Is there a best time of year to list your home in Austin? Well, I can show you the last several years of data to help you answer that question. In General Austin has a very seasonal market, and especially the more so as you get out into the suburbs, it attracts a lot of families with children and families and kids typically buy based on the school season. So the busier times of the year where buyers are out are generally in the spring and summer. By the time you reach mid summer, a lot of those families have stopped shopping, they want to already be settled in by school season. And school starts early here. It’s usually around August 15 or so where some other parts of the country might be after Labor Day. But our school for whatever reason starts around mid August, which means families want to have already moved in, usually by July or so. So you can see what happens to our sales cycle here.
This is showing this was a crazy example in 2022. But our prices went up over 20% hit a peak in May. And then just as quickly came back down. This is due to added pressure because of interest rates. But we normally do see a downswing in the sales cycle in the fall and beginning of school year. Now to show you in 2021, that was probably the hottest year ever in real estate. But our prices went up again, super high in the spring, and they came back down about a 11 to 10 to 11%, around the start of school picked up just slightly 2020 is the only one that’s kind of an anomaly. It makes sense that our spring market, everything kind of shut down, we were having a normal super active market. But with what happened in 2020. Businesses, everything just stopped for a few months. So that spring market got delayed, the rest of the year, picked up again.
So we kind of had our spring in the fall. But that was just a one time thing caused by the whole economic global shutdown, you go back to 2019, you still see that same upswing in the spring and then the downward trend and the same thing back in 2018. So when you’re looking at a graph like this, the main thing you want to realize is that where it’s at the peak, like let’s say, last year 2022, the peak was in May, those are for close sales. So if closed in May, that means that the property we had to have been listed or under contract back in April, because it generally takes 30 days to close on a property, it may have sat on the market for a little bit. So that property was probably listed the month before in March. So if you list your home, usually in March and April, those are the peak months that have the most number of showings the most offers.
And you can catch that trend of the buyers willing to pay up less negotiating power on the buyer side in a lot more competition of buyers competing against each other, which is ideal when you are ready to sell your home. The worst time to list would be right where school starts like the week of school, just forget it. Like don’t even bother listing it right then. Especially if you’re selling one of those big houses attracting families. Your situation might be different if you’re selling like a single one bedroom downtown condo because you’re not appealing to someone that’s really worried about the school season.
But just know that if you list later in the year, you’ll actually make less money than those who sell in the spring. Now ultimately, when you should sell depends on your circumstances if you don’t need to sell in the spring but something happens to you in the fall. You’ve changed jobs you get married something changes in your life. Then of course you can sell your home anytime a year there’s closings that happen year round in Austin, but just expect that it’s going to take a little bit longer. You’re gonna have to be more conservative on price in order to get that sale. If you were thinking of selling your home this year and you want to brainstorm your timeline and best strategy, email us to book a quick appointment with us.
