Want to move into your new home in time for Christmas?

It might seem a little early to be talking about Christmas, and its definitely too early to be putting up the tree, but if you are wanting to have sold your house or to move into your new home by the end of the year, you will need to get cracking.

To realistically achieve moving into your new home before the festive season an offer has to be agreed on by the beginning, or perhaps by mid-October at the absolute latest.

Banks, HOAs, KwaDukuza municipality and the deeds office all need to be in motion since at best it will take 2 months to register on the current timings.

That is also assuming that you are not subject to a sale and do not have long lead times on guarantees.

One should also remember that from about mid-December, municipalities, attorneys and the deeds office start to shut down, or at the very least start working on skeleton staff, so delays are to be expected from then on.

Thinking prudently, if you are looking to sell or move in by Christmas, you need to set December 17 as the decisive deadline.

Similarly, as a seller, if you are wanting to sell by Christmas and have the property transferred by then, the same time frames would apply.

You need to be on the market today and be correctly priced in order to get signed offers within the next month.

Even if you are a seller who is toying with the idea of selling I would still say this is a good time to act as opposed to the beginning of the new year.

If I asked a seller what their wish list would be when coming to the market they would probably say something like: only serious buyers, no time wasters, ideally not competing against lots of other properties and a market with some urgency.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that was always the case!

Although those conditions cannot be guaranteed, the best chance as a seller of getting those is at this time of year.

Behaviours and patterns are cyclical, and as we head into the end of the year not too many people are thinking of putting their property on the market compared with the start of the year when we normally get an influx of new sellers.

Opting to sell now will unquestionably see you competing against fewer alternatives.

Another important consideration is that the end of the year in people’s lives is often very busy and house hunting drops down the priority list.

The sensible assumption of this is that the people who are looking are often very serious and that there are very few window shoppers around right now.

Lastly, as discussed already, buyers who want to be in by Christmas or to at least secure a property by then, have a natural urgency to use the holiday season or year-end as the cut off time.

All these factors explain why this time of year gives the best offers-to-viewings ratio, and, why as an agent this has always been my favorite time of year.

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