Why May, may just be the Best Month To Sell Your Home

The daffodils are blooming, the birds are chirping, and the last bit of snow has finally surrendered to the rising temperatures. Spring has finally arrived, and with it, so have the homebuyers.

Industry experts have always considered spring to be the best time of year to sell your home.

After a cold and bleak winter, homebuyers emerge in droves to find new homes that will suit their needs. But of all the spring months, May has proven to be the most profitable. Here are four reasons why May is the best month of the year to sell your home.

Putting Your Best Foot Forward

Your garden’s flowers will be in full bloom, the outdoor temperatures are moderate and will mask a lack of insulation or air conditioning, and sunlight will fill your home well into the evening hours. Spring weather makes it easy to put your best foot forward and present your home in the best possible light, provided you repair any winter storm damage before opening your home to viewings.

Your home will never look better to homebuyers than it does in the spring.

Winter, on the other hand, is the worst time of year to sell a home, and it’s easy to see why.

Your beautiful backyard could be buried under snow. The sun sets so early that your home may seem dark and dreary during viewings, and any shortcomings in your home heating system will be instantly recognizable. Fall and summer aren’t much better, with either brown grass and stifling heat or a yard full of leaves dampening buyer demand and suppressing prices.

Ideal Timing

Spring is also the best time of year to list your home because it makes the timing convenient for homebuyers. For homebuyers who are parents, making an offer on a home in May will result in a closing date at some point in the summer. A summer closing date allows children to switch schools between school years.

House hunting is also a lot of work and requires homebuyers to be available if the perfect home is listed on the market. Spring is ideal for this because Christmas or summer vacations don’t hamper this season. Finally, spring is the season of income tax refunds, and with the average Canadian tax refund clocking in at $1,400, that may be the extra push homebuyers need to enter the market and upgrade their homes.

Pent-Up Demand

Finally, house hunting in winter is just plain difficult. It’s cold, the sun sets early, and winter storms can force homebuyers to change plans at a moment’s notice. For these reasons, many buyers suspend their homebuying plans during the colder months and resume their search in the spring.

But once the temperatures start to rise and it’s easier to get around, homebuyers restart their search, this time with the pent-up demand that comes from a winter of living in a home that doesn’t meet their needs.

While there is more inventory in the spring months, this increased competition from buyers results in a net positive for home sellers. Competition between buyers means that you’re likely to receive an offer faster, and the offer may be higher than in other months of the year.

Data Says May is the Best

All of the reasons we’ve given above indicate that spring is the best time of year to sell your home, but not that May is the best month. For this, we turn to cold hard data, which indicates, time and again, that May is the best month of the year to sell your home.

TheRedPin.com analyzed five years of sales data in the greater Toronto area, and their findings indicated that May has the highest number of sales of any month of the year and that the average selling price tends to be higher.

Similarly, the Zillow Buyer’s Guide indicates that the first two weeks of May are the best time to sell a home, citing homes selling almost two weeks faster than average, and for an average of $2,500 more.

Finally, ATTOM Data Solutions analyzed 14.7 million home sales from 2011 to 2017 shows that homes sold in May sell for 5.9% more than the average. They noted, however, that warmer parts of the country tended to realize their best selling months slightly earlier, so if you live in British Columbia, you may want to consider listing your home earlier.

If you are considering selling your home, now is the time to take the plunge and list it.

Selling in May will result in a faster sale for a higher price. But if you aren’t ready just yet, don’t worry – Fall is widely considered the second-best season for selling your home, and it’s right around the corner.