Selling a Home in 2024 – What to Expect

The only constant is change – that is certainly the case for home buyers and sellers dipping their toes into the real estate market this year. With uncertain market changes and new nationwide rules, successfully navigating the market is ripe with challenges, and opportunity alike. Here’s what you can expect if you want to sell a home in today’s environment.

House Prep Expectations

Prepare to do a little work. While a good agent takes the lion share of the marketing and legal issues, sellers still have plenty of weight to pull. Cleaning, decluttering, organizing… The prep work before listing a home can be tiring, but it’s also incredibly important.  Just remember, a clean well put together home will demand a better price and sell faster. It is worth some energy to get the home looking as best as possible, especially in the market we’re in. (more on that below…)

A proper agent will go through the home and discuss changes and items to address in order to make sure the property looks it’s best in the eyes of a buyer. It also needs to be discussed if there are any known repairs that should take place prior to listing a home, or if they are not necessary and cab be handled later down the road.

As you can imagine, the way people live in their homes falls on a huge spectrum. One persons clean is another persons messy – The time it takes to get the home in good order could be an afternoon, or it could be weeks or more.

Timeline Expectations

Since the year 2000 the valley has mostly been in a seller’s market, where homes sell quite quickly. When we have not been in a sellers market, it’s been a buyer’s market and those buyers markets have been pretty short periods. Right now, we are coasting along in a third and rarely visited category… a balanced market, neither a sellers market or buyers market. 

Since we so rarely find ourselves in an extended balanced market, sellers experiencing the market right now tend to think the market is worse than it is. That’s because the market feels “worse than normal”.  Well, it IS worse than normal because a ‘normal’ market for Arizona over the last several decades is a sellers market.

Sellers need to keep in mind that a “balanced market” and a “normal market” are two different things. Balanced has not been the normal market for AZ, it just feels worse than it is.

Sellers need to manage expectations and understand that competition is higher than it’s averaged over the last few decades, buyers are being pickier than in years past, and rightfully so. They are spending good money on high interest rates, so only the best offerings will go the quickest.

Sellers right now are averaging 36 days until an accepted contract up from 20 days at this time last year. Many sellers will be shorter, and many will be longer. Each property type, zip code, community and specific home can vary.

If your property needs work and/or you are overpriced, you are going to be sitting on the market longer than average. It’s more important now than in years past to showcase your property in the best light possible, and price it appropriately in order to reach the end goal efficiently.

Showings expectation

If your agent has marketed the home properly, and priced it appropriately, you’ll get some traffic through the door.  The first couple weeks on the market are the busiest for activity.  80% of showings will occur over the weekends, but it also depends on the type of home and target demographic – Working families and retirees have far different schedules.

Showings while living in a home can be inconvenient, but necessary. Arrangement for specific timing, days, or advance notice is possible to set up – However the more available and flexible you are the more opportunities you may have to land the right buyer.

In prior strong sellers market, like Phoenix was for a long time, it was not unusual to see 10 showings and 7 offers in one weekend.  That generally does not happen in the current market. There isn’t a ‘normal’ metric for showings to offers ratio. As you may expect, those nice, clean, updated and well priced homes have a much higher batting average than those overpriced/needing work homes.

Plan to step out of the home during showings to allow buyers to feel comfortable and picture themselves living in the home. Showings average 15-20 minutes, but really interested buyers may take plenty more time to explore.

Cost Expectations

The total cost in selling a home can vary.  Title and escrow fees will run about 1% of sale price in fees for these services. Buyer concessions and negotiated repair costs can range from zero dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, so this can be hard to predict up front.  Just remember, you never have to accept buyer concessions, and you are not obligated to do repairs on the Arizona standard contract – BUT, a buyer may walk if you don’t, so it’s a risk you need to asses when the offer is presented to you.

Lastly, you will have real estate professional/Realtor costs. Thankfully for home sellers, the opportunity for reduced compensation to a real estate professional is now a larger possibility.

If you haven’t heard by now, we are in the early innings of a major national change that “decouples” listing agent and buyers agent compensation. The idea behind this change is that some sellers were upset they paid for a buyers agents compensation. While sellers never technically had to, it was customary, and in a sellers best interest to do so.

As of August 2024, sellers won’t need to pay the 5-6% which had the buyers agents compensation “baked in”. Sellers are only needing to pay the compensation of their own agent, which is likely closer to the 2.5%-3% range for most professionals.

If you speak to a Realtor who is still asking for 5-6% after August 1 of 2024, be cautious and get a second opinion!

The caveat here is sellers ARE still allowed to pay a buyers agents compensation. A seller CAN still offer it up front to help attract more buyers, but even if you do not offer it up front, a home buyer may still include their agent’s compensation as a part of the offer. Each offer and situation will be unique and have to be accounted for from a sellers stand point. This leaves more dollars to be negotiated between a buyer, meaning your agents expertise is more important then ever.

Your total costs for a home sale for most sellers in this new era should generally range from 4%-8% depending on the unique circumstances.

As always, please let me know how I can help you reach your real estate goals.