Schools Out For Summer and So Are Buyers?

You often hear that summer is the busiest time for real estate.  It makes sense.  Teachers are out of school and able to devote time to buying/selling their home.  There is more daylight. Also, more people are willing to get out and look at houses when the weather is nice. This all makes logical sense, but will the statistics support the theory?  Let's take a look...

Contracts Vs Sold

The first thing we need to consider is the difference between a house going under contract and a house actually selling.  In general, it takes about 45-60 days for a house to close after it goes under contract.  So, some of the sales we will be seeing in the early Summer months are actually houses that went under contract in the Spring.  Furthermore, some of the contracts we see in the late Summer will not actually close until the Fall.

With this in mind, I think it is important to look at both aspects to understand how active the summer months are.  To start, let's look at houses that go under contract.

New Contracts

As we can see from this graph of Harrisonburg and Rockingham contracts over the past 4 years, the number of contracts peak in the spring and then slowly decrease through the summer (school year).  In some years the pace of contract has stayed somewhat steady or there is a spike closer to fall.  Let's take a look at how this effects actual sales.

Number of Sales

As we can see from this graph, the peak of sales is truly in the Summer.  This logical as the peak of contracts should precede the peak of sales.  

So, this does not mean it is too late to sell your house.  The current market has still been buzzing with people looking for housing.  As we can see, the number of sales stay fairly strong into the fall months.  

If you have any real estate related questions, call me at 540-246-9067.