Hot New Christmas Item Is A New Home
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PLANO (CBSDFW.COM) - There's a new hot item on more people's Christmas lists this year... a new house.
For the longest time conventional wisdom said the holiday season was a bad time to try to sell your home.
But that isn't true in today's current housing market, according to many realtors.
The Ervin family has only owned their new home for a few days, but all the Christmas decorations are up.
"Yeah I get out of all the other Christmas presents," David Ervin said.
He and his wife were looking for their new home for months, and he said if anything, the approaching holidays only made him more determined to buy quickly.
"Knowing the market that we're in, especially within the last year or two and how fast things are moving, we knew we kind of had to jump on something that we liked when we liked it," Ervin said.
Realtor Jennifer Davis said a few years ago she and her colleagues thought of the holidays as a dormant time for deals with so many distractions interfering with sales. Now she said sellers realize buyers this time of year are serious.
"Anyone that's going to squeeze in the home buying process into their already busy holiday schedule, means it's serious business. They're not just kind of kicking the tires," Davis said.
With mortgage rates near historic lows, Davis says this is an ideal time to sell before rates go up. It can also help that homes and entire neighborhoods often look their best decked out with holiday decorations that can make showing a home easier.
"You have little kids, you want to provide this to them and be able to do this for them for them to be able to have a place to wake up on Christmas that is their own. It's pretty awesome," Ervin said.
Realtors said this is a time when sellers also benefit from the surge in relocations and buyers looking to close before the beginning of the year when they start new jobs.
