5 Advantages of Buying a Colorado Home This Winter

By Greg Smith

ColoradoHomeSource represents the region’s finest properties with exceptional skill, using the most innovative technologies currently available. ColoradoHomeSource offers ultimate privacy, security, speed, and efficiency. The team’s years of full-time experience have given them a clear understanding of the mindset of home buyers and sellers and a thorough understanding of the regional marketplace.

Every year, a large share of buyers step away from the market once the temperatures drop. The reasons are understandable: the cold, the holidays, and a calendar that pushes a house hunt further down the list with each passing week. Yet the months most people sit out are often the months that favor the buyer most. Here are five advantages of buying a home in the winter.

1. You face far less competition. Fewer buyers are active between now and spring, which means fewer multiple-offer situations and less pressure to make a fast decision. You’ll likely have enough time to see a home two or three times before submitting an offer, think it over, and write terms that actually make sense for you.

2. Winter sellers are more motivated. People who keep a home on the market through the winter, or list during it, are usually on a timeline. A job move, a new home already purchased, a divorce, or a deadline that can’t shift gives them a real reason to sell. They’re not testing the market. They’re serious, and they need to sell.

That seriousness hands you the upper hand, with more room to negotiate on price, more time, better terms, and possibly concessions that make the deal work for you.

3. Some of these homes have been waiting since spring. Several winter listings failed to sell through the spring, summer, and fall markets. The sellers may have reduced the price once or several times, and some were under contract with a buyer who never reached the closing table.

All of this produces seller fatigue, and a fatigued seller is far more open to price and terms they would have declined earlier in the year. Some of the best opportunities we see for buyers are homes that have sat for a long stretch, fallen out of contract, and simply need to sell.

4. You get to see the home at its worst. Let’s be honest, homes don’t show well in the winter, but that works in your favor as the buyer. You find out whether the furnace really keeps up with the cold, whether some rooms run cold while others run hot, where the snow and ice build up, and how the driveway drains.

Far better to learn that now than in spring, when the melt arrives, and you suddenly have a wet garage. These details may seem minor, but a winter showing tells you how a house performs when the conditions are the harshest, and no summer showing can.

5. Everyone has more time for you. Lenders, inspectors, title companies, and contractors typically slow down this time of year, which means more attention on your particular deal. It can be easier to get terms from a lender quickly and to get a contractor’s bid on a shorter timeline. The result is faster answers, easier scheduling, and a smoother closing.

If you thought about buying a home this year and put things on hold, it may be time to reconsider. The winter market rewards the buyers who stay in it. If you want to get back out there and take a look, call or text us at 303-543-5720, email us at mclean@boulderhomesource.com, or visit blogboulderhomesource.com.