Why Waiting for Spring to Sell Is a Huge Mistake

The Sell for 1 Percent team unpacks the latest Central Ohio market shifts, leading with good news for borrowers. Mortgage rates are trending down towards 7.25% after flirting with 8% just weeks ago, a positive sign following a significant drop in the 10-year Treasury yield. Contrary to popular belief, the team argues that waiting for the spring market could be a major misstep for sellers, as the post-election and holiday periods often see a surge from serious, motivated buyers. With roughly 6,800 active listings in the Columbus metro area and over half having already dropped their price, local buyers currently have leverage, but sellers who list now can capture that pent-up demand before the new year.

#SellFor1Percent #ColumbusRealEstate #ColumbusOhio #OhioRealEstate #ColumbusOH #FranklinCounty #RealEstate #RealEstateAgent #HomeSellingTips #HomeBuyingTips #RealEstateMarket #HousingMarket #HomeOwner #MortgageRates

Full Transcript

Hey there, everyone. Jaime with Sell for 1 Percent Realtors back again with a new market update regarding the Central Ohio real estate market. Here after midterms, it is November 4th, 6th.

Good Lord. Oh, boy. Feels like November 4th.

It is the 6th. Yeah. Actually, today is starting to feel like the first day of fall.

It’s a little chilly out. Yeah. It leaves our phone.

It’s a little wet and a little cold. Yeah. It’s my favorite time of the year.

So, we are here to give you guys a market update as the votes have come in and things have changed, and we see Jaysen has a new updated background. And he’s also talking to one of the kids who have the day off from school. So, that’s a good day.

How do you get this note taker off the screen, too? Must be little Callie. Maybe only I can see that, but you got to get this note taker off as the host. I don’t see it.

So, we’re all good. Very good. Well, we have Rich with Highlands Mortgage to give us a rate update.

It sounds like some things are settling down a little bit, Rich. What do you see? Well, it’s been a very consequential week here. Of course, we had the election on Tuesday, which resulted in a blue tsunami on Wednesday and then led to a tech wreck on Thursday.

Another tech wreck. We’ve had a few tech wrecks now. This morning, we got the non-farm payroll jobs number for the month of October.

It came in screaming hot compared to what they thought it would be. They thought that the job creation would be somewhere in the $50,000 range. It ended up like $165,000 in new jobs created.

$165,000, which may not sound like a lot if you don’t watch it every day. By missing by 100,000 jobs on a monthly basis, that’s huge. As we’ve said before, the Fed has a dual mandate.

They have a dual mandate to tamp down inflation and to make sure that jobs do not crater and that we continue with stable employment. The fact that we have stable employment is meaningful towards what interest rates will do here moving forward. Now, when we talk about the 10-year Treasury bond a lot, the 10-year Treasury bond sometime in early September or early October, I forget when exactly, we were in the 535 to 540 range, 5.35 to 5.40 range.

We’re currently in the 4.85 to 4.87 range, so a big move down on the 10-year Treasury, which is affecting mortgage interest rates in a good way for everybody out there. Currently, we’re looking at rates in the 7.25-ish kind of a range. It could be a little lower than that if you have the right mix and your loan amount and all that and your loan-to-value could be a little higher if not.

But thinking back a few weeks, we were worried about pushing into the 8% range, and now we’re getting down closer to 7%, so that’s good news. The world didn’t come to an end, and the tsunami did not completely engulf us, so here we are. How are you guys seeing the real estate market looking in terms of showings and activity like that? Jay, do you want to jump in there? I figured you would jump in with all your doom and gloom about showing counts.

I think that things are pretty good. It’s all relative. I think it depends on who you ask, who you’re talking to.

I’m working with some clients. It seems like the new builds are awfully slow. I don’t know what the data is on housing starts, but here in Columbus, it seems like every builder is dropping price or trying to pay us realtors a commission incentive to try and push their product out, push their new build slop onto our customers.

The market overall, we’re still pushing right around 6,800 active listings. The average days on market is up to 80 for the metro. Median is holding right around 49.

As I meet clients, I give them what the expectations right now ought to be. I think the perception is that November and December are not the best times to sell a house. During election years, I disagree with that.

Usually October kind of sucks. You get the barrage of all the ads and the negativity. That takes the wind out of the sails, as data will talk about showing counts later on, I’m sure.

Once you get past the elections, it’s about a week or two, and then it finds its footing again. You usually have a pretty strong end of November and a pretty strong December. The big wild card this year with that is going to be interest rates.

Normally in November and December, rates are coming back down after they were raised up during the hotter months in the spring and the summer, where the market can withstand that. The seasonal declines are somewhat softened by rates coming down. This year, we have a pack to get under seven.

We can see that pack. If that happens, I think it’s going to be a really nice November and December for the people that weathered the storm here. If it doesn’t happen, if Iran gets hot again, who knows what can happen.

