I get this question from sellers all of the time.  Many people have their own belief which month is the best to list.  In fact, many say that it is best to list in the spring because there are the most buyers around or because their home will look its best.  

Is there any truth to the believe that it is best to list in the spring?  The truth may surprise you.

I recently spent some time extracting all of the new sales, new listings, and inventory levels out of matrix, month by month. As you would expect, it was very clear that during certain months of the year, generally in the late spring, there were many more sales than there were in the November to January time frame.  Does this mean that you should list in the spring?  Looking at the data, we can see that inventory is highest in the spring, meaning more competition, and that there are also the most new listings being launched in the spring, meaning more distraction for buyers causing them to wait to see what is coming on the market next.

To look at the data more closely, I created a number of ratios such as the number of new sales as a % of the number of new listings each month.  Since we know that new listings are what sell most often, we can hypothesize that this would be a great ratio to speak to the chance of selling a new listing in a given month.  You may find it surprising that this ratio seems to say that there is no significant advantage to listing in any month of the year - except in December!  It seems that a good listing, listed in December, has an excellent chance of selling - as far as this ratio is concerned.  I can say that I did list a number of properties in late November and December last year.  We did definitely receive fewer showings, but all of them sold, even ones that I thought would be tough to sell.  December may be the golden month that others are missing out on!

I also compared new sales in each month to the total inventory available that month.  As with the ratio above, this calculation also showed that there is no best month to list a property.  In the months where there is lower inventory, fewer properties were sold.  This ratio was almost dead flat for every month of the year - meaning that, again, there is virtually no advantage to listing in the spring.

This is definitely not a comprehensive proof. But, I do get the feeling that we can dispel the myth that it is best to wait until the spring.

Of course, we also need to look at the current market to determine if it is a good time to sell a home. It's a thumbs up there as well. Although prices are down from the highs of a couple of years ago, business is relatively brisk and well up in terms of volume compared to last year. At the same time, inventory is about 10% lower, great reasons to sell your home now rather than later.

Here are the raw stats from the last 30 days:

Over the last 30 days, 196 single family houses were sold, down by 2 houses from last week. The median price is down $14,700 to $534,000. The average house was on the market for 44 days. In the last 30 days, 96 condos were sold, down by 4 condos from last week. The median price is down $1,900 to $253,350. The average condo was on the market for 65 days.

There are now 1,639 houses for sale, down by 88 from last week. Condo inventory has fallen by 51 to 817 suites. (h)(s)