How long does it take to stage your home for sale?

There are known peaks and troughs in the real estate market. ‘Everyone’ wants to sell in spring and summer, but not too near Christmas, or a long weekend and make sure your auction isn’t rained on during winter. You will hear it all as you plan to sell.

For every article telling you to sell in spring I can show you one that says you can sell just as well in winter.

The whole concept of summer, autumn, winter or spring sales are probably restricted to the southern capital

cities. The further north you go the variation diminishes significantly in Australia anyway.

A beautifully staged home, with a roaring fire and cosy styling, will delight and inspire buyers in winter just as well as styling a property for sale a home styled for sale in spring. Weather aside, your timeframe will also be determined by factors like your family plans, external deadlines and much more. Whatever the situation consider the end

goal (the next home you want to be in and when that will be) and work backwards from there.

Here is an example of how this might work:

» You want the kids settled by January into new home ready for school start in February

» Allow up to three months settlement period on any offer you make on that home

» A six week house hunting period prior to that

» Three months for your home to have settled

» Eight week sale campaign prior to that

» Four to six weeks to prepare your house for sale, appoint an agent and prepare marketing

» That’s 44 weeks of prior planning and preparation to be ready for a school term start in February!!!

You can offer incentives for early settlement, organised people can get their house on the market in a week if they have to and if you are anything like the hubby and me, we bought the first Saturday we went looking.

However, without external pressure, you could easily spend up to 44 weeks getting out of one property and

into the next. If you are disorganised or indecisive it could take much longer.