It’s difficult to talk about the right time to sell your home, as things can be rather impossible to predict in the real estate market of today. Some of the best professional real estate agents don’t have a clue as to what will happened in the future, so how can a regular Joe not feel overwhelmed.

However, certain predictions can be made if you look back at what happened during the past. Now, the most important thing about the year 2016 is that it’s an election year. This can have a huge impact on the market prices, so it’s not be overlooked.

Furthermore, there are some rumors saying that interest rates will be going up even further. Remember the quarter point hike that happened in December? This is was the first drastic increase since the year 2006 and this is exactly why you must use different strategies for selling your house this year.

Price it right

If you had two real estate agents beside you and if you asked them whether to go for a higher price or not, you would probably get two completely opposite responses. The one that wants to go with a higher price believes that you can have more profit by overpricing.

The other agent thinks that underpricing is the better way, in hopes of higher interest and more potential buyers competing over the house. This may lead to a bidding war that can drive the price higher.

Both methods can be effective and the only way to decide which way to go is to check the initial interest rate for your house before putting it up for sale. If the interest is high, go with the overpricing method, if not, go the other way.

Finance the whole sale all by yourself

The officials in the Federal Reserve are calling for increasing rates, gradually, over a long period of time. With the federal fund rate being 0% for a long time, the recent increase to 0.25 % in December is already starting to make an impact.

The next increase will bring the rates to 0.50%, and there are more of these expected in the future. If mortgage rates continue to go up, affordability across the board could be affected significantly. One of the ways you could help potential buyers afford your home if the interest rates rise is for it to be “handled” by you.

You can simply finance the deal yourself and make the monthly payments suitable to your buyer by offering him or her a much lower interest rate than they could ever get with a traditional mortgage lender.

Focus on selling to millennials

One of the safest bets for selling a house in 2016 is to target millennials. These are young people ages 18 to 34, and they are an internet and tech friendly generation. A “future generation” that has its own set of rules. A lot of baby boomers are going to start rushing out of their homes and this will increase the number of houses on the market.

The increased amount of houses combined with the job market that is constantly improving will make more millennials capable of buying homes on their own. Since these are tech savvy people, they like looking up stuff online. So, the online market is yours to exploit. You have a lot of options. You can get someone to take some good looking photos and you can even get Powtoon coupons, so that you can make professional videos to showcase your home.

Millennials enjoy gourmet kitchens, backyard decks, open floor plans, vegetable gardens and balconies with pretty views. If the house you plan on selling has these features, make sure that you focus on them in your marketing campaign.    

A final tip to consider is hiring the services of a real estate agent who has a lot of experience in selling homes. In order to improve your adverting on websites, you can give a listing agent a call. Furthermore, they may have some other marketing resources such as networks or professional connections, to help with promoting.