Experts Disagree on Best Time for Sellers to List Homes
Some say spring, others say winter, but the difference on sales price is small.
Hey home sellers, how much have you thought about when to put your house on the market?
A lot of real estate agents and listing agencies have thought about it for you, crunching numbers to determine a “magic window’’ of the best time for sellers to put their properties on the market.
Based on analysis of three years of data, Zillow said the magic window, nationally, is mid-March to mid-April. In Boston, due to its harsh winters, that window is mid-to-late April, and sellers who list then could earn up to an $8,100 premium, the listings database says.
Skylar Olsen, senior economist at Zillow, urges sellers to wait for there to be an increase in the amount of inventory on the market, then put their listing “on top of the pile.’’ Zillow search results put the most recently listed homes at the top of the list.
“You want to list your home in the magic window after the pickup in the number of listings (which draws shoppers), but late enough so that your home shows up at the top when the audience is the biggest,’’ Olsen said.
But Anthony Lamacchia, owner and broker of McGeough Lamacchia Realty, Inc., is on “Team February,’’ calling the winter month the best time to list.
Lamacchia, who often makes graphs and charts to analyze real estate data, said data that indicates a surge of sales in the spring can be misleading, as some of those deals actually came together in February and March.
He does, however, expect this year in Boston to be an anomaly because of the large amount of snow.
Real estate agency Redfin stands by spring (March 21 to June 20) as the best time to list. Thirty-nine percent of homes across the country listed in that time period went under contract within 30 days. Fifteen percent of them sold above their listing price, based on a Redfin analysis of 7 million homes listed between 2010 and 2014.
But winter is not far behind, according to Redfin. The number of homes sold between Dec. 21 and Mar. 20, was one percentage point behind spring when it came to time on market and price sold.
In fact, looking at those two stats for all four seasons and across almost all big cities in the U.S., the differences are minimal, wavering about five percentage points at most.
So when should you actually list your home?
Whenever it’s convenient for you, said Michael DiMella, managing partner at Charlesgate Realty.
“Truthfully, the biggest factor is the sellers’s lifestyles, dependent on kids’s school schedules, whether they have to relocate for the job, or if the right house for them to move into comes onto the market,’’ he said. “So many other factors are much more important than to time the market to get every little dollar.’’
DiMella did admit that people selling and buying in the winter are more serious about the hunt, so it’s possible sellers could get a better price.
But even Troy Martin, a Redfin economist, said, “More data I’ve seen has led me to believe that there isn’t a best time.’’
“It’s just this cultural thing that in the spring, everyone is going to buy or sell, but it has much more to do with the house you’re selling than the month you list,’’ Martin said.
Correction: A previous version of this article attributed a quote to a Zillow spokesperson. It was actually a quote relayed from Skylar Olsen, a senior economist at Zillow.
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