The spring real estate market isn’t necessarily the best time to sell your house; you can get your house sold quickly and for top dollar at almost any time of year if you price it appropriately and it’s marketed correctly. While spring is definitely one of the favorites, I really prefer Fall when you are talking about marketing a mountain home. Nothing is more lovely than your house on the backdrop of nature's breathtaking spectacle.

There’s a certain energy to the seasons which makes it feel like the perfect time of year to get your house sold quickly and for as much money as possible. And while in many locales that season is Spring, Fall is actually one of the hottest times of the year to buy in the Blue Ridge.

Usually you would also have more sellers to compete with in the market but this year, we have the phenomenon called "The Golden Handcuffs". 

Many sellers have gone on “strike” this year, opting to not put their house up for sale. Why? 

It’s not that prospective sellers have all colluded as a group to do so; it’s that there’s a good amount of homeowners who have incredibly low mortgage rates on the house they currently own. This is causing some people to hold onto their current house because buying another one would mean taking on a higher mortgage rate.

That’s a fair reason for certain people not to sell this year, but it’s also the exact reason it makes sense for other people to sell their house now!

Who Should Consider Selling This Fall?

Whether you have a low mortgage rate on your current house or not, there are still some reasons you might want to consider selling now, such as:

• You’ve been considering moving to a lower cost area. If you live in a high-priced area and have been thinking about moving to an area with lower priced homes or living costs, now is a great time to sell and reap the benefits of selling high and buying low somewhere else.
• Moving out-of-area for work. While moving for a job isn’t something you can always time, now is a great time to do so if you have any say in the matter. So if there’s been any hint of having to move for your career, you might want to put that into motion now.
• Moving closer to family. Whether you have aging parents, kids, or grandkids you need (or just want) to be closer to, selling this spring could be the perfect timing.
• Divorce. Deciding when (or even if) you’re going to sell a house due to divorce isn’t always an easy decision. But if you’re in the process of divorcing and it looks like you’ll have to sell your house within the next year, it might make sense to do it during this spring market if all parties can agree to do so.
• Downsizing. Whether you’ve had too much space for quite some time, or are a recent empty-nester and just know you should eventually downsize, you should think about putting your bigger house on the market to capitalize on a pool of buyers hungry for a large home. (This is especially true for anyone who’s been living in their house for decades and has no current mortgage, has a second home to move into, or is planning on moving into a retirement home or assisted living facility.)
• You simply don’t like where you live. Life is too short to live somewhere you don’t love.

Why Should You Consider Selling This Fall?

If you fit into any of those categories, you might want to seriously consider putting your house on the market and take advantage of the current market conditions, such as:

• House prices are still historically high. While there is data showing that prices have come down a bit in certain areas, they are still higher than they were just a few years ago. In fact, according to Robert Shiller — a Yale University professor of economics and co-founder of the Case-Shiller Index — “Home prices are very high by historical standards…”
• Prices could come down in the near future. There’s been a lot of talk about home prices coming down, yet it just never seems to happen on any catastrophic level. Hopefully it won’t happen to that degree. But while there’s no way to predict when or how much they’ll come down, historically the market eventually takes a dip every so often, and we’re probably due for one sooner than later.
• Less competition from other sellers. There hasn’t been enough houses for sale to satisfy the number of buyers looking to buy a home for the past few years, but the number of listings is down even more this year. CNBC reported that listings are down 20% from this time last year, and that it’s half the amount of homes available at this time of year in 2019, before the pandemic-driven real estate market took off.
• Eventually more Baby Boomers will decide to sell…and there are a lot of them. Economists and real estate experts have been predicting for years that there would be a lot of Boomers selling their houses at the same time. But every year it seems that the majority of them continue to hold onto their homes. At some point there will likely be a wave of their homes hitting the market, which could possibly impact how quickly you could sell your house, and the price you could get if the amount of listing exceeds buyer demand at that time.

The Takeaway:

Many homeowners have a low mortgage rate, which makes them hesitant to sell their house. This creates an opportunity for other sellers to capitalize on less competition and historically high home prices during this fall's market.