Here's Exactly When You Should Sell Your Home to Make the Most Money
While factors like the square footage and location impact how quickly—and for how much—a home sells, seemingly small details can stack up, too. Research suggests that everything from the scent of your space to the kitchen’s cooking equipment can make or break a home sale and drastically impact how much a home sells for.
Turns out, another element outside of the home—the time of year—substantially moves the needle on sale price as well.
For their new Seize the Season report, Opendoor (a digital platform that simplifies online residential real estate transactions), crunched the numbers from MLS listings for closings between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2023 in more than 50 American markets. The researchers took note of the average closing price and the average “days-to-pend” (essentially, the amount of time the home was on the market) by season, then compared those seasonal figures to the annual averages to try to spot patterns.
Each season has its highs and lows, but since 1 in 4 homeowners cite “making a profit” as their number one motivation for selling, according to a previous Opendoor survey, they specifically highlighted factors that can make your home sell for more money each season.
It’s important to note that each market, buyer, and seller varies, but depending on the features your home includes, these findings might help you plan the best time to put your home on the market.
Spring tends to be the sweet spot if you’d like to maximize your return on investment, Opendoor found. This is especially true if you own a home with one of these features:
A pool (+$34,000 in spring vs. winter)
A basement larger than 1,000 square feet (+$32,000 in spring vs. winter)
A large lot of an acre or more (+5.3 percent in spring vs. winter)
Three or more bedrooms (+5 percent in spring vs. winter)
Summer is ideal for transactions that involve age-restricted listings, or residences that are part of communities with an age limit, often over 55, to reside there. These have the highest peak closing price in the summer compared to any other season.
Fall and winter appear to be the worst times of year to list your home. Properties listed in the fall usually take the longest to sell, and once they do, they have just so-so sale prices, at least from the seller’s perspective, the report found. And much like the temperatures in winter, homes listed in that season are generally cold in terms of their returns. Winter deals have the lowest average closing prices.
You Might Also Like
