Charlotte sellers thinking about waiting until after the holidays are working from an assumption the local calendar doesn’t support. Over more than two decades of transaction history, December has consistently been one of the top two or three months of the year for Live Love Homes, according to founder Lisa Archer. The reason lies in who is shopping at year’s end: buyers working against a deadline, some of it real and some of it imagined.
The imagined deadline belongs to families moving from out of state. Many of them assume Charlotte’s school semester ends in December, as it does in many districts elsewhere, and plan to have their children enrolled by early January. In fact, Charlotte students don’t take their semester exams until January. The assumption is mistaken, but the urgency it creates is real: these families want to close and be settled by the end of the year, and they shop accordingly.
The real deadline belongs to investors. Purchases and sales timed for tax purposes need to close before December 31, which adds a second group of motivated buyers to the same weeks when many sellers have pulled back.
Behind the December rush is a pool of relocating buyers that stays large year-round. Archer cites recent estimates of more than 150 people moving to Charlotte every day, and few of them are moving casually. “If you’re moving here from out of state because you’ve got a new job, you have to buy,” she says. In a single recent month, her team worked with buyers coming from Connecticut, New York, Chicago, and Florida, without any one region dominating.
That demand rests on a broad employment base. The city’s banking sector, its international airport, and its role as an American Airlines hub have kept Charlotte more insulated than many metros, Archer says. Metro-wide, homes are selling at about 96% of asking price, and inventory runs at roughly three and a half to four months, well short of the six months generally considered balanced.
Because so many buyers arrive for job reasons, they rarely shop on a conventional schedule. Archer describes a typical scene: one member of a household is at a job interview while the other drives around Charlotte looking at homes, often on a weekday. Weekend open houses miss that buyer entirely.
Her team’s response has been to hold open houses every day, either in person or virtually. So far this year, 39 of the team’s listings have sold to buyers who came through an open house, and Archer expects the total to reach about 50 by year’s end. In one recent case, a Tuesday open house drew an investor who saw the sign and the listing on a search app, and who now plans to buy two properties.
The virtual option serves sellers who can’t accommodate unscheduled visitors, such as households with aging parents, a sick child, or a work-from-home schedule. A QR code on the yard sign links to a walkthrough video available around the clock, and some virtual visitors go on to book in-person showings.
The main objection on the buyer side is mortgage rates. Some buyers say they’ll wait for rates to come down. Archer coaches her agents to shift the conversation from the rate itself to the monthly payment, using lender partners that offer rate buydowns and free appraisals. “If we can get you the payment that works for your budget on a monthly basis, would you want to go out and start looking at property?” is the question she has her agents ask. For a relocating buyer who has to buy anyway, that question often removes the reason to wait.
Year-end urgency does not make buyers less selective. If anything, Archer sees buyers as less tolerant of cosmetic work than they were a year or two ago. “The number of people who will bypass a house that needs new carpet and paint versus what they were doing a year or two years ago is crazy,” she says. Those buyers will either wait or offer well below asking price.
For a December seller, then, the advantage of motivated buyers holds only if the home is ready for them. That means fresh cosmetics where needed, pricing based on current trends rather than older comparable sales, and concessions that don’t show up in the list price, such as a one-year home warranty, the appliances, or help with a buyer’s rate buydown. These are the details that make a home the next one to sell, which is the question Archer has her agents ask about every listing.
The case against waiting comes down to who is buying in December: families trying to beat a school deadline and investors trying to beat a tax deadline. Sellers who take their homes off the market until January give up those buyers. “If we’ve got an offer in hand, we’ve got to figure out how to get it to the closing table,” Archer says.
About the Expert: Lisa Archer is founder of Live Love Homes, a residential real estate team with Keller Williams Realty Ballantyne Area in Charlotte, North Carolina, with expansion teams elsewhere in the Carolinas and in South Mississippi.
This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.
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