Is the Market Up? How to Choose the Right Time to Sell Your Home

In recent months the real estate market has been in such fluctuation that it’s made people very nervous about selling their homes. Property owners that want to go on the market can’t tell whether now’s a good time.

Others have been forced to sell their home in order to avoid foreclosure and bankruptcy. Either way, homeowners have wound up failing to make as much money off their house as they really should have.
So how does one identify the right time to sell a home and make the greatest potential profit? For help, consider the following tips.
Look locally
One of the easiest and quickest ways to see whether homes are selling is to investigate the local market. If you notice that many of the homes for sale in your region are just not getting sold, that’s a pretty sure sign that the market is not doing so well.
The thing to remember about the real estate market is that it can be hot in one area and not so active in another. By looking at homes in your local market, you can get a fairly good idea what’s selling, if anything, and how fast those homes are moving.
The numbers you collect in the local market should give you a better sense of whether you ought to take the plunge with your property.
Work with an agent
Real estate agents are professionals at what they do. They can quickly identify the best ways to get a particular home sold if there’s any kind of market for it.
Agents make their money by selling homes, so they’ll do everything in their power to ensure that plenty of potential buyers are aware that someone is selling his or her house, and get those people on site to look at the property.
Without an agent, you’re going to have to do the majority of the work yourself, and the odds of you getting the house sold in a quick and effective manner are going to be steeper.
Look at the prices
Along with examining the other local homes that are selling, you’ll want to take a look at how much those homes are selling for. If properties are going for fairly low prices, compared to their earlier value or current assessment, that’s a sign that the local real estate market is not doing that well.
Other homeowners are simply taking what they can get for their property because they’re anxious to move out. If that’s happening, most property owners around them will probably not put their homes on the market just yet because the odds are they will lose money on the sale.
Being able to have your home sell in a good market is the best way to move on to your next house or apartment. Otherwise, if the market’s weak, your house might sit there for months, or even years.
After a long period of no activity, you may ultimately lose patience and sell your house for a lot less money than it’s worth. If you still have a mortgage on the property, that could really hurt you financially.