#PropertyReport: December is a good time to buy

As the year draws to a close, buying a property often drops to the bottom of the priority list for most people.

Schools close, holidays are planned, the weather heats up, and various festivities sound far more appealing than walking around homes.

Many people also feel just too exhausted to make a big financial and lifestyle decision.

I would suggest however, if you are serious buyer or will be a serious buyer come the start of next year, to dig a little deeper into your end of year exhaustion reserves and try and buy a place now as opposed to waiting until the new year.

One obvious reason is because you will be competing against a huge influx of new buyers that enter the market in the first quarter of the year.

In effect, you will be better off doing it in December when you are one of only a few people actively looking at the end of the year, or more accurately from the second week in December onwards so this has the potential of playing into your hands a little more.
I also want to share some stats that illustrate this point quite well.

Looking back at all the offers we as an agency have agreed over the last seven years, December has always been our lowest month for new offers agreed.

That is a fact and is by no means a surprise to anyone. However, you might be interested to know that over this time, if you added up the total for each month, December has been at best, 30% behind the next worse month (November) and up to 90% behind the best month (October).

We always talk about timing, and a savvy buyer might use these stats as useful information as it will be a good time to trade.

Just as buyers are starting to lose energy at the end of the year, so are sellers.

Many sellers at this time of the year might have been on the market for quite some time already, and the thought of what always feels like “starting again” in January can be quite daunting.

They would rather just take an offer in the hand now rather than roll the dice into next year when they will also be competing against more sellers.

So as a buyer, it might just be a good time to strike, with a nice clean offer, and tempt the seller into going into the Christmas break knowing that the stress of selling is done and dusted.

To be honest, I think a lot of us would also be quite tempted by that outcome, knowing that next year, it is one less big thing to worry about.

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