Some West Chester & Liberty Township Ohio homeowners are waiting until after the holidays to put their home on the market for sale.  Some are waiting for the “spring real estate market” to list their home for sale.  My advice… if you want to or need to sell your home, sell it now.

Why?  If you are looking to sell within the next two years, the highest sales price you will be able to attain for your home is it’s current value.

This is not just my speculation or guesswork.  In November, Fannie Mae forecasted median home sales prices for the next eight quarters.  Their projections call for prices to fall and to not again reach today’s values until the 3rd quarter of 2012.

Home prices will not begin to rise again until…. (1) we have a more stable economic climate with higher consumer confidence  (2) unemployment begins to come down significantly (3) the inventory of homes listed for sale in West Chester & Liberty Township is reduced.

Just waiting for the spring months to get here before putting your home on the market can cost you real dollars.  Yes, it’s true that there are more buyers out looking at homes in the spring.  There are also a lot more homes on the market for sale then, meaning much more competition and thus a great deal more pricing pressure.  Waiting to list your home for sale will almost undoubtably mean you will be listing your home at a lower price and will be selling for less.  

But isn’t this just the seasonality of the market you ask?  Take a look at the graph below and you will see a comparison of the last three year’s home sales for West Chester & Liberty Township Ohio.  And while you can clearly see the seasonal peaks and valleys, the real issue here is that moving forward there appears to be no driving force to increase sales (demand) very much.  The other concerning note here is that we are currently operating at sales levels that are lower than sales were during the financial crisis of 2008.

So as we move into 2011 and the time of the year when inventory of homes for sale begins to grow, my advice?  Don’t Wait!   Get your home on the market and price it to sell today for today’s market.  Sell before the flood of additional homes come on the market.

And please don’t misunderstand me here, I am not trying to portray all gloom and doom and be overly negative, but I do think it is only responsible to state the facts and try to draw some reasonable conclusions.  There is reason to act with a sense of urgency here. 

Oh yeah… one other reason to not wait.  If you are also going to be buying a home, in addition to selling your current home you need to know that interest rates are going up and going up fast.  Keep waiting and they will be even higher.