The Summer Market
As summer quickly approaches, we wanted to share some perspective with you about the North Scottsdale real estate market. One question real estate agents in this area are asked every year, is should I continue to market my home during the summer? We feel that summer is still a great time to have your home for sale. Especially if you are truly a motivated seller. Homes sell in our area every month of the year, but we decided to do some research to be able to share some facts with you about sales.
For this analysis, we looked at zip codes 85255, 85262 and 85266. We specifically selected homes that went under contract each month and that ultimately closed. What we found is that 36 percent of the sales that closed in 2018 went under contract between the beginning of June and the end of October. This is a total of 223 homes priced at more than one million in North Scottsdale. During the same time period, 2,571 showings scheduled through MLS’s ShowingTime tool. This is currently only used on 41% of the homes in those zip codes priced above $1,000,000. One could estimate that the actual number of showings during that time was much higher based on the number of agents who did not use this tool on their showings.
Economically Speaking
When you look at this from an economics perspective, demand for homes is still there during the warmer months. People shopping for homes during these time periods are definitely serious buyers to brave the heat. What is interesting is what happens to supply. The graph below shows inventory during the same time period. It shrinks significantly, so there is less inventory competing for a buyer’s attention. One of our clients summed up his thoughts about home shopping during this period like this: “If I wanted a home in Scottsdale for the season, I would definitely shop in the summer so that I could use it when the season started.”
So, the short answer to the question is yes. Unless there is some other reason to consider, keeping your home on the market during the summer makes strategic sense. Some sellers feel that pulling a home off the market for 90 days resets their days on market. While this is technically correct, it doesn’t erase the previous number of days on market that are visible to everyone; it is not a secret.
Days On Market
A recent example is a home, not one of our clients, who put their home on the market in 2007 and then removed it and relisted it six additional times. You don’t have to be a math expert to look at this listing and see that since 2007, this home has been on the market seven times for a total of 1933 days, approximately 5 years and 3 months. Yes, they have reset the clock so to speak, five times. But even when it went back on the market, and showed current days of only five, the other 1928 days have not disappeared from the history.
You can be sure that whenever a potential buyer looked at this home, their agent let them know how long it had been on the market in total time, not just the last listing. A red flag to both agents and potential buyers is how many times a home has been on and off the market and how many different agents have been involved. This prompts questions about why a home has not sold, why so many different agents are involved?
Marketing In The Summer
During the summer, our goal for the homes we have listed is to keep actively marketing them aggressively. Here are a few of the ways we do this.
Since a buyer is much more in charge of the way they search for a home than in the past, our goal is to get in front of them at every opportunity. The single largest marketing investment we make every month is in Zillow and Trulia. This investment means that anyone searching for a home in North Scottsdale has a high likelihood of seeing one of our client’s homes. Our listings are displayed on the first page when they search in 85255, 85262 and 85266. Our plan is to continue getting this exposure for clients through the summer.
Facebook is also effective for targeting and getting the homes we list in front of potential buyers. We use a variety of creative paid campaigns to reach potential buyers that we can target through Facebook. We also run Facebook campaigns targeted at local Realtors. Targeting those who have had North Scottsdale luxury transactions in the past couple of years, so our homes show up in their feeds, and we can also suggest homes for specific types of client’s.
Additional Marketing Techniques
Email marketing is one of our more effective tools for reaching other agents. We currently run three different types of campaigns to agents. The first is our own list of luxury agents that we have networked with in the past. We send this list an email each month highlighting our current listings, but we also send them any new listings or price changes as soon as they occur. We also are active in both the Pinnacle Peak Luxury Home Tour and the Paradise Valley Luxury Home Tour. As members, we have access to both mailing systems and send directly to the agents that participate in those tours.
Our web site is another significant marketing channel. It is promoted in all of our marketing and receives a high level of traffic. Every home has its own web page that features all of the photographs, the listing brochure, the video, and the 360-degree photos.
Finally, our award-winning Luxury Property Report is in the mail. Each of the homes we have listed is prominently featured in this publication that is distributed via mail to nearly 6,000 homes and promoted digitally and reaches thousands more. In the digital version, readers can actually click on links in the listings to visit the actual property’s listing page.
So does it make sense to stay on the market? You decide, but we recommend it in most situations.
If you would like to learn more about The Lifestyle Collection and how we are Real Estate Reimagined, click here, or email us at Jordan@TheLifestylecollection.com.
