How Hard Is It To Sell A Home?

Are you having any success in selling a home in Tallahassee? I get this question from prospective home sellers in Tallahassee, as well as from REALTORS from all over the internet. I think it is one of the more important issues defining our housing market nationwide.

Most real estate professionals define a "good housing market" as one where when somebody wants to move, they can sell their home. Simple. Concise. Understandable. There is a market for homes and somebody will want to purchase mine if my family needs to move. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for the past few years. In fact, it has gotten bad enough that we actually track some key housing statistics so that we can continually monitor and be ready to answer the question on the mind of every home owner ...

How Hard Is It To Sell A Home?

For long-term readers of the Tallahassee Real Estate Blog, you know that we track the Home Sales Success Rate  in our local market area. This measurement tracks the trend of ease of selling a home, but does not specifically tell you how hard it is to sell a home.

The home sales success rate is simply the total number of home sales in the Tallahassee MLS over the past 365 days divided by the total number of new listings over the same period of time. We measure this daily and it gives us a one-year trend that removes all the influences that can occur due to seasonality.

On the other end of the spectrum, we also measure and track the home sales failure rate in Tallahassee. This measurement tracks the trend of difficulty in selling a home, but it does not specifically tell you how many people actually failed in selling their home.

The home sales failure rate is simply the total number of homes that left the market during the past 365 days without a successful sale. These would be listings that expired, were canceled, or were just withdrawn from the market. We take the failures and divide them by the total number of new listings during the same time period and the resulting ratio, measured daily, gives us an idea of how hard it is to sell a home.

Up until this point, we had a good idea of the relative trend of failures and successes, but we wanted to be more accurate.

So Just How Hard Is It To Sell A Home?

The following real estate graph combines the information from the previous two graphs and shows us that roughly 41% of home sellers were successful in the past 365 days. The good news is that the trend is at a two-year high and appears to be improving. Of course, the bad news is less than 1/2 of home sellers who list their home for sale in Tallahassee are successful in getting the home sold.

The colored area of the real estate graph above represents 100% of the listings that departed the market over the previous 365 days from each point on the graph. The red area measures failures, while the green area measures success. Fortunately, the green area is growing, the red is receding, meaning it is getting a little less difficult to sell a home.

If you have a home to sell anywhere in the world, make sure you work with a real estate professional who understands what it takes to be successful today. Too many home sellers have discovered that failing to sell a home ultimately yields a lot less money for a seller than being successful on the first attempt. If you need some help, let us know and we can help you find the best real estate professional in your market area.

*Joe Manausa Real Estate is a brokerage company headquartered in Tallahassee, Florida. Its unique business model provides specialists to both home sellers and home buyers, and the results speak for themselves. JMRE has significantly more 5-star reviews on google than any other local competitor. Joe Manausa Real Estate is a leader in internet marketing and utilizes search engine optimization, email marketing, social media and data analytics to get their clients’ home sold faster and for more money than any other Tallahassee brokerage firm. For more information, visit www.manausa.com or call us at (850) 366-8917.