3 Signs Your Home Will Be up for Sale Soon

While there’s nothing wrong with scrolling through Zillow for hours, if you’re actively looking for a home in a particular price range or school district and you keep losing bidding wars or missing out on your chance to make an offer altogether, it might be time to rethink your strategy.

One option is to try and find homes that are going to sell but haven’t been listed for sale yet. Although this is not an easy task, here are three tips that can help.

Signs of an imminent home sale

Whether you’re looking for a new home, or just curious about a home in your area, here are a few signs it could be on the market soon:

Yard overgrown

If the grass, bushes, and other foliage in a typically manicured (or at least decently maintained) yard is slowly becoming overgrown, this may be a sign that it is currently empty . Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s about to hit the market, but it certainly could.

The owners may have had to pack up and move in a hurry and have not yet had time to list the property, or it could be foreclosed. In any case, if you live nearby, you can try asking your neighbors or ask your realtor to check if it’s open by default.

The property has a move or property sale

Whether it’s called a move-in sale, real estate sale, residential property sale, yard sale, garage sale, or whatever, if the contents of the home are being sold, there’s a good chance the property itself could be next.

The house and / or yard is being transformed

Is the house covered with a new coat of paint? Did a team of landscape designers come to put the yard in order? Have rusty outdoor fixtures from the 1980s been replaced with new ones? Exterior upgrades like this reduce attractiveness and can be a sign that a house is about to be listed for sale, especially if all the upgrades happen around the same time.