If you’ve been thinking about selling your Marble Falls home but keep wondering whether you should wait until the market gets better, I think there’s a more important question to ask: Does selling your home make sense for your life right now?
It’s not a terrible time to put a home on the market. It is, however, a market that requires sellers to be realistic about what is happening around them.
Marble Falls is sitting at just under 10 months of housing inventory based on the most recent data I’ve analyzed. That’s important because Texas REALTORS reports that roughly four to five months of inventory generally represents a market balanced between buyers and sellers. When you’re approaching 10 months, buyers have considerably more choices, more time to compare those choices, and less reason to feel a sense of urgency.
I’ve gone much deeper into the numbers in my Highland Lakes housing inventory analysis, including how inventory has changed over time in Marble Falls, Horseshoe Bay and other communities throughout the Highland Lakes. I don’t want to repeat all of that research here because the bigger question for someone considering selling a Marble Falls home is what you actually do with that information.
You can sell in this market. But you need to sell in the market that actually exists, not the market you remember and not the market you hope will return.
The Best Time to Sell Isn’t Necessarily Spring or Fall
There is always an argument for waiting.
Wait until spring because that’s when buyers come out. Wait until summer because families are moving. Wait until fall because there may be less competition. Wait until interest rates change. Wait until inventory comes down. Wait until something else happens.
The problem is that human nature doesn’t operate according to a real estate calendar. People buy homes when they have the desire and need to buy them, and people sell homes because something in their lives tells them it is time to move.
Maybe you’re downsizing. Maybe you’re moving closer to family. Maybe you’re relocating. Maybe you need a different house. Maybe you’ve simply decided you’re ready for whatever comes next.
Waiting until spring means putting that plan on hold based on the assumption that the market will be better several months from now. Nobody can promise you that.
In fact, one of the things that has surprised many real estate practitioners over the past year is when the market gets active and when it doesn’t. With housing inventory in Marble Falls having risen considerably over the last several years, you could just as easily make the argument that you should wait until inventory comes back down. The problem is that you could be waiting a long time.
The best time to sell your home is when selling makes sense for your life. Then we have to figure out how to compete in the market we’re actually in.
You Have to Be Priced to Sell, Not Priced to List
I’ve been in real estate for more than 40 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever met a seller who didn’t believe their home was special. That’s understandable. You’ve lived there. You’ve improved it. You’ve maintained it. You’ve made memories there, and you know things about the property that a buyer walking through it for 30 minutes can’t possibly know.
But there is an important difference between your perception of value and market value.
An agent can sit at your kitchen table and agree with whatever number you have in mind. Sometimes that’s the easiest way to get a listing. Tell the seller what they want to hear, put a sign in the yard, and hope the market eventually catches up. I don’t think that does the seller any favors.
I don’t set home prices. The seller doesn’t set them either. The market ultimately determines value. My job is to read that market, interpret what it’s telling us, and help you price accordingly.
We can have a bloated perception of what a home should be worth, but that perception doesn’t become market value if a ready, willing, and able buyer isn’t willing to pay it.
That’s particularly important when buyers have almost 10 months of inventory from which to choose.
Pricing a home a little high in a market like this doesn’t necessarily leave you extra room to negotiate. Sometimes all you’re doing is helping sell the competition.
A buyer looks at your house for $600,000 and then looks at another home for $575,000 that shows better, offers comparable features, and feels like a better value. Your listing may have just helped that buyer understand why the other house is the one they should buy.
You’re either going to sell your home, or you may help sell the competition.
Buyers Right Now Are Looking for Diamonds or Deals
I have something I call Robbie’s Double D Rule: buyers are looking for diamonds or deals.
When inventory is high, buyers don’t have to settle nearly as much.
A diamond is the property that stands out. It shows beautifully. The condition supports the price. The features make sense. The presentation is right. When buyers compare it with the alternatives, they understand why it deserves their attention.
The other opportunity is the deal. Maybe the house needs updating. Maybe there are repairs the seller doesn’t want to make. Maybe the finishes aren’t comparable to the house down the street. That’s okay, too, provided the price recognizes those differences.
Not every seller needs to remodel a house before putting it on the market. I look at every property individually because spending $50,000 doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get $50,000 back.
But if you don’t want to make necessary repairs or improvements, we have to understand what that decision may cost on the other side of the transaction.
Things you’ve learned to live with over the years may simply be quirks to you. A buyer doesn’t have the same relationship with them. And when that buyer has numerous other homes available, they don’t necessarily have to accept your quirks at all. They can buy the house down the street.
That’s why price and condition are so closely connected.
People Can Like Your House Without Wanting to Buy It
This is one of the harder things for sellers to understand when a home has been sitting on the market.
You can have showing after showing where buyers say the house is beautiful. They may love the kitchen. They may compliment the backyard. They may tell their agent how much they liked the floor plan.
And then they buy something else.
People can like your house without believing it’s worth what you’re asking for it.
If buyers consistently choose competing properties, the market is giving us information. Maybe another house was priced better. Maybe its condition was better. Maybe it was cleaner. Maybe its improvements were more appealing. Maybe the photography got the buyer through the door and the property delivered when they arrived.
That’s when we have to look objectively at the entire package.
A challenging market doesn’t define a property, and it doesn’t mean a home can’t sell. But it does make execution more important.
Marketing a Home Is More Than Putting It in the MLS
There is much more to marketing real estate than entering a listing into the MLS, syndicating it to real estate websites, and hiring someone with a camera.
