When Is the Best Time to Sell?

If you’re looking for the best time to sell, here it is.

Today I'm here to talk to you about the best time to put my house on the market. So this is the No. 1 question I get coming into a new year. So sellers have on their agenda that they want to sell their house in 2023. They call the real estate agent, and they're asking, “what is the best time for me to put my house on the market?” Today I'm here to share with you my thoughts on the best timing.

So the first disclaimer is that a house that is well-priced, in great condition, and marketed correctly will sell great regardless of the time of the year. You do those three things—you price it right, you market it correctly, and you have it looking good—it's going to sell. But the question is, “what's the best time?”

So my argument is we have to look at the data of what the market tells us. There are two things to keep in mind when you're looking at this: One is, “when is the least amount of competition?”

So in my market, where we serve the least amount of competition, the least amount of houses for sale is in January and February. Believe it or not, that's the least amount of competition there is on the market. The second thing that we want to look at is when does buyer activity start to pick up for the spring market?

What is the best time for me to put my house on the market?

We have this ongoing joke in our office that the spring market starts on January 1, right? Spring doesn't start till April, yet the buyers out there start calling on January 1. In January, February, and even the beginning of March, buyer activity is peaking. If people are interested, they want to look at houses, and yet there's a shortage of houses to look at. If I'm a seller and I'm trying to maximize activity and minimize competition, take advantage of January, February, and early March, which may seem counterintuitive. The house will sell if it's in good condition and marketed well, but the optimal time, the time where there's the least amount of competition, is actually January, February, and early March.

If you have questions about your local market, or you want to sit down and look at your neighborhood or your price point, we'd love to sit down with you. We come, and we go over all of this stuff for specifically your market, your time frame, and your price range. So making sure that you have someone that is equipped and knowledgeable about that is super important. So if you'd like to have us come out and take a look at your house and talk to you about that, we can definitely do that.