Could This Fall Be the Hottest Time to Sell Your Home? | Richmond, VA Real Estate Estate

Could this fall be the hottest time of 2024 to sell your home? I'll break that down on Frequently Asked Friday. What is going on, party people? Thanks for tuning in. You're probably already skeptical. Here's another real estate agent telling me that now is the golden opportunity to sell. I personally believe that this fall may be the best time of the year of 2024 to sell your property. Let me break that down for you. All right, so if we set aside the fact that we're in an election year, which is a whole another video, a whole another topic, what we know about our local metro Richmond market is that every single year, the number of home sales tapers down. So it peaks out at some point in the summer, anywhere from May to July, and then it slowly drops, whereas we bottom out the number of home sales around December, January of every single year. Now, let's talk about the fact that we're in an election year. So typically, across the United States as a whole, when we go from October to November, we typically see a 10% drop in the number of homes that are selling from October to November, whereas in election years, we typically see a 15% drop from October to November. So we have more buyers and sellers that are saying, hey, you know what? I just want to wait to see how this election turns out. I just kind of, I'm going to hit the pause button. And we see the number of home sales drop more significantly in the month of November on election years. Now, you might be sitting here and listening to me and say, hey, Chris, you're not really making a solid argument so far as to why it might be a perfect time of year to sell my property. You're telling me you're breaking down the fact that there's going to be less home selling. That means that it is not going to be a good time for me. I'm smarty pants, and I'm reading right through what you're telling me. And what I would submit to you as a prospective home seller is that the number of homes that are selling in the market at any given time is completely irrelevant. The relevant metric to look at, the relevant data to look at is the relationship between the seller supply, meaning the amount of homes that are going on the market, and the buyer demand, meaning how many buyers are putting homes under contract. The only thing that is relevant as a seller is where are we in the cycle of supply and demand given the current landscape of the market. So let me give you a what if. So for example, would you rather sell your home in the summer when there's a number of homes selling, but there's three homes to every single buyer in the marketplace? Or would you rather sell your property in the dead of winter when there's not that many transactions happening, but there's three buyers for every single listing? Kind of interesting when you think about it that way, right? Now the metric that we use, the way we track this dynamic between buyer demand and seller supply is a metric called month supply of inventory. And I'm not going to geek out on you, but essentially what we know is that when we are at six months supply of inventory, we're at equilibrium. That means we're in a neutral market. If we're above six months supply of inventory, we're in a buyer's market. If we're below six months supply of inventory, we're in a seller's market. So in layman's terms, the lower that number, the more that we're in a seller's market. In Metro Richmond at this moment in time, or at least in the month of August, we were at 1.4 months supply of inventory. So we are very much in a seller's market. And what my personal prediction is, we see less and less homes that hit the market throughout the fall and the winter months. But given that we're in an election year, we're going to have less and less sellers that are going to be choosing to put their property on the market. Now, will we see less buyers that are out there buying homes? Yes. Are we going to see a significant more amount of sellers that decide not to list as opposed to buyers that decide not to buy? My prediction is yes. So my prediction, what I feel like we're going to end up in is we're going to end up in a situation where there are a number of sellers that are either pull their homes off the market or just decide not to hit the market at all. And that number is going to significantly outpace the number of buyers that decide to exit the market. And what we're going to find ourselves in a situation where once again, there's three buyers to every property. This is actually the situation that we found ourselves in the last three years in Metro Richmond, where the hottest time of year to sell was the month of December or January, believe it or not. And my prediction with it being an election year, that's going to be even more significant. I'd be very curious to know if you believe me, I'd be very curious to know, to get your opinion, throw it in the comments, shoot me a DM. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see how this one plays out.