Who is moving right now? Difficult Situations: Death, Distressed & Dumpsters

It’s getting harder to sell real estate because it’s harder to find who is willing to move and seller leads willing to relocate in these market conditions. Agents are asking who is moving? In many regions of the nation, supply of SFR’s is starting to climb as buyer activity has slowed unseasonably early this year.  It helps to know who is moving despite the tough conditions.

Currently supply is at its highest point of the year, typical for fall – however available inventory is still near all time lows, and the number of transactions are down nationally 30% from this time 2 years ago (via Altos Research). Compounding this fixed 30 year interest rates are up to 23 year highs (currently 7.63% according to FRED) and avg home prices nationwide still up sky high at about the same as this time last year, and with salaries / hh income flat it has the net result of making homes much less affordable now than in the last 10 years. 

Nationwide, right now, there are 326,000 homes under contract right now – so yes, people are still moving. Given such a dramatic drop in affordability,  It begs the question, in this market who is moving right now? 

The short answer:The only people that are moving right now, have the means to do so -or simply have to move as poor affordability still beats the alternative. The people who are moving right now are experiencing a life altering life event that necessitates a move.

At Revaluate, our AI predicts who is moving or more accurately, is most likely to move.  The Revaluate AI is powered by life event data – the same life events that cause people to move.   Our clients range from individual agents to national brands who leverage our data as part of their marketing and lead gen strategy. We call this data the Data D’s and in Part I we will explore 3 D’s: Death, Distressed & Dumpsters that are frequently related.

Part I: Death, Distressed & Dumpsters

Early on, when we were building Revaluate, I would talk with my real estate agent friends and ask them for tips on how they would find seller leads who is moving and people that were likely to sell in their neighborhood.  A common theme – they would drive around their farm and look for tall grass that had not been mowed in some time, as well as dumpsters in the driveway.  

Unkempt yards with tall grass frequently was a tell-tale sign of a distressed property (people were thus behind on their payments to the lender and were anticipating eviction and thus not putting in the work.  In other cases it was a sign that there had been a death in the family – causing routine maintenance to be passed over.

Similarly, when they noticed a dumpster in the driveway, or out on the street this was also very often a sign that the house would soon be going up for sale.  People often rent dumpsters to clear out the junk in a home prior to a move.  They also do so when grandma passes and years of stuff needs to be tossed – or carpet and renovation materials need to be disposed of as a home is prepared for the market. 

Professional Real Estate agents are accustomed to dealing with difficult situations. Foreclosure and family deaths can be some of the most stressful experiences in life.  Selling a home can cause people to feel overwhelmed as well.  Selling will most likely not be top of mind for these prospects – so nurturing language and care must be utilized rather than acting with the finesse of a highschooler on prom night.

Obviously, tall grass and dumpsters don’t always predict a move – sometimes the teenager is just lazy and didn’t do their chores, right? Or the dumpster could indicate a family is renovating a kitchen and intends to stay put.  But more often than not, these visual clues indicate a pending mover, and future seller leads.

Leverage this knowledge the next time you are walking your dog or taking a jog around your market to look for signs of who is moving.  But rather than investing time to drive around hoping to hunt up these clues – leverage Revaluate to do the time consuming work for you.  Revaluate can build you a database in your farming area, identify the needles in the haystack of homes that will be most likely to sell in the coming months and tell you what to say in any situation.

Schedule a time to talk with our data nerds to learn how much opportunity lies waiting for you in
your database and your neighborhoods for 2024 and beyond.

Part II: Diapers, Diamonds & DINK

Part III: Diplomas, Downsizing & Discretionary Income

Part IV: Divorce