Best time to sell

When you start thinking about listing your home, it helps to know the best time to sell. If you’re not in a rush, positioning your home to be put on the market during the hottest selling season can help ensure you receive the highest dollar while also closing quickly.

What is the Best Season to List Your Home?

It is common knowledge in the industry that spring is the best time to sell your home. We can go even further and say that May is often regarded as the ideal month to list your home. Due to warmer weather and a general feeling of new possibilities, there is an uptick in buyers during this season, making the buying market more competitive, often resulting in higher values for listed homes. The warm weather can help encourage people to get out of their homes and attend open houses or seek out showings a little easier. It is also the ideal timeline for families who can close in late spring and move mid-summer to help ensure their kids get settled and easily enrolled in a new school. The larger pool of buyers means you will likely receive more offers, and more offers mean buyers will be asking for fewer concessions but probably still offering top dollar.

This pro-seller market often continues throughout summer, as many families rush to lock in a home before the new school year begins. This rushed timeline can lead to quicker closing dates as buyers start to panic and rush. At the same time, summer means sellers have to contend with high heat and vacations, which can often be a deterrent for people looking to buy.

When is the Worst Time to Sell a Home?

Have you ever experienced an Iowa winter? If you have, it comes as no surprise why this is the worst season to sell your home. While warmer climates, such as California or Florida, see a healthy seller’s market throughout the year, in places like the midwest, where winter can feel endless, there is a slight dip in selling during that season. Not only do frigid temperatures keep people from braving potential inclement weather, but usually, by wintertime, people are securely settled into the rhythm of their life. For families, listing their home in the winter would mean changing schools, which is often avoided.

Suppose, however, you are considering selling your home. In that case, the winter season can be valuable for doing work such as updating flooring, painting walls, or finally getting to that list of repairs. Those updates will make your home market-ready for when spring finally blooms!

Why this May Not Matter

Ultimately, selling your home comes down to one thing: you. While getting top dollar is often the goal, if you have a job change, want to downsize to cut costs, or need more space, you should list your home when you are ready. While there are advantages to a spring/summer listing, that doesn’t mean it is impossible to sell in the off-season. In fact, seasons matter less if it is nationally considered a seller’s market.

Ready to list you home today? Contact Emilie Lawrence to get started.