I’ve had lots of questions this week about timing.  When should I put my house on the market?  Should I wait until Spring?  When should I start looking seriously for a home to buy if I want to move in the Spring?  These are great questions and the answers now are different than they have been in the past.  

Work the dates backwords…Let’s say your goal is to move into a new home in April’08.  On average, you need 30 days to close on the purchase of your new home once your offer is accepted.  It takes buyers an average of 30-45 days to find a home they want to buy.  In today’s market, having a pre-qualification letter from your lender is paramount.  Many sellers will not even entertain offers from buyers without this letter.  It is also advisable to be able to submit a condition-free offer.  This means that when you write an offer to buy a home you don’t write it so that you “must sell your current home” in order for the deal to go through.  Yet, most of us will need to sell our current home before buying a new home - otherwise we could potentially have two mortgage payments (yikes!). 

This means your home needs to be on the market when you start to shop seriously for a home to buy.  Depending on your local market, the average days on market may be 60.  This means you should expect to have your home on the market for 2 months before receiving an offer.  Take this time into consideration.  You also need to talk with your Real Estate professional about how to price your home to make sure it sells by the time you are ready to buy.  That way the closing of your current home can be scheduled to work out in accordance with the closing of your new home.  See - timing is everything! 

So, let’s recap.  You want to move in April’08. You need to sell your current home before purchasing a new one.  30 days to close on each.  30-45 days to find a home you want to buy.  Average days on market (DOM) in your area is 60.  This means you need to look at listing your current home in January’08 and start seriously shopping for a new home mid-January/early-February. 

Now the question becomes… “Should I really list my current home in January?  Isn’t the market slow at that time of the year?”

Let’s address this question tomorrow.