Real Estate Case Study: Pulling a Home Off of the Market Over the Holidays
Yesterday, we closed escrow on a condo in North Park at 3957 30th St (La Boheme). It is a large, top floor, 2bd/2ba plus loft condo with two outdoor spaces and 2 side by side parking spaces.
On The Market
We listed the condo, for $499,900, back in August with a normal marketing roll out for a property like this. We had our professional photography, interactive 3d tour, and targeted Facebook & Google ad campaigns. We generated a lot of traffic right out of the gate.
There were tenants in the unit with a newborn baby, so showings were a bit tougher than usual as we needed to try and group them together into once or twice weekly buckets. Nonetheless, we were able to generate three offers during that first 30–40 day run.
Litigation, the Financing Killer
Unfortunately, La Boheme was (is) in the midst of constriction defect litigation. I’ve written a lot about litigation, so I will link it up, but to sum it up: it’s really tough to get financing. Of those initial 3 offers, two were not able to qualify because of the litigation (the third was too low).
So now we found ourselves at the end of Sept/beginning of Oct with what was becoming a stale condo sale, thanks to the litigation. This can lead to lower offers, as the property may be seen as less desirable.
The election season always tends to have a little bit of a slow down on the market (due to uncertainty) and the holidays were just there after. What were we to do?
We Removed the Listing For The Holidays
This was one of those calls that has advocates on both sides.
The statistics prove that home buyers tend to take a break from house hunting over the holiday season. Which means, less people looking at your listing. The last thing that you want is to have the clock ticking on a house listed for sale, while nobody is even out looking at it. BUT, some agents will advocate for listing a home during the holidays, citing less competition.
We chose to remove the listing, and bring it back fresh in Jan.
A New Hope
Just days after re listing in early Jan, we were inundated with calls for showings. As evidenced here in episodes 2 and 3 of my A Day in Real Estate series, I was making the drive to North Park multiple times for a few days in a row to show off the condo.
The spike in activity produced three more offers, and we were able to open escrow over our list price ($500,500).
Conclusion
The decision to remove the listing for the holiday season worked out for my seller’s benefit on this particular condo sale. It helped that we had some great marketing ideas for this one. Had we just kept the property listed through the holidays, we would’ve had a ton of market time when the buyers came back into the fold in early Jan. Which I believe would’ve lead to lower offers.
