Warm weather and a three-day weekend makes this the perfect time for house hunters.
Memorial Day Weekend is the busiest summer holiday for real-estate activity, a recent study from real-estate company HomeLight found.
The best time for sellers to list their properties is early May or April, research suggests, but there are advantages to putting a home on the market this weekend. While this is a popular weekend to travel, school is still in session so many people are still waiting to go on their summer vacations.
“A lot of home buyers are hitting open houses instead of the beach,” said Holden Lewis, housing expert at personal-finance website NerdWallet.
Last year, over 19,000 homes went on the market during Memorial Day weekend, according to HomeLight. If they’d waited even two weeks after the holiday, those seller would have had a lot more competition as an additional 28,213 sellers had listed their properties.
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The number of homes listed actually increased in the weeks following Memorial Day, HomeLight found.
On average, a home will be seen three times on the first day the property is listed, said Skylar Olsen, director of economic research at Zillow ZG, +0.63% Therefore, many sellers take advantage of the extra eyeballs their property can receive this weekend and the relatively smaller amount of competition.
What to expect if you’re finalizing a home purchase
Memorial Day also occurs roughly two months after the unofficial start of spring home buying season in March, which is roughly the amount of time it takes to finalize a real-estate transaction.
This weekend is also ideal for completing a home sale. Last year, 15,564 homes were sold or closed on during Memorial Day, higher than the Fourth of July (8.504) and Labor Day (11,520). Only 10,545 sales occurred on the Monday after Memorial Day Weekend.
This is all the more unusual because closings typically happen during business hours, said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com. “They can close before they go on summer vacation and take care of the move before they settle for school,” she said.
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