8 Advantages of Getting Real Estate Listings in the Winter

Sellers can benefit from putting their homes on the market during the winter, but what’s in it for you? Potentially, lots — thanks to fundamental changes in how most buyers now shop for homes. You might have to slog your way through snow and ice while selling in the off-season, but the payoffs can be significant.

Here are 8 advantages of getting real estate listings in the winter.

1. Build up your inventory

Sure, many sellers are reluctant to put their homes up for sale in the off-season, but earning those listings will help maintain your inventory and keep it growing during a time when other real estate agents’ resources remain stagnant.

2. Stay busy and keep the revenue flowing

While other real estate agents and their customers use the winter months to hibernate, you can stay busy converting your winter listings to sales and getting those satisfied clients to write reviews and make referrals.

3. Earn a bigger commission

Low interest rates and a smaller pool of available homes can attract serious buyers who might not have a choice but to find their next home during the winter months. That can translate to premium prices for sellers in the winter and a bigger payoff for you, too.

4. Enjoy quicker sales

When motivated sellers tire of showing their homes during the holidays and lenders have foreclosures they need to get off the books as soon as possible, you might have the opportunity to close sales more quickly than during other times of the year.

5. Hone your marketing skills

When there are fewer sellers demanding your time in the off-season, you can spend more marketing hours and resources on the clients who list with you. Use the extra time to dive deeper into marketing tactics you haven’t fully explored — for example, using social media platforms, trying out new staging strategies or incorporating video into your mix — and see how you can better leverage them for your business.

6. Get a head start on spring buyers

Inspections on winter real estate listings give you a chance to see how the home performs in the most extreme weather. If buyers come later in spring, you have a more comprehensive picture of what kind of shape the home is in.

7. Gain a reputation for selling in the off-season

Most industry experts feel that winter is one of the worst times to put a home on the market, so when you close those sales, spread the word far and wide. Your successes can contribute to your reputation as the go-to agent when people decide to list their homes in winter.

8. Practice makes perfect

If you’re only a few years into your real estate career, selling homes in the winter can be a great opportunity to tweak and evaluate the effectiveness of your lead generation tactics, marketing efforts and sales processes so that you can improve them going forward.

While waiting until spring to sell a home has some advantages, it’s no longer a hard-and-fast rule of real estate; buyer behavior has shifted over time, changing when and why homes are purchased. Getting real estate listings in the winter can still be a challenge, but they provide opportunities for you to streamline your sales and marketing approach — as well as your customer service delivery — and close more business while other agents wait out the winter.