Turns out that listing a home in the winter is not that bad of an idea. The CEO of redfin went and did some data digging and found that winter time is not a slow time. From the related article in the New York Times:
But instead of relying on “old rules of thumb,” superstition or real estate decisions “driven by emotion,” he said, he surveyed sales of more than 750,000 homes nationwide over a year. Mr. Kelman’s assumptions turned out to be untrue. Winter, his data showed, is the best time to sell. “People who list in winter have less competition,” he said, citing results released last month that define winter as December through February. “There is such a trickle of inventory that each one gets more attention.”
Lest you think that the suburbs, or worse, California, is just, well, different than Manhattan, appraiser-extraordinaire Jonathan Miller did his on data digging for Manhattan. There is some subtlety however:
By this reckoning, Mr. Miller said, the best time to list a home is “at the tail end of winter, just before the spring sales rush.” Locally, listings introduced in March sell the fastest, and March is also the month when most listings are introduced to the market. Based on the number of contracts signed each month, “ the spring is still the ‘Super Bowl’ of annual real estate sales,” Mr. Miller said. “June is the top month,” he said, for the number of contracts signed, “with March being the month that results in the shortest time on the market.” Homes put on the market in October take the longest to sell.
There are some other juicy tidbits in the article. Check it here.
