Here is something slightly maddening about selling a house. Same property. Same price. Same photographs. List it in one month and you are fielding three viewings a weekend. List it in another and the phone barely rings for a fortnight.
The gap is bigger than most people expect. Look at the figures on the best time of year to put a house on the market and a home listed in March takes around 52 days to sell on average. The same house in August takes about 70. December is worse still, closer to 72. That is nearly three extra weeks of tidying up before viewings, of keeping the hallway clear, of asking the children not to leave the Lego out.
Why spring does the heavy lifting
It is not mysterious once you think about how people actually view houses.
- The light comes back. You cannot do a six o’clock viewing in January. By March you can, and weekday evenings suddenly become available to people who work full time.
- Gardens stop looking sad. Bare hedges and a sodden lawn do a property no favours. A few weeks of growth and the same outside space reads as somewhere you would sit with a coffee.
- The school year drives families. Sell in spring, complete in summer, start the new school in September. Work backwards from that and March is exactly where you need to be.
- January thinking turns into February doing. People spend the first weeks of the year deciding to move. By late February they are actually booking viewings.
- Fewer competing listings early on. Get in before the spring rush properly builds and your house is one of a handful rather than one of forty.
None of that is about the market being clever. It is about daylight, gardens and school terms, which is a rather more human explanation than most property advice offers.
The August problem
August is the worst month of the year to be trying to sell, and the reason is embarrassingly simple. Everybody is away.
Buyers are in Cornwall or Corfu. Solicitors are on leave, which slows everything that has already been agreed. Mortgage advisers are at half staff. Nobody wants to spend a rare sunny Saturday looking round somebody else’s kitchen. If your house goes on in the first week of August, you may genuinely wait until September for the market to notice.
Late November through December has the same problem for different reasons. People are thinking about Christmas, not conveyancing.
Thursday, oddly enough
There is even a best day, which sounds like nonsense until you consider the behaviour behind it.
Most serious buyers scroll through Rightmove on a Thursday or Friday evening, planning the weekend. A listing that goes live on Thursday lands right in front of them while they are booking viewings. Go live on a Sunday and by the time anyone is looking properly, you are buried under three days of newer listings. Ask your agent to schedule it. Most will, and most will not think of it unless asked.
When to ignore all of this entirely
This is the bit I would want a friend to tell me.
Timing helps. It is rarely the thing that decides how a sale goes. Far more people regret waiting for the perfect month than regret listing in a slightly ordinary one. If your circumstances have changed, if the job has already been accepted, if the house has become too big or too small or too expensive, then waiting five months for March is not a strategy. It is just five months of living with the problem.
Life does not consult the property calendar. Nobody schedules a divorce, an inheritance or a relocation around Rightmove traffic.
If you are stuck with a quiet month
There is an upside worth knowing. Fewer sellers list in the slow months, so a well presented, sensibly priced home has less to compete against. The buyers who are still looking in mid August or the week before Christmas tend to be the serious ones, because nobody browses houses in that weather for entertainment.
Price it honestly, get the photographs done on a bright day even if that means waiting a week, and accept that it may take a little longer. That is usually a far better plan than sitting on your hands until spring and hoping nothing changes in the meantime.
About the author
Paul Gibbens – Property Expert at Housebuyers4u
He is a property expert at Housebuyers4u, advising UK homeowners on quick house sales, realistic valuations and how to avoid common pitfalls such as unclear fees, hidden option agreements and last-minute price changes.
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