Читать книгу Sell Your Home in Canada - Geraldine Santiago - Страница 5

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What Type of Market Is It?

Before you put your home up for sale, it is important to look at the larger market conditions, such as local and national housing prices, mortgage rate movements, and new home construction. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) helps people selling their homes understand how the housing market is evolving. The CMHC’s regional offices and Market Analysis Centre are great sources for finding out about the current housing market. The CMHC regularly publishes local market analysis reports and provides information on recent trends in housing market conditions across the country.

Your regional CMHC market analyst can tell you if it’s a buyer’s, seller’s, or balanced housing market. Contact information for market analysts is available on the CMHC website at www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca.

Buyer’s Market

In a buyer’s market, the number of homes available for sale exceeds the demand, so prices will either stabilize or drop. With fewer buyers and more homes, buyers have greater negotiating leverage, so sellers should price their homes competitively if they want to sell.

Seller’s Market

In a seller’s market, relatively few homes are on the market, so the number of buyers exceeds the number of sellers and the seller dictates the price. In this situation of low inventory, sellers often get their price (sometimes more than the asking price) because of a bidding war, in which there are many competing offers.

Balanced Market

In a balanced market, there is an equal number of buyers and sellers. If you are a seller in this market, you will probably not experience a bidding war because there are enough properties listed on the market.

When Is the Best Time to Sell?

The busiest times in the real estate industry are usually the spring and summer. This is when many companies relocate their employees, and as a result there are more properties to choose from. Because of this availability, many buyers tend to do their home shopping at this time, so there is the most competition among buyers. A recent poll showed that Canadians feel that April, May, and June are the best times to sell a home and December and January are the best times to buy a home.

A recent poll showed that Canadians feel that April, May, and June are the best times to sell a home.

If you are selling your home in order to move up to a new house, another major influence on deciding when to sell is the mortgage interest rate. What rates are available now? Will they fall or will they rise in the near future? If they rise, how much will they go up? It can be hard to answer these questions, but CMHC’s Market Analysis Centre can help by providing you with both an analysis of the current mortgage market and an outlook for future mortgage rates.