Now is the time for real estate agents to really take advantage and find vendors looking to sell in 2016.
January is stereotypically the time for beach, relaxing and a gradual easing back into work, right? If you’re a real estate agent you should think again. Here’s why.
Our data has consistently found that there is one time of the year more people make the decision to begin selling their homes than any other: the first working Monday of January.
Home owners sign up to compare agents at LocalAgentFinder as the first step towards selling their property.
In 2015 the first Monday of January (also the first working day of the month) set a huge new record as our largest day ever for sign ups.
This week the pattern has been repeated with about 7500 agents proposals submitted to hundreds of newly registered properties. But it’s not just the first day, the first calendar week of this month (Jan 4-11) has been our biggest on record with agents sharing more than 23,000 proposals to thousands of new vendors.
The first Monday beat our previous daily record by a huge 70 per cent, and continued strongly through the week with 400 per cent growth on last year.
Why? It’s the same reason gym memberships spike in January, or people quit smoking or go online and book flights overseas.
Home owners who may have been thinking about it for months, or even years, decide this is the year they’ll sell their home.
And they don’t muck around. Before 9am Monday hundreds of vendors had already signed up to compare agents.
What this means is that for real estate agents January is no time to sit at the beach drinking beer and contemplating the year ahead, because this is when the really savvy agents get a running leap ahead of the competition.
Agents should forget that January is the slow season and use every tool in their power to get back to work and market to those home owners.
Because while spring is the selling season, January and February are when people start the process to sell.
This is also where agents should not be scared of technology or transparency, for example, by engaging with social media, online comparison sites and other real estate tech, they will get the kick-start they need just by being available on the platform.
The January vendor rush also points towards the need to look beyond spring. This year particularly with interest rates still low, autumn is looking likely to be a very strong season of interest for home owners.
Regardless, our data shows one thing: Now is the time for real estate agents to really take advantage and find vendors looking to sell in 2016.