The best and worst months to sell a home

Every spring, the same question surfaces in real estate conversations across the country: When is the best time to sell a house?

The answer costs real money to get wrong. Across 16 major U.S. markets, homes that closed in June sold for a median of $388,791, while homes that closed in January sold for $361,497. That is a $27,294 gap for the same types of houses, in the same cities, separated only by the calendar.

Multiple independent datasets point to the same broad conclusion. ATTOM Data's analysis of more than 47 million single-family home and condo sales between 2015 and 2024 found that May delivers the highest seller premium at 9.5%, followed by February (9.4%) and April (9.1%), while November trails at 6.4%. Realtor.com's 2025 Best Time to Sell report identified the week of April 13-19 as the national optimum, with homes listed that week selling roughly $27,000 above average, nine days faster, and with 17.7% more buyer views per listing. Zillow's 2024 analysis found homes listed in the second half of May sold for 1.6% more, or about $5,600 on a typical U.S. home.

Those findings all line up on the same window: spring listings, early summer closings. But national averages mask wide differences between markets. An Offerpad analysis of aggregated multiple listing service (MLS) data covering more than 2.1 million single-family home transactions across 16 metropolitan areas from January 2023 through March 2026 shows exactly how much timing matters, and where it matters most.

Best Month to Sell a House: Price, Speed, and Competition

The best time to sell a house depends on your priority. The table below shows the optimal and worst months for each selling metric, averaged across the 16 metros analyzed.

The peaks do not line up because of the lag between listing and closing. Homes listed in April and May get showings, receive offers, and enter escrow over the following weeks. The spring listing rush creates summer closing peaks. The price peak in June reflects offers made during peak competition. The speed peak in July reflects sellers who listed in the hottest market of the year and moved through closing quickly.

The worst month to sell a house is January by nearly every measure: lowest prices, fewest buyers, and the largest average price reductions ($16,948). That pattern holds in both the metro-level MLS data and ATTOM's national 10-year study, which identified November and October as the weakest months on a seller-premium basis.

When to Sell a House: Month-by-Month Breakdown

The table below shows how every major selling metric shifts across the calendar year, averaged across 16 metros and all available years.

January and February are the trough. Homes sit longest, sell for the least, and face the weakest buyer competition. Sellers listing in winter often have reasons that override timing: a job relocation, a family change, or a financial deadline.

The spring acceleration is sudden. Between February and April, days on market (DOM) drops by more than 12 days. Above-list sales jump from 14.8% to 21.8%. Buyers who spent winter browsing start putting in offers once inventory improves.

The best time to sell a house is the April-through-July window. These four months have the fastest sales, highest prices, most bidding wars, and smallest price reductions. Within that stretch, May and June are the dual peaks: May has the most competitive offers (23.6% above list) while June has the highest median price ($388,791). July is the speed peak, with homes selling in 44 days on average, 18 days faster than February. This pattern is consistent with Realtor.com's finding that mid-April is the optimal national listing window, since homes listed in mid-April typically close in May or June.

Then the fade begins. By September, days on market has crept back above 48 days and above-list sales have dropped below 20%. Families settle into school-year routines and buyer urgency fades.

October has one quiet distinction: the lowest seller concessions of any month ($2,714). Buyers still searching by October tend to be committed, not browsing.

Best Time to Sell a House by City: Where Seasonality Hits Hardest

The national averages mask wide differences between cities. The seasonal swing in days on market ranges from 27.7 days in Indianapolis to 11.5 days in Tampa. Markets with cold winters tend to see the biggest seasonal swings, while Sun Belt cities with year-round warm weather show more consistent activity.

Three tiers emerge from the data.

High-swing markets (20 or more days): Indianapolis, Austin, Columbus, Charlotte, Dallas, Raleigh, and Atlanta. These seven cities see the biggest seasonal shifts. Most are in the Midwest and Southeast, where cold winters and spring thaws create a distinct selling season. Sellers in these markets gain the most by timing their listing for spring and summer.

Austin is the puzzle in this group. It does not get cold enough to freeze buyers out, yet it shows the second-highest DOM swing in the dataset (25.3 days). The explanation likely lies in its economy rather than its weather. Austin's tech sector runs on corporate hiring cycles that concentrate relocations in spring and early summer. When the big employers bring in new hires, demand surges. When hiring slows, the market cools.

Moderate-swing markets (15-20 days): San Antonio, St. Louis, Las Vegas, Columbia, Jacksonville, and Houston. These cities show real seasonal variation, but not enough to override other selling decisions.

Low-swing markets (under 15 days): Orlando, Phoenix, and Tampa. Year-round migration from northern states, retiree relocations, and steady warm weather create more consistent demand. In Tampa, the difference between the best and worst months is 11.5 days, compared with 27.7 days in Indianapolis. The Florida metros consistently show less seasonal variation in time-to-sale than their Midwestern counterparts, a pattern Zillow has also documented in its annual market studies.

