Don’t Miss the Fall Market—5 Reasons to List Your Home Now

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Today we’re counting down the top five reasons why fall is a good time to list and sell your home.

5. It’s absolutely beautiful right now. Your landscaping looks great. Flowers are still in bloom and the yard is green. The house looks great and your curb appeal couldn’t be better. 

4. It’s the perfect time to trade up to a larger home. If you’ve been waiting for the market to turn, stop waiting. Interest rates are still really low. Homes priced under $600,000 are still selling in about two to three weeks. Homes in the higher end of the market take longer to sell, so there is more for you to choose from. The cost for your loan will be really low right now, so make sure you take advantage of the market and move up to a larger home.

3. Buyers have been waiting for new homes to come on the market. A lot of homes that were on the market have sold. The ones that are leftover have been on the market for a long time, and buyers don’t want them. They are waiting for great homes to come on the market. These homes should be in a great location, in great condition, and competitively priced.

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Fall buyers are ready to make offers right now.

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2. Buyers are highly motivated right now. These buyers want to buy homes. They are not coming up to Tahoe for vacation like they do in the summer; they specifically want to buy a home for the winter. Instead of getting 10 or 15 showings like you do in the summer, in the fall you’ll get two to four showings. Those buyers are ready to write offers.

1. Inventory is shrinking right now. This is the best reason to sell your home in the fall. There is a smaller number of homes available than the number of sales. For example, in August of 2017, we sold 223 houses. In September of 2016, only 206 homes sold. So, inventory is shrinking but sales stay up.

Don’t wait for next spring. List your home this fall and enjoy a successful home sale.

If you have any other questions about selling this fall or you would like to know more about preparing your home for the market, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

When Is the Best Time to Sell Your Home in the Mountains?

How do you know when the best time is to put your home on the market? There are three important factors to consider.

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

When is the best time to sell your house in the Truckee-Tahoe area? There are a few factors to consider: 

1. What percentage of homes are selling on a monthly basis? In March and April of last year, over 18% of homes on the market actually went into escrow. In August, 20% of homes went into escrow. That number dropped to 18% in September but jumped back up to 22% in November. 

In short, March, April, August, and November had the highest percentages of homes in escrow last year. 

That number can shift depending on your neighborhood. For example, last March in Tahoe Donner, 75% of homes on the market went into escrow. Inventory is incredibly low in Tahoe Donner, which is why the percentage of home sales is so high. So far this year, inventory remains low. 

Last April, Tahoe Donner had 58% of homes on the market enter escrow. That number dropped to 11% in May because more people put their homes on the market. As a result, you can expect inventory in Tahoe Donner to go up again this May. The percentage of homes sold went back up in November of 2016.

Overall, keep in mind that spring and fall have a higher percentage of homes go into escrow. 

2. What is the average selling price? Between January and May, the average sales price in our area was $808,000; from August through December, the average price dropped to $776,000. Prices go up when homes sell in the spring and drop a bit through the second half of the year.

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Prices go up when homes sell in the spring and drop a bit through the second half of the year.

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In Tahoe Donner, the average price from January through May was $603,000. From August through December, the average sales price dropped to $575,000. Even luxury markets like Old Greenwood experience a similar trend, with an average sales price of $1.88 million in the spring and $1.6 million in the fall. 

3. When is it most convenient for you to put your home on the market? Of course, this is the most important factor of all. When does it make the most sense for you to sell your home? When do you need to move? What makes the most financial sense for you? 

If you have any other questions about when to put your home on the market, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I would be happy to help you!

Christy's Tips on Getting Your Home Sold

Usually, if a house is listed but isn’t selling, it’s for one or a combination of five different reasons that I want to share with you today. 

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Why is your home not selling?

That’s a tough question. Here in the Tahoe Truckee area, you can’t just put a “For Sale” sign in your yard and expect your home to go off the market. The answer, though, can usually be boiled down to one or a combination of five different reasons:

1. The home is overpriced. Our average buyer is an out-of-towner who visits the area for the weekend, looks at several properties, and picks whichever one offers the best value. Price is a big factor in how emotionally attached they get to a home, as well. If you’re just waiting for an offer to come in, you’ll be waiting for a long time. Price the home correctly the first time to generate offers and give you the opportunity to choose the best one. 

If you’re just waiting for an offer to come in, you’ll be waiting a long time.

2. The presentation is off. Have you ever gone into a house that didn’t quite smell right or just didn’t feel very good to be in? A house’s presentation is another factor that plays a large part in how emotionally attached a buyer is going to get to it. To present your home in the best possible light, make sure it’s clean, it smells good, and it’s nice and warm.

3. Poor marketing. This can either be because the online photos don’t look very good, the property is unavailable on multiple websites, or the description of the property doesn’t correlate with its actual dimensions. Many agents look at the multiple listing services to decide what houses they’re going to show, so you need to make sure your house’s photos look spectacular and its description conveys exactly what it has to offer. 

4. The home is in bad condition. Do you have a few light bulbs out? Is the carpeting peeling? Then you may have a problem. You want your house to stand out for the right reasons. 

5. The seller isn’t listening to feedback. Whenever we have a listing being shown, we always get feedback from buyers and agents, and we listen to that feedback. That’s the primary way we know if there’s something that we need to correct. That’s also a good way to know if your competition is priced better.

