5 Reasons To Sell Your Home in 2022
If you’re a homeowner in Denver, 2022 could offer some serious upsides to selling. If you’ve been wavering on listing your place and cashing in on its equity, here’s five reason you might want to consider doing it sooner rather than later:
1. Housing Competition Is Low
If you’ve read the headlines lately, you’re probably keenly aware that housing inventory remains low. According to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors (DMAR), Denver’s housing market has approximately 1,184 homes for sale, a 48.8 percent drop from the same time last year. In 2021, we were already grappling with a 60 percent year-over-year decrease in housing supply, so this is a whole new record. To put that into context, Denver had 24,000 homes at the height of the real estate bubble in 2007.
While this isn’t great news for buyers, it’s a celebration for sellers, especially those who don’t feel their homes are in “A+ condition.” While painting, decluttering, making updates, and staging can net you the highest dollar amount (and it’s also a service I offer), your home may not need to be 100% perfect to get a good price.
2. Homes Are Selling for More Amid Buyer Demand
On top of low inventory, there’s a strong demand for homes and a large pool of buyers. Cue the perfect economic conditions for you to snag a top price for your home. The majority of Denver sellers have been getting over asking price. In other words, you have very good odds of getting what you want.
3. You Want to Take Advantage of Lower Rates
Rates are inching up, but they’re still hovering at historically low levels: for primary homes, people are still finding interest rates in the high 3’s/low 4’s. That won’t last long with the Fed announcing several rate hikes in 2022. The good news is with such low inventory, many buyers are also willing to do 60 day leasebacks (where you’d lease your house back from the buyer), enabling you time to find a new home and lock in a good rate before moving out.
4. You Want to be in a Better Position to Buy Another House
A lot of sellers are worried about selling and not finding a good place to live amid the buying craziness. That’s a very real and understandable concern. If you feel, with today’s market conditions, that you couldn’t afford to buy – with current interest rates, prices and what’s happening in your financial situation – then you can either get creative with your financing options or reconsider altogether. (Pro Tip: check out my article “7 Tips for Making Your Offer Stand Out”, to learn more about creative financing and cash-buying options).
However, if that’s not the case and you can trade-up, or you’re A) looking to downsize, B) rent or C) move to a less expensive market, selling your home could put you on financially strong footing and/or give you a better advantage than most buyers. Chances are you’ll be able to sell at a premium, providing you a large windfall of cash towards a down payment and enabling you to provide more competitive offers. Ultimately, you’ll want to decide what’s best for you, and that could mean staying put.
5. Conditions Won’t Stay This Way Forever
With interest rates rising, more and more buyers are going to either be priced out of the market or turned off by market conditions altogether. While this won’t curb demand completely, sellers might want to consider that new construction and more inventory coming on – along with diminishing a pool of buyers – may have an impact on the number or quality of offers on your home. Even if multiple buyers get discouraged and decide to pull out, it will still be a strong seller’s market. But will you get more interest now than later in the year or early 2023? Most likely, yes.
