One of the oldest axioms in real estate - besides location, location, location - is that the best time to list a home is just after the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl has gained popularity as a housing-market selling-season indicator. According to traditional real estate wisdom, that's when the busy spring home selling season gets underway.
With this Sunday's match between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons, I thought it was a good time to determine whether the Super Bowl as a selling-season indicator for the housing market is fact or fiction. The answer, as best as I've been able to determine, is that it's more myth than reality.
It's true that the Super Bowl just happens to fall at the time of year when the holidays are over and potential home sellers start thinking about their plans for the new year – including whether it's time to put their home on the market. Also with all the rain we've been having in the Bay Area, the weather hasn't exactly been conducive to getting a home ready for market and holding an open house.
But the fact is that there is nothing “magical” about the Super Bowl, for the real estate industry, as a point in time to kick off the selling season. In fact, after crunching all the sales data over the years, the economic team at Zillow says that for the nation as a whole the best time to sell is actually the last two weeks of March.
In an article in the Chicago Tribune, Zillow chief economist Stan Humphries said there's a strategy to it all. He acknowledged that the bulk of the listings will show up right after the Super Bowl sometime in February. But by late March, the new listings are dwindling and those listings that have been around since early February might be getting a bit stale.
By listing toward the end of March, a new listing might get to the top of the list in search engines and attract more buyer attention. The article did note that there are regional variations to all this. In milder parts of the country (i.e., the Bay Area) the right time may be slightly earlier, while in colder climates it could be later - possibly late April. Or, at the in certain price points it doesn’t really matter because everything is selling!
Whether the right time to list a home here in the Bay Area is February or later in March, one thing is clear: Now is the right time to start getting ready if you plan to sell this year. Are you ready to kick-off the selling season???