In case you missed our “Slim Pickin’s” post, here’s the Cliff Notes version: inventory is down more than 35% to approximately 7k units and buyers are frustrated with stale listings. If you have been thinking about listing your property and testing the sales and rental market at the same time (common strategy for owners), you may wish to choose only the former right now.
This is a prime time to list your property for sale, akin to being a big fish in a little pond, versus waiting until the Spring or Summer to list when competition will have increased. Buyers are still out there and still looking; any new property coming on the market at this time is likely to get better than average traction. The key, as always, is pricing right and paying attention to the first 3-4 weeks in the life of your listings, the “critical hour”, when most of your offers and activity will be generated.
Further, testing the rental market now may bring you unnecessary gloom: mid-winter months are the worst possible time for landlords, yielding the lowest rents of the year with the least amount of tenant traffic. Unless you absolutely need cash coming in the door, avert the temptation of listing your apartment for rent quite yet. See what happens on the sales side and test the rental waters in the greener Spring or Summer months to make sure you don’t lock yourself in to to a low-yielding lease.
