What is the Best Time of Year to Sell My Home?

What is the Best Time of Year to Sell a Home?

There are many answers to this question online. But real estate trends vary, not only from state to state and city to city, but even from neighborhood to neighborhood. For example, The Huffington Post has this to say about the best time to sell a home:

    “In a new study, researchers at Zillow found that homes listed between May 1 through May 15 sold, on average, around 18.5 days faster than homes that weren’t listed during that timeframe. Homes that sold in the first half of May were also purchased for about 1 percent more than the average listing, which translates to a premium of about $1,700.”

But do those trends hold true for the Triangle area?

The data for the following graphic was taken from the Wake County Register of Deeds and shows the number of deed transfers by month for January 2016-February 2017.

As you can see, the highest number of deed transfers took place in May and June, with a close third in August. Given that information, you might think that the months preceding the highest closings would be the best time to list your home. However, the number of closings are only part of the story. There is a big correlation between number of showings and how high the offer is. The more competition, the higher the offer. So in order to decide which months are the best to list your home, we need to know which months had the highest rate of showings per closed sale. Consider the following graph of showings per month in Wake County.

The arc in showing data virtually mirrors the arc in closings. But as you’ll see in a moment, that doesn’t mean the months with the highest sales are the best months to sell your home.

In the following chart, I’ve divided the number of showings for the month preceding the deed transfers by the number of closed sales, to give us the total average number of showings per closed sale.

Showings per closed sale

Even though June had the highest closings for the year, May, the month preceding those homes were on the market, did not have the highest showings per sale. Actually, May was one of the lower showings months with 11 showings per listing.

Conclusion: The best months to list your home are pretty much anytime in this market. But if you want the most action here are the months that you’ll have the highest number of showings:

First Place – January, March and April

Second Place – June, September and October

Third Place – February

Fourth Place – May, July and August

And in last place, November, with all that competition from winter holidays.

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