When To Start Marketing Your Home

As mentioned last week, the amount of homes on the market varies wildly depending on the price range.  On a monthly basis I compare the number of homes on the market to the number of homes selling per month to see how long it would take to sell the current inventory.  The latest numbers show:

$0 - $199,999  =  6 months
$200,000 - $349,999  =  8 months
$350,000 and up  =  22 months

One of my astute clients asked the very pertinent question of how these numbers relate to when to start marketing a home.  And here's the interesting part --- this shows the average time it took homes to sell in the same price ranges during the past three months

$0 - $199,999  =  4.4 months
$200,000 - $349,999  =  5.1 months
$350,000 and up  =  6.5 months

As you can see, the trendline is the same (it takes longer for higher priced homes to sell), but in all three price ranges, it hasn't been taking as long as inventory would suggest to sell a home.  Aside from the unique nature of any given property, my suggested time frames for when to put a home on the market are currently:

$0 - $199,999  =  6 months in advance
$200,000 - $349,999  =  8 months in advance
$350,000 and up  =  10 months in advance