The Days of "Anything Goes" Are Over

Unless you've been on Mars or abducted by aliens or marching in a "Leafs are going to win the Cup" parade, you're aware that the real estate market is changing, has been changing and looks to continue changing.

The monthly sales figure are trending downward and the sales-to-listing ratios clearly show the days of a Seller's market are pretty much a thing of the past. (these are very distinct, defined ranges in these ratios to give us the definition of a Seller's Market, Balanced Market and Buyer's Market - we don't just make these tags up and apply them whimsically).

In the heady past few years of selling homes, you could pretty much throw anything into the market and it would get gobbled up, often times, in a feeding frenzy of buyers. But now, Realtors are going to have to work a little bit harder in order to get their listings sold. There's more Seller competition for fewer Buyers.

As a result, I see us heading back towards the "polished apple" metaphor. When buyers come across two comparable properties, similarly priced, most often, they're going to choose the "most polished one".
It's been my experience that most Buyers buy up into the upper end of their mortgage bracket, leaving little money, if any (at least for the first several years) for major improvements. They're looking for homes that have all this stuff already done for them!

Note that even in the recent frenzied market, this was still the case, but wasn't that apparent because the plethora of buyers would have fewer homes to choose from and buy up the "less polished homes" right away, too!

Now, with more choices, Buyers can afford to take a bit more time and pick and choose through the selection.

And that brings me to the Realtor. In this new market, the Realtor has to roll up their sleeves and hopefully get more cooperation from the Seller in "polishing that apple".

Things like de-cluttering, cleaning, sprucing up and home staging are going to play more significant roles as differentiators in which houses sell first......or at all!

And the Realtors who are savvy enough to recognize this change, and work with their Sellers to apply some elbow grease to make it look like a "cut above" the competition, are the ones who are going to get top results.
Insist that your Realtor brings more to the table than just a "For Sale" sign for your lawn and a lockbox for your front door.