The typical seasonal slowdown of activity in the Twin Cities housing market has begun in recent weeks, demonstrating how even unprecedented housing stimulus coupled with ridiculously low interest rates and housing prices down dramatically from 2006 cannot beat Mother Nature.

This Winter is likely to remain far more active than last year’s but this activity is still going to be down substantially from its peaks this Summer and Fall.  This is normal.  This is ok.  This is what happens every. single. year.

The housing market takes a relative breather due to the myriad holidays, school schedules, and of course the change in the weather.  Not only are there fewer buyers out in the Winter months, there are fewer sellers too; many sellers simply do not want to keep their house “show ready” during all of the festivities between Thanksgiving and the New Year.

If you are selling your home during this time of year, things can get lonely.  When you listed your house a few months ago it wasn’t unusual to have 3-4 showings per week – now you may be struggling to get even 1!  One of the old “tricks of the trade” is to cancel your current listing and then immediately relist it with a change of photos that depict the current season, some new descriptions, and often a slightly revised (lower) price.

The mere act of relisting your home is likely to bring a quick “pop” of new attention to your house and often leads to several new showings in the first week and often spills into the 2nd or 3rd week as well.  The reason this works is that many buyers avoid “old” listings like they would expired milk in a store.  The difference is that while milk will go bad if it isn’t bought quickly, a house does not “spoil” just because it has been on the market for a few months.  Often the house is now listed for less (sometimes substantially less) than what it was when it was first listed… something that many buyers miss.  When you remove the stigma of the “old listing” you will find more buyers will stop to take a look.

This “trick” is not meant to deceive anyone – the full listing history of a property is available to all REALTORS and when asked, I always tell anyone the true length of time it has been listed for sale.  The truth is this trick works.  In fact, I recently did this with a listing and saw 3 new showings in the first 4 days it was relisted – two of those showings went very well, with buyers having placed the house on their “short list.”

Now if you are terribly overpriced, show horribly, or in a market with no activity this trick won’t do you any good but if you have addressed everything else you can and still haven’t seen results, this is just one more thing to try.