. Properly feels passionately about the issue of homelessness. That is why we are delighted that together with our clients we can assist Glass Door in their fantastic work to help some of the most marginalised people in society.
Families become homeless for reasons we can all identify with. We are concerned about people who are struggling to keep things together in our fast-paced world – and we care about those who have no support. We chose the Doorstep Homeless Family Project because they are passionate and effective yet they are a small team with limited funding. They provide homeless families, living in temporary accommodation in London, with access to services to secure the emotional and practical support they require to enjoy a better quality of life.
We need nature and nature needs us. We support The London Wildlife Trust because we share its concern for the environment. We want to ensure that we keep nature in mind as we work in the property market – and crucially, with people’s homes. We also want our employees to engage with nature and benefit from the wellbeing this brings. London Wildlife Trust cares for over 37 of London’s spaces, and their vision is: “a London alive with nature, where everyone can experience and enjoy wildlife”.
We had the opportunity to interact with Michael of Properly in our search for a new rental flat. Michael was professional and courteous in our dealings with him. He was a pleasure to interact with and he frankly stood out amongst all the agents we interacted with over a search of several weeks.
Had Michael round for a valuation of our flat – very knowledgeable and friendly and wasn’t pushy at all. When it comes time to sell we’ll definitely be giving Properly a call!
The level of customer service I received at Properly with Mariel and her team was frankly outstanding. It’s lovely when people genuinely care and go the extra mile which certainly they did. I couldn’t recommend them more highly, the most pleasurable property experience ever for me.
The service is outstanding. Mariel could not be more helpful and professional. Every individual I engaged with, was well informed and had the full history of conversations. First class service.
Mariel and Michael made the process of agreeing a housing let incredibly seamless, stress-free and quick. Their timely communication and fantastic ‘customer service’ was second to none. Would highly recommend
We did not feel rushed at all which was great as it really allowed us to really take the property in. We did put down an offer and Properly did a great job in securing a good outcome for both the sellers and ourselves.If you are looking for an agency that will do more than just open the door then look no further.
We had such an easy and stress free move. Michael helped us with all our questions and was quick to find out any answers to our questions. Would highly recommend.
Michael and Mariel have been very helpful from the time I contacted them on a property I was interested to rent and through the offer process. Mariel did a wonderful video call showing of the house since I was not in London at the time. I felt completely comfortable to sign the lease from the video call. Thank you Mariel!