All kinds of things can happen. If something negative happens and rates go up, then it’s probably not going to be as strong as December as what we’re expecting. I’m seeing showings pick up.

Still getting good contracts and good offers from people. Selling quite a few listings. I think that the end of the world is overhyped.

It would be great if gas prices could come down. I noticed they were back up to $4.30 yesterday. I thought that crap was whack.

That’s a nice segue to Dave. A couple good segues to Dad’s. By the way, all these dollars that I’ve hung up behind me, those are all the bets that Dad loses to me.

That I’ve put up. You may want to take what Dad says with a grain of salt. Too bad people know that that’s a green screen.

It’s all a fictitious image that you’ve created. Pull a dollar off of there. Pull that one off right there below the sell for 1% neon sign.

Excuse me, sir. I’m getting calls to my face. My glasses are ringing in my ears.

I can’t hear you, sorry. I’m seeing the same thing. I think there’s a little pent-up frustration from buyers.

Everything was put on pause. I think we’ll start to see more of an uptick this weekend and next week. I think buyers are going to have a new agenda to be in their new home before Christmas.

November is not bad. It always can be better. We like to get our unfair share, as they say.

It’s not terrible, but I think December is going to work out fairly decent if we can get Rich and his buddies at the Fed to continue to lower interest rates. As you were talking there, Jay, I kind of had deja vu. We kind of had that same conversation about interest rates coming down back in February.

I think we were all feeling pretty doggone good that interest rates were going to get into the low sixes. I think, Rich, you even had a couple of clients that you were quoting high fives in the perfect situation. They pulled the rug out from underneath us and started this war, and interest rates started climbing.

The spring market wasn’t bad, but I think it would have been a whole lot better if interest rates had held, gas prices had held. It’s interesting to watch how all the ingredients come together into the cocktail and how it impacts the marketplace. I was doing a little bit of research a week or two ago about gas prices.

Gas per barrel is right around $100 a barrel. Prior to gas prices jumping, the numbers don’t make sense. We’ve had this conversation before.

I’m a numbers guy. When Ohio gave us the tax rebate on gas, we were around $4.25, and gas dropped to $3.79. Then about two weeks later, it’s back up to $4.25.

I was like, how did it go back up when we have $0.385 that was taken off a couple of weeks ago? I started looking at cost per barrel of oil, what it was two weeks ago versus what it is today. Oil had gone up like $2 or $3 a barrel. When you break that down by 50 gallons, it’s a couple of cents a gallon.

How did it jump 50 cents? Then I’m doing some more research. I was really surprised that the oil companies in the first half of 2025, the first six months of 2025, profits were like $17 billion. I’m a capitalist, more be it to you.

I understand you guys are the ones taking the risk. You’re the ones doing the drilling, so on and so forth. They made $17 billion.

If you look at the first six months of 2026, they doubled that. They were like $32 billion. For me, I don’t mind you making money, but why did gas prices go up and then you’re doubling your profits? The gas thing right now is weird.

Your mom said that she saw gas. I think I did too down at the Giant Eagle there at Sawmill and Powell Road. If you had your Giant Eagle card, it was like $366,000.

Without it, it was like $389,000 or $369,000 or $379,000. Without it, I think it was like $389,000. It’s like, okay, the election happened, so gas prices are going to dump.

I don’t know. I’d like to see gas come down. I’d like to see my McDonald’s hamburger come down.

I’d like to see more people employed. Obviously, Rich, we had a whole bunch of people get employed here in the last month. We’ll see where it goes, but I think there’s buyer pent-up frustration.

We’ll see if the number, Jay, at 6,800 active listings, if I’m right, we should see that number fall, maybe get down close to 6,000 by the time we get to middle of December. A lot of people aren’t listing their home right now. You hear from many clients, should I wait until the spring market? Should I wait until March? Our position has always been the perfect buyer may be in the market right now.

Don’t wait. Get it on the market. Everybody else is thinking like you.

I think that we will see inventory towards the middle of December fall from 6,800. We’ll definitely see it that first week of January because everybody writes their listing contract to expire on December 31st. We’ll see a 6,700 property dump January 1 through January 5.

It could be that we’ll be below 6,000 active listings if the buyer pent-up frustration comes to light and as houses start to come off the market. There we are all wrapped up in one. In my experience in working with people, even on the refi side, when rates come down, the general public, it takes four or five days, maybe a week before people really recognize that rates have dropped.

Most people are not sitting here watching CNBC and the 10-year treasury and the mortgage-backed securities every day like we are. That could, by next week sometime, maybe the word gets out that rates are lower. They are, in fact, not at eight.

They’re closer to seven. That might stir up some more demand, hopefully. Jaime, are your buyers all sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for interest rates to drop to 3% again? I think that there’s definitely some trepidation.

There’s some people waiting. I think we’re up 25-30% more listings than this time last year. I think it’s something close to that.

Over 50% of the listings have had at least one price drop. They’re on the MLS. I think buyers have a lot of leverage in this market right now.

