When is the Right Time to Sell in Sun City Arizona
This morning I fielded a query off my Active Rain blog. Which was surprising in that I’d nearly forgotten that I have an Active Rain blog. The question tended to meander a bit, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the gist was when the best time to sell real estate in Sun City would be.
I think of Sun City real estate, and that in several of the Phoenix market’s other active adult communities, much as I do the weather in San Francisco - everything is the opposite of what you would expect if you glance at the calendar.
In San Francisco, it’s not uncommon to see baseball fans bundling up in June while football fans in October are basking shirtless in the sunshine. (It’s a little less common since the Giants left Candlestick, which seemed to be connected via meteorological vortex to the North Pole through much of the season, but the point remains.)
Similarly, while the rest of the Phoenix market - the rest of the nation, for that matter - sees stronger sales in the summer than in the winter, the opposite is true in Sun City. Over the past two years, sales of single-family detached homes have peaked in March and bottomed out in September and October - homes closing then likely went off the market and under contract in August and September.
(I’ll post a chart for sales in Sun City, hopefully tomorrow … it’s a bit late and I don’t want to futz with Excel and my photo editor at this late hour. And I need a post for tomorrow.)
This isn’t to say to wait until January or February in hopes of a March closing. Far from it. Because homes still are selling in these other months - not as many as are closing in March but nevertheless, they are selling.
But the reason why the selling season in Sun City and other similar communities runs in reverse is because of the return of the winter visitors. These communities are some of the last places where the old-fashioned “Just Listed” postcards still work because neighbors are telling their friends back in the snow about the homes for sale around them.
On our Westbrook Village site, we track where our readers are … it’s not a coincidence that there are high concentrations from Washington, from Canada and from the Midwest. These are where the area’s first residents came from and they continue to tell all of their friends about their wonderful life during our mild winters.
Hopefully, I don’t need to explain that the best priced homes in the best conditions are the ones that are being moved. (As well as homes in need of updating - quick flips they aren’t, but the potential remains depending on the starting price and the amount of updating that is required.)
The second half of the inquiry was about marketing and whether the style I use - reliance almost exclusively on the Internet - is feasible in an active adult community. Or as this seller put it, “(name of prominent brokerage) seems hopelessly outdated to me. Or maybe that’s what works in Sun City.”
If my Westbrook Village website has proven anything to me in the eight months since we launched, it is that buyers are using the Internet regardless of location and regardless of age. And if buyers for the active adult communities aren’t looking, their children and their grandchildren certainly are.
That holds true for Westbrook Village. It holds true for Ventana Lakes. And it certainly holds true for Sun City, Sun City West and Sun City Grand.
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