This week I received a call from a potential seller regarding listing his home in the middle of November. To me that’s a little dicey. While inventory is low and the market is moving despite interest rates around 7%, there’s still the holidays to contend with. Generally speaking, the market begins to cool down by November. Sellers who haven’t attracted a buyer yet are lowering their prices or taking their homes off the market and will put them back on in the spring. It’s a great time to buy a house, and with one notable exception it’s a great time to sell.
If you’ve got a house that needs to be fixed up, like something that is dated and priced accordingly, there’s always a contractor market. In fact, contractors prefer to purchase properties in the fall and winter so they can turn them around quickly and try to get them back on the market in the spring when things heat up. That reduces their holding costs and makes their timing just right.
I’ve sold plenty of homes in the fall and winter. The question becomes, is a seller better off waiting until 2027? Here are the key dates for listing homes in the coming year: January 1, February right after the Super Bowl and Ski Week, April 15th after tax day. The only current issue is macroeconomic instability caused by war, inflation, and AI. While people will be losing their jobs around the country to AI, here in the Bay Area we may benefit from the AI millionaires that are being created. There are only so many houses, and when you get a buyer pool with fat wallets prices tend to rise.
There can be lots of reasons to sell over the November through mid-February. There’s always going to be buyers and sellers in the market. So, if you need to sell and you’ve got a nice house, by all means list over the slower period. If you’ve got a fixer though, you are hitting the market at the best possible right time.