- Real-estate agent Dana Bull advises submitting home offers two days before Christmas.
- In general, buyers are distracted during the holidays, so it can be a good time to score a deal.
- Another good window of opportunity is the Fourth of July weekend.
If real-estate investor and agent Dana Bull was looking to expand her portfolio, she'd be putting in offers in late December — specifically, two days before Christmas.
December 23 is her "favorite day of the year to submit an offer," she told Business Insider. "I find that sellers are very interested in getting a deal done going into the holidays or going into this year."
Bull works in real estate in a variety of capacities: She's a licensed agent, does real-estate consulting and coaching, and is a seasoned investor who owns multi-family and single-family homes throughout Massachusetts.
She's learned that if you want to land a good deal on a property, timing matters.
"It's always a good time to be deal hunting during a distracted market," Bull said — and people tend to be distracted over the holidays. "Most people are just in coast mode, but if you're not in coast mode or if you can take yourself out of coast mode, this is such a great time."
Starting a negotiation a few days before Christmas is a good time for several reasons.
"In general, people are in good spirits, and sellers tend to feel a sense of relief if they receive an offer because they usually aren't expecting one," she said. "Christmas Eve puts a deadline to get things wrapped up with the negotiating and creates a sense of urgency."
She says she would avoid submitting an offer on actual holidays — "it's a bit rude and unrealistic to get a response" — but the days following Christmas are fair game. "I almost always submit an offer that week. It's a time of great reflection, and sellers are generally motivated to put a deal together so they can enter the new year with a plan in place."
The holiday window of opportunity is small. A couple of weeks into January, "it's like a light switch comes back on," she said, noting that mid-January is one of her busiest times of the year for consultations. "What I've noticed is this herd mentality where everybody just ebbs and flows at the same time, so if you can be flowing when everybody else is ebbing, this is when you can negotiate."
That said, "You don't want to make a bad purchase just because it's a good time of year," Bull added, but if you can carve out time to look for deals when most other investors aren't, you could be rewarded.
"There are always these pockets, like the Fourth of July is another great time where people have signed off, and I'm almost always working with somebody that weekend to try to scrounge something up."
Seasonal swings aren't a myth, and they can be significant. In her market, for example, "Massachusetts has huge seasonal swings in average pricing by like $100,000."
Regardless of your market, however, in the winter, "prices always come down," Bull explained. "And then they're going to start to climb. Then, in the summer they come back down again and they climb again in the fall. Every year it's the same quarterly trend, so if you are looking to buy a house, right now is one of the best times."