The question I get most in September is some version of "should I wait until spring?" Here is how I actually think about it, using what happens in Greater Boston between now and Thanksgiving rather than what a national headline says.
What's different about fall
Fewer homes come on the market in the fall than in the spring. That is true every year. What people miss is that the buyers who are out in October are not browsing. They have a lease ending, a relocation date, a school situation, or they lost out on three houses in May and are still looking. Fewer listings and serious buyers is not a bad combination for a seller.
The window is real, though. Homes that launch between mid-September and the last week of October get their full first weekend and a normal negotiation. Once you get past Veterans Day, showings thin out and the calendar starts working against you. If you're going to list this fall, the goal is to be live by mid-October.
The two-week prep
People assume getting a house to market takes a month or two. If the house is in decent shape, it takes us about two weeks, and most of that is scheduling. Here is the order of operations.
Week one
- The walkthrough. We go room by room and make one list: what to fix, what to remove, what to leave. It is usually shorter than people fear. Paint the one dark room, fix the thing on the list from the last inspection, clear the counters.
- Pricing. We pull the sales from the last 90 days in your town and the ones currently under agreement, then price to the buyers who are out right now, not to the spring. Overpricing in October costs more than it does in April because there is less time to correct it.
- Staging plan. Our staging team decides what comes out of the house and what comes in from our inventory. If you're living there, we work around you.
Week two
- Staging install, usually one day.
- Photos, video, and drone the next morning, while the light is good and the house is perfect. Fall light in New England is the best of the year for exteriors; use it.
- Launch on Thursday. The listing goes live with everything: photos, video, floor plan, Zillow Showcase. Showings start Friday, open houses Saturday and Sunday, offers reviewed early the following week.
Three things that matter more in fall
Curb appeal is a two-week job, not a season. Mulch, trim, clear the leaves off the walk, put mums by the door. The photos are what buyers see first and the front of the house is the first photo.
Light. Showings after 5pm in October are in the dark. Every lamp on, every blind up, bulbs matched. It sounds small. It is not.
Heat. A cold house on a showing reads as a house with a problem. Set it to 68 and leave it.
When waiting is the right call
If the house needs real work, a kitchen or a bath, not paint, and you want the return on that work, spring may be the better play, and we'll tell you so. We flip houses ourselves and we know what a renovation timeline actually looks like. If the work can be done by February, we can plan a March launch around it now and use the winter to get it right.
Either way, the useful first step is the same: a walkthrough and a number. Ask for a valuation and we'll tell you what we'd do, and when.
Amanda Rosen leads Modern Boston Living, a Greater Boston real estate team ranked in the top 1.5% nationally, with an in-house staging company. More from the journal · Recent sales