Home Sale Prices by Season: What Timing Costs or Saves

Speed is one dimension. Dollars are another. Some markets see median prices shift by nearly 20% between peak and off-peak months. Others barely move.

St. Louis is the most extreme case. The median home there sells for 19.2% more in June than in January. For a home priced around $250,000, that is the difference between $249,000 and $297,000. Same house, same neighborhood, same school district. The only variable is the month.

Atlanta has the largest dollar swing ($48,438) because its higher median price amplifies even a moderate 12.3% seasonal shift. Columbus, with a lower median price, still shows a $42,346 swing because its 13% seasonal effect is among the strongest in the dataset.

At the bottom of the table, Phoenix barely moves. A 2.3% price swing ($10,817) means sellers face almost no price penalty for selling at the "wrong" time. For Phoenix sellers, the best time to sell is whenever the home is ready.

Jacksonville has an unusual pattern: Its peak price month is December, not June. Northeast Florida draws winter buyers from the Northeast who decide over the holidays to make the move, pushing late-year demand and December prices above the summer months.

The magnitude of these swings is consistent with ATTOM's national finding that seasonality is worth several percentage points of seller premium. The metro-level view simply shows how uneven that average is across the country.

Bidding Wars by Month: When Homes Sell Above Asking Price

The percentage of homes selling above list price is one of the clearest indicators of buyer competition. Across the 16 metros analyzed, May leads at 23.6%, nearly double January's 12.4%. The market-level variation is where the data gets more interesting.

Columbus and St. Louis are the bidding war leaders. In Columbus, nearly half of all May transactions (46.4%) close above asking price. In St. Louis, that figure passes 50% in June, meaning more buyers pay above the list price than below it. Both are affordable Midwestern markets where spring demand meets limited inventory, and the result is intense competition.

At the other end, Tampa and Orlando both show just 4.5 percentage points of seasonal swing in above-list sales. In these markets, the odds of a bidding war stay between roughly 9% and 13% year-round.

Markets with the biggest days-on-market swings also tend to have the largest bidding war swings, confirming that the same seasonal forces drive both speed and competition.

What This Means for Sellers in 2026

The data provides a framework for understanding the seasonal forces at play in each market.

In high-swing markets, timing is worth tens of thousands of dollars. Sellers in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Columbus, and Atlanta can see $28,000 to $48,000 in median price differences between the best and worst months. Listing in April or May to target a June or July close gives sellers the combined advantage of higher prices, faster sales, and more competitive offers.

In low-swing markets, other factors matter more. Phoenix, Tampa, and Orlando show minimal seasonal variation. For sellers in these cities, home condition, pricing accuracy, and local neighborhood dynamics will likely determine the outcome more than which month they list.

Speed and price do not peak in the same month. The fastest sales happen in July (44 days) while the highest prices come in June ($388,791). Sellers prioritizing speed may benefit from listing slightly later in the spring.

January and February are the toughest months to sell by nearly every measure. Prices, speed, and buyer competition are all at their annual lows. Sellers who can avoid listing during these months will, on average, face better market conditions.

Peak months bring peak competition from other sellers. May has the highest transaction volume (4,320 average per market), meaning more new listings compete for buyer attention. A well-priced, well-presented home listed in April, slightly ahead of the rush, may outperform a weaker listing in May simply because it faces less inventory competition. That mirrors Realtor.com's finding that the mid-April window combines strong demand with 13.2% less inventory than an average week.

Methodology

This metro-level analysis is based on aggregated multiple listing service data for single-family home transactions from January 2023 through March 2026 across 16 metropolitan markets: Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Columbia (SC), Columbus (OH), Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh, St. Louis, San Antonio, and Tampa. The MLS data was sourced and prepared by the Offerpad Research Team.

All statistics represent market-wide transaction data. Seasonal averages are computed across all available years for each month. Days on market (DOM) measures the time from listing to contract. Median close price is the midpoint of all sale prices in a given month. Percent above list measures the share of transactions where the final sale price exceeded the original list price. Average price drop measures the average difference between original list price and final sale price for homes that sold below asking. Average concessions measures seller-paid closing cost contributions.

The dataset includes more than 2.1 million individual transactions. Coverage note: because the dataset runs January 2023 through March 2026, January, February, and March are represented by four years of data while April through December are represented by three. This creates a slight recency bias on absolute values for the first quarter but does not change the relative ranking of months. Columbus MLS does not report concessions data; Houston and Las Vegas concessions values likely reflect differences in MLS reporting rather than actual seller-paid amounts near zero.

Supporting national data is drawn from ATTOM Data's "Best Days to Sell a Home" analysis (47 million single-family and condo sales, 2015-2024), Realtor.com's 2025 Best Time to Sell report (50 largest U.S. metros), and Zillow Research's 2024 annual sales analysis.

This story was produced by Offerpad and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

Copyright 2026 Stacker Media, LLC

This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 9:00 AM.