Picture it...January 2001:
It was my first January in the business. Naturally, I was freezing. I tend to get cold right around the end of September and not warm up until late May, but that’s just me.
So, there I am, freezing in my office. I have my little space heater under my desk, and I still feel lethargic from the holidays. Sitting down to start my day, I think, “Why am I even here?”
In my mind, all buyers are snuggled up until spring, so any attempts to generate business in early January are futile…right? One of the few (thousand) times I’ve been wrong.
Like ice thawing on the lake, once the calendar flipped to the new year, there was a nearly instant and significant uptick in buyer traffic, both on my website and my phone. The Groundhog had spoken, and it would be a really early spring.
In the years that followed, I was less surprised by the turn of the calendar and the business that came with it. This year will be no different. As 2024 gets rolling, the housing market will start moving and climbing until it reaches its peak during the summer. Just like it does every year. No exceptions.
Also, every year…no exceptions, I get dozens of seller questions how soon things will start to pick up for the “spring rush.” The so-called spring rush is just Phase II of the annual sales cycle, so get ready to sell because, my friends and neighbors, spring is springing.
First things first. Take a day and do a fast run-through of your property. Use our FREE set of Checklists for prepping, staging, and photographing your home to speed things up. Each checklist helps you organize and fly through every step of the prep process. (FYI, these and many other tools are available in our best-in-class Seller Success Libray.)
Or go all in and enroll in our One-of-a-kind Digital Course: Living To Listing: The 10-Day Home Selling Transformation. This course will make you money and save you headaches along the way. For those of you who follow Stephen Covey, this is a master class in Sharpening The Saw if your house were a tree you needed to cut down. Just saying…
And if you’re worried about falling prices and rising interest rates–don’t be. In 2023, despite multiple interest rate hikes and a nauseating string of bad reports about the housing market, Ohio not only held it’s own, it got better.
Yes, overall home sales in Ohio were down a little over 8% year over year. But…home PRICES grew by 7.5% vs the previous year. So, any negative news about your prospects of selling a home this year should be wholly ignored. We are here on the ground and have been for over two decades. Plus, have I ever lied to you? No way amigo.
If your home is already on the market, consider refreshing your listing. If you have last season’s photos or a bunch of holiday decorations out, you need to hit the reset button before the buyer parade fires up again. New photos and a new listing description (aka Love Story) will give your listing a brand new look and help you stand out to buyers.
One last suggestion: if you don’t have an Open House scheduled, get one scheduled. The checklists I mentioned earlier, and our Open House Playbook is all you need to generate traffic.
“More traffic = more buyers = more offers = more money.”
-Real Estate Truth
Whether you believe in my January/Early Spring theory or not, as I learned from countless movie and TV references about the Boy Scouts, you should always be prepared.
If you want to know a little more about our Flat Fee system, check out the videos on our “HOW IT WORKS” page, or if you want more personal advice, schedule a 20-minute call with me. That way, we can go a little deeper.
In the meantime, keep sending your questions. Your best bet is to send me a message at Glen@OhioMLSFlatFee.com. I read and respond to every email…eventually.
Broker/Realtor
Ohio Property Group, LLC
Author: “You Can Sell It”
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