Every home has a story to tell. The job is figuring out what that story is and telling it in a way that attracts the right buyer.
That starts with photography, but great listing photography isn’t about having the largest possible number of photographs. Nobody needs to see ten photographs of an ordinary bathroom. If the bathroom is spectacular, that’s different. Otherwise, those photographs aren’t necessarily helping us sell the property.
I want to identify what I call the money shots. What are the images that make someone stop scrolling? What makes this property different from the others they’re seeing? What is going to make the buyer want to know more?
Then the words have to support the pictures. Property descriptions shouldn’t simply be a list of features. The copy needs to help a prospective buyer understand the property, the lifestyle and why this particular home deserves consideration.
Accuracy matters, too. I was in the MLS recently and noticed a property description where the subdivision name was misspelled. I reached out to the listing agent and let them know. Is a typo by itself going to keep a home from selling? Probably not. But it illustrates the larger point.
When the market gets harder, you need to be on point.
The photography, wording, pricing, property condition, showing availability, advertising and overall presentation need to work together.
And in Marble Falls, reach can matter tremendously. The buyer for your property doesn’t necessarily live down the street. Marketing may need to extend into other markets and reach people who are considering the Highland Lakes but may not discover the property through their conventional search habits.
Putting a home on the market and actually marketing a home are not the same thing.
Waterfront Doesn’t Get a Free Pass
Waterfront properties are always going to command a different level of interest and generally a higher price than comparable lake-adjacent or inland properties. But I would be very careful about making sweeping statements about what every waterfront property should be worth right now.
An amazing waterfront property can still sit if it is priced outside the market. The condition still has to support the price. The marketing still has to communicate what makes the property special. The right buyers still have to be reached.
During 2020 and 2021, we saw an extraordinary influx of buying activity and some aggressive pricing throughout the Highland Lakes. Since then, the market has been working through a correction while buyers have become more educated and inventory has increased.
When buyers have more choices, waterfront doesn’t suddenly stop being desirable. It simply doesn’t make a property immune from the rest of the market.
Negotiation Has to Be Put in Context
In a buyer’s market, sellers should expect buyers to negotiate. But that doesn’t mean every offer is a good offer or that a seller should accept whatever lands in front of them. Everything is deal-specific.
If someone offers $25,000 below asking and requests $25,000 in closing-cost assistance on a $300,000 house, that’s significant. The same $25,000 reduction on a $2 million property is a completely different conversation. I want to understand the entire offer.
How accurately was the home priced to begin with? What have comparable properties actually sold for? How long has the property been on the market? How much showing activity have we had? Have there been other offers? How strong is the buyer? What financing are they using? What contingencies are included? What does the seller need to accomplish?
Then there is another number sellers sometimes forget to calculate: what does saying no cost?
If rejecting an offer means carrying the house for another three or six months, what will you spend on mortgage payments, interest, property taxes, insurance, utilities, lawn care, maintenance and everything else that comes with owning the property?
Sometimes the first offer turns out to be the best offer. That’s certainly not an absolute rule, but I’ve seen it happen enough times over four decades that I don’t dismiss a legitimate offer simply because it isn’t the number we hoped to see.
An offer deserves analysis, not an emotional reaction.
Selling Now Doesn’t Necessarily Mean You’re Losing
This may be the biggest emotional hurdle for someone who watched a neighbor sell for an extraordinary price in 2021. What exactly are we losing?
Are we losing actual money, or are we comparing today’s market with an inflated perception of what the property should still be worth based on a very different period in real estate?
Home prices can be a little like egos. Growth feels great while everything supporting that growth remains healthy. But when the number gets disconnected from reality, eventually something has to bring it back into alignment.
Increasing prices are wonderful when buyers continue buying at those prices. Increasing prices combined with increasing inventory and properties sitting on the market tell us something different. You certainly can list high and wait.
If you have all the time in the world, don’t mind keeping the house showing-ready, don’t mind leaving for showings, and are comfortable potentially carrying the property for an extended period, that is a decision you can make. But putting a home on the market and getting a home sold are two different goals.
If your goal is to move forward, then we have to concentrate on the things we can control. We can’t control interest rates. We can’t control how many competing properties come onto the market. We can’t control the economy, and we certainly can’t control what the housing market will look like next spring.
We can control price, condition, presentation, accessibility and marketing.
The Market Doesn’t Have to Put Your Life on Hold
Selling a Marble Falls home right now requires realistic expectations, but realistic doesn’t mean pessimistic. There are buyers. The challenge is that those buyers have choices.
Our job is to give them a compelling reason to choose your property instead of all the others available to them. That means understanding where your home fits, pricing it for the market rather than for our ego, making sure the condition supports that price, presenting it properly, reaching the right buyers and being prepared to negotiate intelligently when one of them raises their hand.
If you’re waiting for someone to tell you exactly when the market will be perfect again, I can’t do that.
What I can do is look at your individual property, the homes you’re actually competing against, recent sales, current inventory, condition, buyer behavior and your goals, then give you an honest assessment of what I believe it will take to get your home sold.
Because ultimately, your life shouldn’t have to wait for the housing market to become convenient.
I’m Robbie English, REALTOR, Broker with Uncommon Marble Falls Realty. If you’re considering selling a home in Marble Falls and want an honest conversation about where your property actually fits, call or text me at 830-953-5571.
