This Is the Best Month to Sell a House, Experts Report

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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This Is the Best Month to Sell a House, Experts Report

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Home prices have reached their highest level in history in a number of markets. Much of this has been driven by people who have relocated from large cities during the pandemic. Many of the housing markets in America have seen a double-digit price increase compared to the same time in 2020. The trend has created a financial bonanza for sellers. This has been compounded by a low supply of homes, brought on because of the buying frenzy.

The premium people get for their homes varies by month. ATTOM Data Solutions, a major supplier of real estate analysis, looked at 40.1 million home sales from 2011 to 2020. It included those calendar days during this period when at least 10,000 homes were sold nationwide. Because of the length of the period, the information shows the trends in years when home prices rose sharply and some in which they did not.

To pick the months when sellers got the best premium on homes over the course of a year, ATTOM Data Solutions modeled the value of homes and compared them against what sellers actually received when they sold homes.

The month with the largest premium was May. Todd Teta, chief product officer with ATTOM Data Solutions commented: “As home sellers continue to enjoy an extended sellers’ market, moving full steam ahead from the momentum gained over the last ten years, the month of May is particularly poised to garner the greatest sale premiums.”
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When the data were used to identify the best individual days to sell a home, five of the best days were in May, led by May 23, when the premium based on the ATTOM model, was 19.3% above market value.

These are the best months to sell a house:

Month Median Sales Price Seller Premium
May $197,400 13.4%
June $206,000 11.7%
July $209,000 11.2%
April $190,000 9.2%
August $205,000 8.9%
March $185,000 8.6%
February $177,510 8.2%
September $201,000 7.5%
January $178,058 6.6%
November $200,000 6.4%
October $200,000 5.8%
December $200,000 5.8%

Click here to see the cities where housing prices are rising fastest.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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