What is the best time to list a house?

For every realtor, time is money and money is time. So every move they make should be timed perfectly to get an optimum result. It’s vital that real estate agents know the best day and best time to list a house.

Over the last three or four decades, the world as we know it has changed drastically. And this applies to all industries including real estate. According to a report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 44% of homebuyers look for properties online first. If we go back a few decades, people were looking through newspapers to find properties! 

But even then, realtors needed to have an understanding of when and where homebuyers look for properties in order to find the best time to list a house. According to several sources such as NAR, CNBC and Redfin, the best day to list a house is Thursday and the best time to list a house is around 5 in the afternoon.

But in order to take advantage of this data, realtors need to have an understanding of who the potential homebuyer is – and why homebuyers are browsing during certain times. 

Why is Thursday the best day to list a house?

More than 90% of real estate agencies around the world have a website and the most prominent feature on all of these websites is property listings. According to NAR, the typical homebuyer uses a mobile device to look for properties online as their first step in the home buying process. 

Let’s dive a little deeper into the profile of our homebuyer before we get an understanding of when and why they browse for houses during particular times. Almost 50% of homebuyers are between the ages of 29 and 53. And out of this group of buyers, 98% looked for homes through a website as the first step of their buying process. 

With a basic understanding or profile of our homebuyer, let’s now look at some behavioural patterns to understand why Thursdays at 5 P.M. could be the best time to list a house.

Let’s first look at why Thursdays are the best day to list a house. The theory is most people tour listings over the weekend. And a lot of people start planning their weekend on a Thursday. A recent study by Redfin shows that a home gets five times more views on the first day it gets listed compared to the subsequent days. 

Why is 5 P.M. the best time to list a house?

Realtors can take advantage of this to get maximum views for their properties by listing them on a Thursday. But why is 5 P.M. the best time to list a house?

Well, the logic is simple. People don’t really start planning their weekends while they’re at work. So wait until they get home before you put your listing live! The newer your listing is when homebuyers start searching for homes, the more views it’s likely to get. 

The best time has actually changed drastically over the past few decades. Before the internet, realtors would advertise most new listings in Sunday newspapers. But that model was flipped on its head in the modern era, Sunday has become the worst day of the week to list a house. Why? Because on Sundays, people are wrapping up their weekend plans and preparing for the week ahead. So they won’t really be looking at more listings until later on in the following week. 

Wednesdays are a dark horse when it comes to what the best day to list a house is. Redfin shows that to sell for the most money, you should put your home on the market on a Wednesday. Since Thursday is the best day to list a house, the competition is much lower on Wednesdays. Redfin’s report also suggests that homes listed on Wednesdays had an advantage of $2,023 in sale price over homes listed on a Sunday.

How to make the most of the best time to list a house?

So we’ve established that the first step for the majority of modern homebuyers is browsing listings online. And we’ve also established the best time to list a house and why that’s the case. 

But you just don’t want to put your listing live at 5 P.M. on a Thursday and be done with it. You want to make sure you get the most out of the increased number of views you get by having posted at the optimal time. To do this, you need to make sure you’re providing high-quality customer service on your website –like providing valuable information on properties and answering any queries that your clients might have. 

I’m sure most of you have heard of real estate chatbots and live chat apps. These are commonly used website conversion tools that can provide high-quality customer service to your web visitors. A live chat app can instantly connect your web visitors with an agent who can then provide further support to the prospect. 

But let’s face facts: People start looking at homes once they’ve come home from work, which is around the same time real estate agents go home from work. (We shouldn’t forget that agents are human too!) 

So how can you provide high-quality customer support even when your agents aren’t working? The answer is a real estate chatbot. It works the same as a live chat app, but everything is automated. Instead of connecting your prospect to an agent for support, a real estate chatbot answers your client’s questions automatically. Unlike a live chat app, a real estate chatbot can be there for your web visitors 24/7.

With chatbot types like Serviceforn’s Dynamic property chatbots, you can have custom chatbots for every single property you have listed on your website without going through the hassle of creating a brand new real estate chatbot for every one. The Dynamic chatbot picks up information from your website and automatically updates itself as soon as you update the information on your site. 

Summary

Thursday is the most popular day for agents to debut new listings. According to Redfin, homes listed on that day sell the fastest. Homes listed on Thursdays have the edge of most likely being sold within 90-180 days.

Also, the best time to list a house is around 5 in the afternoon. Most people start looking for their new home after work. So make sure you wait until the evening to put your new listing live. Remember that listings are likely to get increased views on the day they’re posted compared to subsequent days. So make sure your listing is freshest at the time when most homebuyers are active. 

And, lastly, make sure you make the most out of your listing by seeing your web visitors are given maximum customer service. A great way to achieve this is by having a real estate chatbot for each listing on your website to provide 24/7 customer support.