WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT SELLING AND BUYING IN WINTER 2023

Is the middle of winter a good time to sell your property? Absolutely, the best time to sell your home is when there's very few available options for buyers, which is what we have right now in the Wellington market. The good news for property owners in Wellington is that the demand remains fairly linear over the seasons. The only reason that we sell more property in the summertime is that there's more stock available. 

So if you're thinking of selling, now's a great time to give yourself every chance of getting the best price. But it's actually the total antithesis of what we're seeing out there day to day. And that ties to the fact that there's very few properties to sell, which again means that more buyers are coming through open homes and some owners are getting some really good results. Buyers love viewing the property on a cold, winter, windy, blustery day. They can envision themselves being in the home in what is a pretty up and down climate in Wellington at times. Whether looking at properties in winter from a buyer's perspective, or looking at property in the summer, one thing I've noticed in the market recently is that a lot more people are making offers, but not all of those offers are unconditional. 

And we've had a lot of instances where the owners potentially would have taken a lower unconditional offer for the security, just when the climate's a little bit iffy. So my recommendation to buyers would be to go to your mortgage broker, go to your bank, get finance for an unconditional purchase of a property to give yourself every chance of being successful. 

As an example, a client of ours bought a property unconditionally a couple of weeks ago. They really loved it and 12 months ago, they definitely would have been successful subject to sale. But unfortunately, the competitive process meant that they had to go unconditional in order to secure the property, which they did. They were nervous about bringing their property to market, but we're happy to say that we actually sold that on Friday after nine days and four offers on it. That just would not have been the case 12 months ago. So people are starting to slowly act with a little bit more confidence, putting their best foot forward. 

I think that because owners have lost confidence, there just isn't enough stock to meet the demand which again ties into the fact that if you want to sell, you should sell now when there's very few properties available. 

Outside of finance, the typical things that buyers would want to engage in prior to offering to give themselves every chance of being unconditional is the bank is probably going to want to see a builder's report and a LIM report. In most cases that's provided by the seller of the property. In conjunction with that, it's really important that the buyers canvas all those documents with their solicitor, just to make sure that they're happy with the terms and conditions of the sale and purchase agreement and also the LIM report, to be able to make an informed decision when they go about purchasing their home.

- Louis Metson