We would love to share our marketing strategies and how we succeed in selling homes with you. If you have any questions or are looking to buy or sell real estate, please don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We’d be happy to help!

How to Choose the Best Offer For Your Home

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

How do you pick the best offer on your home when you’re selling?

As most people have experienced in the Bay Area, we’re starting to see multiple offers on properties. What we’re talking about today will even be helpful if you don’t have multiple offers! When you get multiple offers, there are three other factors to consider other than just price.

1. The financing terms: How much are buyers putting down, and are they pre-qualified or pre-approved by a lender? Is the lender local and reputable, or a fly-by-night online lender?
2. Contingency periods: Contingencies can be for inspections and appraisals, among other things. The standard time in California for a contract is 17 days - how much time is the buyer offering? Is the buyer making it shorter or longer? We prefer these periods to be as short as possible.
3. What are the fees and costs buyers are asking you to pay? We’ll take a close look and make sure that what they’re asking for is the normal charges that we’ve reviewed from the beginning.
4. What is the closing time, and will it work for you? Is there enough time between removing the contingencies (and the deposit becomes at risk) to the time buyers want to close?

With all four of these things considered, it’s a balancing act. If you get multiple offers or just one, it’s good to look at all four.

Thanks for watching today, I hope this information is helpful. If you’re interested in talking about real estate at all, we’re always here to help!

What Is Your Home Worth?

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Today we're going to talk about determining the value of your home. Often, people call me asking about their home value because they've seen something on Zillow or Trulia. Zillow and Trulia are often inaccurate, and cannot be trusted to find the true value.

A recent report in the Los Angeles Times featured the president of Zillow, who admitted that there is a deviation of up to 8% in home values quoted online. For a $700,000 home, that could mean that the value is off by $56,000. That's a pretty wide range.

To determine the value of your home, we need to look at what your home is competing with on the market. We need to know what features and benefits your home can offer, and how many buyers are looking for your type of property.

In Truckee, our inventory has exploded. From May to July, we have nearly doubled or tripled our inventory. It's more important than ever for sellers to make sure their property shines. If you're a buyer, you have a lot to choose from.

The good news is if you're selling your property, there are very few new listings coming on the market now. The supply is starting to dwindle right before September, which is one of our best selling months.


If you want to know a realistic value on your home, you should talk to a qualified and experienced real estate agent. They can look at your home objectively, give you the home's true value, and tell you what it will sell for.

How Do We Go About Selling Homes?

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Hey everyone, today we are going to talk about how to have a smooth transaction here in Tahoe/Truckee. Our goal is to make the process as easy as possible for you, and today we'd like to demonstrate how we are able to do that. Today we have invited our listing coordinator, Tabitha, to come talk about what the process is like, from the moment you sign a listing contract with us onward. 

The first thing Tabitha is going to do is look through your contract, making sure everything is signed and in order. She will then give you a call, introduce herself, and get all of your contact information, so we can keep you informed throughout the process.

To start preparing your home for sale, we will run through a checklist. We are going to hire photographers to take pictures of the home, set up any repairs that need to be made, and hire a home staging company to come and make the property look gorgeous. 

The last thing Tabitha will follow up on is the seller's disclosure. She will print it out, send it to you so you have time to look everything over, and answer any questions you might have. Then we will get them back from you, and send them back into escrow.

We find that proper preparation makes the whole transaction that much smoother. If you have any questions for us, feel free to give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

How to Avoid the "Kiss of Death" When Selling Your Home

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation
Call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation

Are you thinking about selling your property in the near future? If so, you've come to the right place. Today, I'll cover how to avoid the kiss of death when putting your home on the Truckee market! 

I've been selling real estate in the area for over 15 years, and 25-30% of my business comes from sellers who failed to sell their home with another agent.

What is it that caused these homes to sit on the market for so long, you ask? It's quite simple, really: the kiss of death when selling your home is overpricing it from the beginning! 

Within the first 30 days your home is on the market, it is considered a fresh new listing. It's when the listing is in its prime - buyers come by to take a look at it, there is excitement about it, and it's the time period you're most likely to get an offer that's close to the full listing price. 

The problem is that many sellers want to list high and "leave room for negotiation." They don't want to give the home away, but overpricing the home from the start pushes buyers away and greatly diminishes the benefits that typically come with a fresh listing. When a home sits on the market for a long time, the first thing the buyer thinks is, "What's wrong with this home?" or "Why hasn't it sold?"

I don't want you to leave any money on the table, but I also don't want your listing to go stale and sell for much less than it would have otherwise. My experience in the industry is at your disposal - I know how to put the right price on your home, so you can get the most money possible. If you want to learn how I do this, or if you have any questions about real estate at all, give me a call or shoot me a quick email. I would love to hear from you!

What Are the Best Remodeling Options in the Truckee Area?

There are many great Truckee area homes for sale.  Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (530) 582-6900 for a FREE home buying consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.
If you're curious about the hottest trends in remodeling, you have come to the right place! Recently, I talked with two designers from Home Concepts about what people in Truckee are doing to add value and style to their homes! 

If you're interested in remodeling your home, the best thing you can do is visit Home Concepts to discuss your options with a professional. They have a design office that will look at your specific property and give you advice on the best available products. There's really no better way to add your own unique touch to your home!

You can reach home contacts directly at (530) 582-2148 - they are always happy to help!