The Best Time of Year to List Your House Is Coming Soon
Want to sell your house for the most money? When you list it matters.
It’s no secret that the housing market is seasonal, with sales dropping off in the winter months and picking back up again in the springtime. But depending on where you live, whether you list your home closer to St. Patrick’s Day or Memorial Day can make a difference.
Zillow examined sales patterns around the country, comparing home values with sales records to see whether homes that sold at a particular time of year commanded higher prices. Broadly, the answer is yes: Selling at the “right” time can increase how much you get. In 2024, homes that came onto the market in late May netted the highest sales premium, with a boost of 1.6% — that’s about $5,600 at current home values — at the median.
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View RatesIn general, Zillow found that sellers did better if they listed their homes between March 15 and July 31 last year.
But like everything else in real estate, markets are extremely local, and researchers noted regional variations: Homes in Austin, San Diego, Seattle and San Jose, California, saw the highest sales premium when they hit the market in the second half of March, for example.
And while springtime is the best time to sell in most of the country, the Phoenix metro area marches to the beat of its own drummer: Houses that went on the market in late November saw the biggest boost. So, sellers interested in using these insights to time the sale of their own home might want to research sales in their specific area over the past year and look for price variations. (Check out Zillow's methodology to see how researchers arrived at their findings.)
Along with the timing, the degree of price variation differed by location. Sellers in San Jose who put their homes on the market in the second half of March saw a typical sales premium of 5.3%. Homeowners in Orlando, Florida, though, only got an additional 0.9% bump when they listed their homes during that market’s early May peak period.
Why home sales aren’t as seasonal as they used to be
The traditional seasonality of the housing market is driven by a couple of overarching factors: the weather and school schedules. These usual patterns were distorted by the pandemic for a few years. The timing of the initial COVID-19 lockdowns — hitting right around when open houses and home walk-throughs would normally start picking up — threw off the rhythm.
The other wild card that has skewed seasonal home sale patterns in recent years is mortgage rate fluctuation. Soaring home prices have made buyers more attuned to rate movements, according to Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow.
"Buyers who are on the edge of qualifying for a loan jump in and out of the market depending on what's happening with rates. When rates fall, more buyers rush in,” he said in a news release accompanying the report. This dynamic throws off typical seasonality, he added.
Zillow’s researchers said that the rapid jump in mortgage rates could have been responsible for the sales premium peak hitting early in 2022, when sellers who listed in late March netted the highest premiums. In 2023, they attributed the expectation that rates would drop materially for the delay in housing market activity. That year, homes that sold in June saw the highest sale premiums.
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