When it comes to real estate, sellers don’t want to leave anything to chance, including what day they list their home on the market. So Redfin analyzed a sample of 100,000 houses sold in 2017 and the results are in.
To sell for the most money, you should put your house on the market on a Wednesday. To sell the fastest, list on a Thursday. Avoid Sunday, which is the worst day to list to attract buyers.
Because homes listed on Sunday perform the worst, we used Sunday as a baseline to compare how much better homes do when listed on the other days of the week. The full methodology is below.
Wednesday’s Price Advantage
Houses listed on Wednesday had an advantage of $2,023 in sale price over houses listed on a Sunday, a sale-to-list premium of 0.53 percent. For a $500,000 house, that means you could make $2,650 more just by listing on a Wednesday instead of a Sunday.
Thursday’s Speed and Certainty Advantage
For speed, Thursday had a clear advantage, with Thursday-listed homes finding buyers five days faster than the baseline. Houses listed on Thursday also had the edge as far as being more likely to be sold within 90 and 180 days.
There isn’t one clear reason why Wednesday outperforms on price, while Thursday wins on speed and certainty. Possible explanations include that agents who list on Wednesdays tend to be better at pricing strategically to command the best price, or that in this fast-paced, low-inventory market, there’s simply a sweet spot for garnering the maximum sense of urgency and competition among eager homebuyers. Another theory is that the advantage of Wednesday and Thursday simply correlates to buyers’ house hunting schedules.
Make your house a fresh listing
“Serious buyers typically start making their weekend house-hunting plans late in the workweek,” said Redfin Denver agent Karla Kirkpatrick-Adams. “You want your house to be one of the fresh listings buyers see pop up as they decide which homes they should see over the weekend. In the competitive Denver market, many homes are listed on Wednesday and Thursday with the expectation that buyers will come through over the weekend, submit offers by a Monday afternoon deadline and the home will be under contract by Tuesday.”
Don’t Forget Regional Customs
Keep in mind, in some real estate markets like San Francisco, weekday broker’s opens are common. A broker’s open is an open house for agents. In some markets, agents may visit a series of broker’s opens on Tuesday, for example, to preview all the new homes that are on the market for their buyers. Rely on your Redfin agent to help you determine the best day to list for your individual scenario and local market norms.
Plan the Perfect Debut
Homes get five times more online views the day they hit the market than they do a week later, so making a positive online debut is critical. “You only get one shot at making a first impression, which is why it’s so important to have the right pricing,” says Karla.
“If you price too high, buyers may dismiss the property outright and never come back. It’s far more effective to price right at market value or slightly below to drive buyer attention early on. It’s common for well-priced houses to get multiple offers and be bid up, while homes that are overvalued tend to sit on the market for a while, despite the shortage of homes for sale right now.”
Using a random sample of 100,000 real estate listings that went on the market between January 1, 2017, and September 20, 2017, we segmented listings by the day of the week they were put on the market. Using the following criteria, we then found comparable homes that listed on a different day of the week:
Same ZIP code
Identical property type
Same price range (Within +/-10 percent on list price)
To ensure data quality, we excluded listings that did not have a valid comparable, sold for less than half or more than two times the list price or were on the market less than one day.
We then calculated for each day of the week the average difference between the sample homes and the comparable homes for the following variables:
Difference between the sale-to-list price
Difference between the sale-to-list ratio
Days on market
Percentage sold in 90 days
Percentage sold in 180 days
We calculated the significance levels for each measure using t-tests. Finally, we aggregated the differences for each day of the week. Using Sunday as the baseline, we calculated each day’s “advantage” over the baseline. We used Sunday as the baseline day because it has the fewest new listings and also the worst performance, in terms of sale-to-list price compared to all other days.
Methodology for professional photography analysis is available here.