I think they’re taking more of a wait-and-see approach, it seems, at the moment. But I mean, the right houses, the right locations. Like you said, the right buyer that’s in the market.

Things are still selling, so the sky isn’t necessarily falling. But I am seeing buyers have a lot more ability to ask for closing costs from sellers. I have clients ask me all the time, is that typical? And it’s like, well, right now in the market it is.

If you’re a buyer, ask for the closing costs. Get a little bit more money off the plate there and keep that cash in your pocket if you’re able to. So, a combination of increased inventory, more selective buyers, and some affordability concerns with normal seasonality.

It’s kind of the perfect storm at the moment. So, buyers aren’t rushing into the scene, but they also aren’t necessarily waiting, I don’t think, waiting around. So, if the right house hits the market, they’re pulling the trigger.

Jay, to Bob, what are you seeing on the stats that you run? I just took a quick look. The total number of new listings is down about 854 in the last week. The one that kind of surprised me because it had come down to around 7,800 was the price changes.

I’m seeing 1,104 price changes in the last week. And when I look at the totals, about 750 homes in contract. And that spread between contracts and listings was larger.

I think the last couple of weeks were around 1,000 listings and 650, 700 in contract. So, things seem to be converging a little bit. What are your thoughts there? You just read off all the numbers that I have, sir.

So, I don’t dispute the numbers that we’re both looking at. All right. Your interpretation? Different than mine? I know it is.

No, it’s exactly… I know you would like for me to fight you, but no, I’m not going to fight you. No, I wouldn’t.

It’s been 39 years in the battle. And I’m not surprised by the price cuts. Sellers, I think the biggest thing is finding that balance between..

I’m not getting a lot of action right now. I’ve had a lot of sellers I’ve held off on cutting price. Because you’re walking into an election.

There’s no reason to slash price going into last weekend. Because I don’t think, in my opinion, it’s not going to make a big difference. Unless you’re going to fire sale it.

So, now I’m going to have a bunch of price cuts to get put out there today. Some substantial, some very minimal. But just so we kind of pop back up and come back to the top of the search list.

I think now is your time to make the push. We’ve got a couple of weeks here before Thanksgiving. The weather is really not bad.

And then after Thanksgiving, you’re going to have another push for the Christmas time. And I don’t have the crystal ball. But personally, I think waiting until spring could be a big mistake.

If you’re a seller. I think you really should be listening now. And if you’re going to wait until next year, don’t wait until March, April, May.

I’d be on second, third week of January. And try and get it pushed out the door. I’ve seen it the last several years.

The strongest time of the year is that end of January, February market. Which, again, is not the conventional wisdom that you’re going to hear from Realtors, sellers, chat GPT. But in practice, that has been the best time.

I think I sold more homes last year between Christmas and New Year’s Eve than I ever have in my career. And it’s just like, the market was not dead then. I would have it out there.

And anyone who’s looking to buy right now, they’re serious. If you’re out in the dark and the cold and you’re looking at houses in the rain, you need to buy something. There may be fewer buyers, but they’re strong.

This 5.30 sunset business is not good. That’s like… And you know, one of the weird things, last week we were down in Florida and we’re coming back up and we had the time change last Sunday.

And we’re over on the east coast of Florida and it’s getting dark there at about 4.30. And a lot of people don’t realize is that New York, which is whatever, 600-700 miles to the east of us, is in the eastern time zone. So they’re on the east edge of the time zone.

We’re on the western edge of the time zone. So if you look it up, there’s about a 45 minute to an hour difference that their sunset happens 45 minutes to an hour earlier than us. So they’re getting hit at around 4.30, 4.45 with a sunset where we’re at 5.30 or so.

And the 5.30 kills me. I looked out my door there the other day and was like, is it dark out? And it was like 5.45. I was like, oh my God.

My, what is it, circadian rhythm is way the heck off right now. I just simply adapt and overcome, father. Then I collect all your dollars and pin them to my wall.

Your will is so much stronger than mine. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Yeah. I am you evolved.

I got a call from your mother last night at about 3.30. In the morning, she said, you’re coming to bed. I might.

I was up busy. I was busy. You’re up working at 3.30 a.m.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on my three and a half hours of sleep. Working on your poly market bets.

No, I got done. Yeah, there you go. It is very interesting.

I’ve got, I think, four listings going in. It piles up. Then all of a sudden, because you’re busy doing everything else.

Then all of a sudden, you got action going. It’s all good. It’s all good stuff.

All right. I appreciate you guys joining us this week. You’re welcome, Gene.

Always good to see you. Especially Rich. It’s very nice to see Gene Maransky once in a while.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. We will hopefully continue tracking listings decreasing a little bit, interest rates coming down a bit, and a little less price cuts. We’ll keep after it here.

We will definitely be back next week to keep you guys updated on the Central Ohio real estate market. Thank you, guys. Thanks.