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Why the Best Time to Sell a House Is Shifting Later in the Year
By Pete Grieve MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Shifts in mortgage rates have an effect on when the housing market will peak.
In most years, the best time to list a home for sale is May. But last year, the optimal time to put your house on the market came a little later, in June. And the housing market could be on track for a similar peak in 2024.
Homes listed last year during the first half of June typically sold for $7,700 higher prices, according to a new report from Zillow. If you’re a homeowner thinking about selling this spring, you may want to wait, as June could be a seller-friendly month once again in 2024, the report says.
Spring and early summer are usually the most active times for the housing market, and sellers can benefit from higher buyer demand. Home sales rise during this time of year because the school year is winding down and warmer weather makes it easier for households to move, among other factors.
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Before the real estate market was shaken up in 2020, May had “consistently” been the best month for sellers to list their homes, according to the report. Now, the best time to put a home up for sale appears to be getting later.
“The shift to June suggests mortgage rates are strongly influencing demand on top of the usual seasonality that brings buyers to the market in the spring,” Zillow said in the report. “This home-shopping season is poised to follow a similar pattern as that in 2023.”
Last spring, the market was experiencing the highest mortgage rates that had been seen in many years. A slight drop in rates in June, however, brought buyers into the market. According to Freddie Mac data, the 30-year fixed-rate loan was 6.79% for the week ending June 1, 2023, but had dipped to 6.67% three weeks later.
Current mortgage rates are higher than a year ago at 6.88%. If mortgage rates fall again during this year’s spring homebuying season, sale prices could get a boost, according to Zillow.
Some analysts are forecasting an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve in mid-June, and if that materializes it would likely lead to a drop in mortgage rates, favoring more home sales. Zillow’s chief economist Skylar Olsen said in the report that a midyear rate cut could trigger a “second wave” of the spring homebuying season.
“The old logic was that sellers could earn a premium by listing in late spring when their home would be on the top of the pile of listings when search activity was at its peak,” Zillow’s chief economist Skylar Olsen said in the report. “Now, with persistently low inventory, mortgage rate fluctuations make their own seasonality.”
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Pete Grieve is a New York-based reporter who covers personal finance news. At Money, Pete covers trending stories that affect Americans’ wallets on topics including car buying, insurance, housing, credit cards, retirement and taxes. He studied political science and photography at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon. Pete began his career as a professional journalist in 2019. Prior to joining Money, he was a health reporter for Spectrum News in Ohio, where he wrote digital stories and appeared on TV to provide coverage to a statewide audience. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times and CNN Politics. Pete received extensive journalism training through Report for America, a nonprofit organization that places reporters in newsrooms to cover underreported issues and communities, and he attended the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in 2021. Pete has discussed his reporting in interviews with outlets including the Columbia Journalism Review and WBEZ (Chicago's NPR station). He’s been a panelist at the Chicago Headline Club’s FOIA Fest and he received the Institute on Political Journalism’s $2,500 Award for Excellence in Collegiate Reporting in 2017. An essay he wrote for Grey City magazine was published in a 2020 book, Remembering J. Z. Smith: A Career and its Consequence.