January Is the New Hot Month to Start Searching for Home

Thinking of selling in winter and are a little nervous? There’s good news for you: The spring market creep has crept all the way to January—similar to those Christmas songs that start even before Thanksgiving. In the last four years, January was the hottest month to sell in one-fifth of the nation’s largest housing markets. With demand high and supply barrel low, the hunt is on for the perfect home, and buyers have no qualms about rushing from their holiday dinners onto Realtor.com to find the best listings and beat out the competition. 

The home-buying season used to kick off sometime in spring, as the snow began to melt and people tried to plan for a summer move-in. But in recent years, the limited supply of homes for sale has spurred buyers to start their hunt earlier and earlier—and now, they're jumping into the market en masse in January, according to a recent realtor.com analysis. Happy New Year, now start house hunting!

In about 20% of the nation's largest housing markets, January was the month in which buyers logged the most listing views, the realtor.com team found. The analysis looked at the number of monthly views on realtor.com from 2015 to 2019—and discovered the extent of spring market creep, as buyers try to get ahead of the competition for the few homes on the market.

The number of properties for sale dropped 9.5% in November compared with a year earlier, according to the analysis—and the shortage was already bad a year ago. But even worse for cash-strapped and first-time buyers was that the number of homes priced below $200,000 fell 16.5% over the same period.

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