Competitive Sellers Market

If you’re a home buyer, you may have hoped that the real estate market might freeze up a bit in early January to allow breathing room in a less competitive market. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be happening.

While it is early in 2022, Realtor.com’s Monthly Housing Report shows that the real estate market is starting off just as competitive as 2021′s.

The typical home sold in 61 days in January, which is 10 days less than in January 2021 and nearly a month (29 days) faster than the typical pace of sales in January between 2017 and 2020, according to Realtor.com. While buyers were active in the market in January, the number of homes for sale continued to lag well behind demand. The number of active listings on the market — which includes any home listed for sale, not just those that are recently listed — was down 28.4 percent in January 2022 compared to January 2021. It decreased 60.4 percent compared to the number of active listings in January 2020. New listings, which are those first placed on the market during the month, were also down by 9.1 percent compared to January 2021 and by 17.9 percent compared to January 2020.

There are a few things I’ve learned over the past 17 years in the real state market as an investor and an agent.  

We specialize in selling homes here in Chicagoland area especially in the West Town neighborhood.   

Obviously you want the best price for your house and the best terms.  

When you’re dealing with multiple offers one of the things that the agent representing the buyer may do is to remove certain contingencies.  

That’s great, but with my vast experience on both ends of the transaction, sometimes I’ve found that the buyers will pay a significant amount over the price of the home, this is great until the appraisal comes back and then they try to renegotiate. 

That is why during the initial negotiations process, when we have an offer for above asking we also negotiate that they remove the appraisal contingency.  

So that way, in the beginning The buyer knows they will pay the difference between the appraised value of the home, meaning what the appraiser says its worth and the price offered.  

So if the difference is really big, you need to make sure the buyer has the funds on hand to pay that difference in addition to their down payment and closing costs.  This is a step that many seller’s agents and buyer’s agent’s forget to confirm to make sure that you close on the price offered and not the appraisal value. 

I was recently involved in a home transaction where the buyer paid $100,000 over the appraised value, and the buyer had to come out of pocket for that difference.  

So just be careful when selling and make sure this is a consideration.

Ri Prasad here of Ri Prasad Luxury Group,  we’re always here to help you sell your home and make sure we dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, feel free to call us for any reason at all, we’d be happy to help because real estate isn’t just a profession, it is an obsession. 

Make it a great home selling and buying day.  And be sure to check out our YouTube channel The Chicago View by Ri Prasad for more  tips to keep you safe when selling. 

And don’t forget if you’re thinking of selling your home here in Chicago, IL, we are the area specialists.