The secret of knowing when to sell your property
Whether you should sell your property today, next week or next year has nothing to do with what the market is doing and everything to do with what your personal motivation is.
Regardless of market conditions, properties that sell are those which belong to people who are influenced by strong motivational drivers such as births, deaths, divorces, lifestyle changes and job transfers among others. As a private seller, one of the first things you need to identify in your pre-sale planning is what your personal motivation is, as this will then help to establish your time line, marketing plan and budget.
Consider the following two scenarios:
Scenario 1: The prospective seller has been offered a new job in a different city with an immediate start.
Scenario 2: A young couple who’ve just found out that they are expecting their second baby and are currently living in a one bedroom apartment.
The seller in the first scenario will have more urgency to sell than the couple in the second scenario. The first seller may have to move immediately and will therefore need to be very strategic as to how they plan their approach to the market.
While the couple may also want to move fairly soon, they have possibly another 8 months to make arrangements, source a new home, pack up and shift.
With the above two examples, the time lines are going to be dramatically different and so should the choice of marketing plans and budgets.
Only you know what your real motivation is and I suggest that you write it down right now. That way, when you are in the heat of negotiations - which can be a fairly emotional time - you can refer back to your reason for moving and decide whether or not the offer you’ve been presented with is going to move you closer to your chosen lifestyle or not. In this way, you’ll respond to the offer from a rational position rather than an emotional one, and in doing so help you remain focused on the goal and moving forward.