Sell Your House in May to Make the Most Money

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 3, 9:30AM EDT

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Sell Your House in May to Make the Most Money — © valentinrussanov / E+ via Getty Images

There has been a radical change in the American residential real estate market in the past year. In early 2022, homes were selling above the asking price. Mortgage rates were low. In some markets, few homes were sold because demand made inventory almost nonexistent. Recently, higher mortgage rates have made it harder for sellers to get premium prices. Because of this, fewer homes are on the market. And buyers are being crippled by mortgage rates at or above 6%. (These American cities are spending billions to build more homes.)
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Despite the challenge sellers have, they are fewer in May because it is the month during which sellers get the highest premium. According to ATTOM’s “The Optimal Time of the Year to Sell a Home Proves to Be Spring and Summer,” the “median automated value” of a home during the period from 2011 to 2002 of an inventory of 51 million homes was below the sales price in every month of the year.
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According to the report:

To calculate the premium or discount paid on a given day, ATTOM compared the median sales price for homes with a purchase closing on that day with the median automated valuation model (AVM) for those same homes at the time of sale.

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May’s premium was 12.1%. The median sales price in the month was $220,000 against an AVM of $195,000. June was second with a premium of 10.7%. The AVM was $206,000, compared to a sale price of $228,000
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The worst month was November. The AVM was $207,000 against a sales price of $220,000, just a 6.3% premium.

Here is the AVM versus sales price for every month:

Month	Median Sales Price	Median AVM	Seller Premium
May	$220,000	$195,000	12.8%
June	$228,000	$206,000	10.7%
April	$215,000	$195,000	10.3%
March	$210,000	$191,357	9.7%
July	$227,500	$207,537	9.6%
February	$200,000	$184,000	8.7%
August	$225,000	$208,000	8.2%
September	$223,504	$207,000	8.0%
January	$200,000	$186,000	7.5%
October	$220,000	$206,000	6.8%
December	$220,000	$206,000	6.8%
November	$220,000	$207,000	6.3%

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.