The spring home selling season officially began on Super Bowl Sunday, but buyers aren’t waiting for the weather to warm up to start house-hunting.
It’s typical for the housing season to get an early start in areas where the weather stays warm all year. More than anywhere else, house hunters in Florida tend to start their searches in January and February. Winter searches also are common across the Sunbelt, especially in parts of Arizona, Texas and South Carolina, according to an analysis by Trulia’s Chief Economist Jed Kolko of properties viewed on the firm’s website from mid-2011 to mid-2014.
Braving the cold
But more and more early-bird shoppers in chillier climates are bucking the warm-weather rule of thumb for homebuying. In Washington, DC, for example, winter sales nearly matched springtime purchases in terms of how long homes for sale remained on the market, according to an analysis of selling patterns between 2010 and 2014 by real estate firm Redfin. And winter sales edged out spring’s when it came to price: 51% of winter listings in the Washington metro area during that four-year period sold above list price, compared with 50% of spring listings.
The District isn’t the only place where house hunters are braving the wintry weather. According to the Redfin analysis of 7 million listings, 39% of homes put up for sale between March 21 and June 20 over the past five years snagged contracts within a month and sold for more than list price. But 36% of homes listed in the winter found buyers within 30 days, and 12% sold for higher than list.
In the fall, 34% of homes were under contract within 30 days, and 11% sold for more than list.
That confirms that spring is still the hottest selling season—“but just barely,” the report notes.
Looking for deals
In fact, Redfin agents are reporting that the season of the year is increasingly less important to sellers deciding when to list, and to buyers deciding when to start their searches.
Proof: Despite snowy weather in much of the country, Redfin reports record homebuyer demand so far in 2015, based on home tours, contracts, and attendance at homebuying classes.
Kolko contends that even though weather is the most important reason for homebuyers to start shopping early or late in the selling season, it’s not the only one. He points to the demand by investors for homes in foreclosures, which can pop up on the market during any season. And Kolko says the neighborhoods where the selling season starts in the dead of winter tend to be the most affordable, while the bulk of sales in pricier communities is typically compressed from March through June.
Waiting for spring
Still, most would-be homebuyers are less likely to brave ice, snow and subfreezing temperatures in search of the perfect house than they are to put it off until spring. But bad weather doesn’t sacrifice sales; it just postpones them, according to a Bloomberg analysis of 10 years of weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and home sales numbers from the National Association of Realtors.
“Homebuyers who decide not to view property during a bout of cold weather don't drop out of the market,” Bloomberg writer Jonathan J. Miller concluded. “They just delay their search until the weather becomes more agreeable, usually in a few weeks or months at most.”
Revealing what Miller called “the practical nature of housing sales,” warm temperatures coincided with more robust housing sales, while cold weather tempered homebuying activity. “The seasonal trends are remarkably in sync: Housing sales rise in warm weather and fall in cold weather no matter the availability of credit, what direction interest rates are moving, or the extent of wage and job growth,” he wrote.
Looking ahead
Homebuilders holding back until spring might consider that their competitors have less inventory on the market during a cold, wet winter, so offering homes for sale before the weather warms up might attract shoppers who don’t have a lot of choices. Plus, cold-weather house hunters tend to be more serious about buying, Michael Corbett, a Trulia real estate expert, told Forbes.