How DeLeon Realty Turned Summer into a Hot Selling Season

For years, sellers have been told that summer is a bad time to sell a home. Children are out of school, families are traveling, but supposedly there are not enough buyers around to generate a great sale price.

At DeLeon Realty, we saw it differently.

When we first started the firm, we drank the same Kool-Aid as everyone else: spring and fall were the best times to sell, and summer was simply too slow. But as DeLeon grew and gained significant market share in Palo Alto and Silicon Valley, we started asking buyers what they actually wanted.

Their feedback was very different.

Many buyers, especially families with children, told us they would love to buy during the summer. It actually makes a lot of sense. Summer gives them time to purchase a home, move in, and get settled before the new school year begins. The problem was not a lack of buyers. There simply were not enough homes for them to buy, which created a cycle where sellers avoided summer because there was less activity, and buyers had fewer choices because sellers were not listing.

So in 2015, DeLeon decided to create our own summer selling season, and Summer Splash was born.

Every year, we bring a group of homes to market in the two weeks following July 4th. We start aggressively advertising about a month beforehand to build excitement and capture buyers who want to purchase before the fall school year. And it has been incredibly successful.

Year after year, our Summer Splash homes have performed extremely well, often selling at the same or even higher price per square foot than homes sold during the spring market.

This summer splash was exceptionally productive, with over $235 million in closed and pending sales in July alone!

One of our Summer Splash listings, 346 Tioga Court in Palo Alto, set a record for similarly sized homes in Palo Alto at approximately $2,700 per square foot, selling for $4,988,000 after receiving seven competing offers. The three-bedroom, three-bath home has 1,845 square feet of living space on a 6,732-square-foot lot.

Of course, the offers did not initially come in at $4,988,000, or a million above list price!

That is where strategy and negotiation really matter. We created competition between the buyers and continued negotiating until we achieved the strongest possible price for our seller. The home itself was beautifully rebuilt with sophisticated smart-home technology, solar, modern finishes, and beautiful landscaping on a cul-de-sac. But having a great home is only part of achieving a great result.

We have always felt that selling any home in Silicon Valley, because of the price point compared to almost anywhere else in the country, is a little like selling an expensive watch or handbag. The quality of the product matters, but so do the presentation, packaging, and marketing. Everything has to come together to make buyers see the value and get excited about the home.

That is exactly how we approach selling homes at DeLeon.

We take an already valuable Silicon Valley home and figure out how to make it shine even brighter. From strategic improvements and staging to aggressive marketing and, most importantly, creating competition and negotiating between interested buyers, our goal is always the same: to achieve the highest possible sale price for our seller.

If you are considering selling your home, we would love the opportunity to show you what DeLeon can do for you.

Audrey Sun (DRE #01933274) | audrey@deleonrealty.com | 650.785.5822

DeLeon Realty, Inc. | DRE #01903224 | Equal Housing Opportunity