Did you know that according to NTREIS (North Texas Real Estate Information Systems, Inc.), home sales in the DFW area reach their peak in the month of July? For much of the rest of the country that peak occurs in June. According to Zillow Talk, in the last week of June alone, national residential real estate transactions are 40 percent higher than average throughout the year. In colder climates, the peak comes a bit later in the spring. March, for instance, is the most popular time to buy and sell in Miami. In Chicago, meanwhile, sales are strongest in June and then again in August.
This makes sense when you think about it. What Chicagoan wants to trek through the snow to house shop in the middle of January? And what Texan wants to house hunt when it’s 105 degrees with off the chart humidity in August? If you take into account the weather, along with the inconvenience of families having to uproot their kids in the middle of the school year — it’s no wonder that the most popular times to buy, sell, and move are late spring and early summer.
Therefore, conventional wisdom seems to tell us, it’s best to list in April and May so that you benefit from the July peak in sales, and the premium pricing during the early summer months as well.
List too late, and you could miss the bump due to the extreme heat in the Texas weather.
The truth is, it all comes down to supply and demand. In order to identify the window when sellers have the best shot at selling quickly for the most money, you need good data on these four questions:
- When are buyers looking to buy?
- When are sellers looking to sell?
- When are these listings and sales taking place?
- Did the sale under-perform or over-perform?
The answers to these questions are readily available to you, my customers and subscribers of my bi-weekly newsletter. Each month we analyze the data to answer that simple question on every home seller’s mind: When exactly should I list?
Analyzing my web traffic, Google Trends, as well as real estate data provided to me by NTREIS, I see an increase in visitors on my site that begins in early spring, ramps up through mid-April, and marches forward into late July. And sure enough my own data as well as data for the DFW metroplex indicates an actual spike in home sales following March and April when people are contacting agents to inquire about selling.
So data suggests if you list too early or too late it could result in more time on the market and a lower sales price. There is a sweet spot when sellers should list, and hitting it just right can pay off to the tune of thousands of dollars.
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