A new busy season
Forget spring. According to 2019’s stats, the busiest home shopping season actually starts in January in many for the country’s biggest markets.
January home shopping
According to a new analysis from Realtor.com, January had the second-most listing views across the year.
The month clocked in just 1% below February and 6% under March. Last year, the gap between March and January was a whopping 21%..
Here’s how Nicolas Bedo, Realtor.com’s economic data analyst, explains it: “The shift to January’s newfound popularity does not mean that the other prime spring months have become less competitive. Realtor.com data shows that views per listing used to ramp up into spring, but now competition starts high in January and stays high … What used to be a lopsided bias for April is now a feverish search starting in January, staying consistently competitive across the first four months of the year as hopeful homebuyers look for just the right home.”
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Competition by market
The analysis shows that January was particularly popular with homebuyers in certain markets.
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Seattle saw the biggest jump in January home shopping with a 32% jump over the next-highest month. McAllen, Texas came in at No. 2 with a 14.9% uptick.
“Although it lagged February, January saw a surge, ranking as the top month in 20 of the 100 largest metro areas, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta, San Jose, California, and Denver,” Bedo said. “In 2018, that was true for just three of the top 100 metros.”
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