January Buyers in Claremont: What the New Year Changes

The buyers who appear at the start of the year are not the same buyers who appear in spring, and the difference is not enthusiasm. It is circumstance.

Somebody touring houses in the coldest, shortest, wettest part of the local year has usually decided something. They are moving for a reason with a date attached, or they spent the quiet weeks concluding that the current house does not work. Very few people do it casually, because nothing about the season encourages casual.

That single fact shapes everything else about buying here in the early months.

The competition is thinner, and different

Fewer buyers are out, and the ones who are out are serious. Those two facts pull in opposite directions and both matter.

Thinner traffic means less of the crowded-open-house dynamic. It also means a seller has fewer parties to play against each other, and knows it. What it does not mean is that nobody is competing - the buyers present are more likely to write, and more likely to write firmly, because they did not come out in the rain to browse.

The realistic expectation is a quieter process with better odds of being taken seriously, rather than an absence of competition. The broader argument is set out in the buying-by-season guide.

The inventory question

The obvious drawback is choice. Fewer houses are on the market and the ones that are tend to fall into recognisable groups: sellers with a genuine reason to move now, houses carried over from the previous year, and the earliest of the properties being prepared for spring.

The carried-over group is where attention pays. A house that has been available across the holidays has usually been seen by everyone who was looking and has not sold, and there is always a reason. Sometimes the reason is price. Sometimes it is a fixable presentation problem. Sometimes it is a genuine defect, and finding out which is the entire job.

What a carried-over listing does offer is a seller who has now lived with the situation for a while, and the difference between a seller in week two and the same seller months later is one of the few real advantages available to a buyer in any season.

The weather is doing you a favour

This is the part buyers dislike and should not.

Touring in the wet season means seeing houses under the conditions that expose the things most expensive to fix. Where water goes, whether the yard drains, whether the roof and flashing are honest, whether a low corner of the lot holds water - all of it is visible in the wet months and invisible in the dry ones. A house that looks fine in the rain has passed a test that a dry-season tour cannot administer.

The same goes for the interior. Rooms are being judged on the season's actual light, which is the least flattering it gets. A house that feels warm and bright in the short months will not disappoint you later.

The scheduling constraints are real

Two practical problems belong to this part of the year.

The first is daylight. The after-work showing window is at its narrowest, so weekday touring compresses toward the middle of the day and weekends carry the load. Anyone buying in the short months should expect to use time off, and should not evaluate a yard, a view, or a street after dark - the reasons are covered in the daylight and showings guide.

The second is the calendar itself. Holidays, a slower start to the working year, and weather all affect how quickly the people a transaction depends on can move. That is a timing question rather than a risk, and it is handled in the escrow calendar guide.

Why the decision often happens now

The quiet weeks at the turn of the year are when households actually decide things. The holidays have just tested the house - how it holds guests, whether the kitchen works, whether the space fits the family it now has - and the social calendar is empty enough for people to think.

This is one of the two annual reset points described in the household reset piece, and it is the one that produces property decisions. A large share of the year's moves are decided in these weeks even when the sale itself happens months later.

For a buyer, that has a useful implication: if you are deciding right now, so is a portion of your future competition. The people who act in the quiet months are shopping against a small field. The people who decide in the quiet months and act in spring are shopping against everyone.

How to use the season well

Get financing arranged before you start rather than during. Fewer competing offers does not make a slow buyer attractive.

Look hardest at what has been sitting, and find out why rather than assuming.

Tour in daylight, and go back in the rain if you can.

Be honest about whether limited choice is a real constraint for you. If your requirements are specific - a particular street, a particular lot, a particular layout - a thin market may simply not contain it, and waiting is not weakness. The counterpart argument from the seller's side is in the winter selling guide.

Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.

See how the rest of the year behaves at the seasonal guides hub.