Coming to the decision to sell your house is not a light matter, we know! There are a lot of decisions to be made, like whether to use a licensed real estate agent or sell directly to a home buyer; where should you move next? Don’t let these questions delay your decision to sell your house. Here are four ways waiting to sell your house in Calgary will cost you.
Don’t Believe Every Headline You Read
You may have seen some headlines in the newspaper or online telling you that Real Estate in Canada is plummeting or at all time slow sales, but remember that newspapers get paid to get you to read or click. Dig deeper into the data of your specific housing area. No matter what is happening in the world people will always need a place to live and waiting to sell your house in Calgary will cost you because there are still buyers for houses. Mortgage rates are at an all-time low so now is a great time to put your house up for sale. With the impending market dip due to the coronavirus economic shutdown, houses will soon be flooding the market, and demand may start to wane. But for right now, there are still enough buyers in the market to buy all of the houses for sale. There are also buyers that have taken a large portion of their money out of the rapidly fluctuating stock market and need to invest it in real estate, if this is describes you then there is another reason we should be talking as well 🙂
Less Competition
If you put your house for sale right now, you will have less competition than if you wait until the market really starts to dip. This goes back to the example of the newspaper headlines, when they read that there were only “x” amount of sales compared to last year. But that was only half the story, if you looked at how many active listings were on this year compared to last it was also a lot lower and so the numbers were actually not that bad…but that doesn’t sell newspapers. Currently buyers will easily find your house in Calgary but once the downward trend is realized, many sellers will use that as their queue to list their house for sale. That means, the market will soon become flooded and you will have lots of other competition for buyers in Calgary to review. In order to catch the buyer’s attention when the market is flooded, you will have to make sure your curb appeal and all necessary upgrades have been done, and you may have to accept a lower offer than you plan on just to sell the property.
Prices Dropping
If you wait to sell your house in Calgary and you start to realize that downward trend, that means the average sales price for your comparable properties will also be less than you were expecting, and you may even have to accept a lower than market price offer to entice a buyer to choose yours. This costs you the extra capital gain you could have had if you did not wait. When the market is flooded with houses for sale, the buyers have more power in selecting the house they want and are able to make lower offers because they have so many other options. The media headlines don’t help this situation as buyers tend to think there is “blood in the streets” as they say and start making really low offers. My team is telling me they are seeing lowball offers ranging from $40,000 – $150,000 below asking price! Desperate sellers in markets like these will start accepting the lower offers, which compounds the dip in the housing market.
Extra Fees
The longer you own the property for the year, the higher the percentage of taxes and dues you will owe. The annual taxes on the property are prorated based on how many days out of the year you own it, you will only receive credit for the part of the year you will not own the property. The same goes for homeowners association fees, only the part of the year you do not own the property will get refunded. These pro-rations are subject to the payment due dates. Most taxes are due at the end of the year, but some homeowners association fees are assessed at a different point in the year.