Best Day of the Week to List Your Home

Do you know the best day of the week to list your home?

Have you even thought to ask the question, “What is the best day of the week to list your home? There is one day of the week that is the best day of the week to list your home. In this post we will quickly cover this important question.

Before we answer the question though, let’s discuss what some of your goals likely are when you list your home.  If you are like most home sellers, you want to get the best price possible and sell your home as soon as you can.  Do you want the highest price and the quickest closing time?

best day of the week to list your home

 

In a hot real estate market, it is more important than ever to choose the best day of the week to list your home

You may think that listing your home as soon as possible is the quickest way to get your home sold. Not true.  The quickest way to sell your home is to create competition with your home sale.  We want to emphasize this for perfect clarity.

“The quickest way to sell your home is to create competition with your home sale.”

There are reasons that creating competition is the quickest way to sell your home.  Here are just a few:

  • Competition ensures that offers have fewer contingencies (contingencies cost you time)
  • Competing buyers will often shorten contingency time periods, or simply remove contingencies
  • Multiple interested parties will keep buyers focused on closing, because they fear losing your home to other home buyers

So what is the best way to create competition?

To answer this question, let’s think about this from your buyer’s perspective.  Assuming you hired the best agent possible, your listing agent will have either taken great pictures or had a professional do so for you.  Your listing will be priced right, your home will be described with perfect descriptions, and your home will be presented beautifully. You will have checked off everything on your home seller’s checklist. So what is the number one thing your home buyer wants to do at this point?

Your home buyer wants to see your home!

The best way for a home buyer to see your home is not whenever they want to see it.  The best way for a buyer to see your home is when YOU want them to see it.  Aside from the hassle of cleaning up every time a showing request is made, there is a really good reason for home buyers to see your home on your terms.

The reason you want home buyers to see your home on your terms is because you want to create competition for the reasons described above.  The best way to make sure you create competition is to know the best day of the week to list your home. You will achieve maximum success with creating competition.

The best day of the week to list your home is determined by the following

You will want to hold a limited open house on both Saturday and Sunday.  Most people have off work on the weekend and these are the two best days for open house showings. Hold your open house for about 3-4 hours each day, not all day.  Your goal is to have potential buyers walk through your house at the same time.  Limiting the open house hours funnels more buyers through at the same time. Nothing makes a buyer more nervous and fretful than finding something amazing in your home, only to hear other buyers falling in love with it too. These little discussions build competition in a buyer’s mind.

In addition to hearing these discussions about the best features in your home, buyers will also visually see other buyers and this visual queue creates competition too. Buyers will be thinking about this when they write their offer.  A home buyer thinks about the other buyer’s interest when writing an offer. The competition forces a buyer to offer a higher price and shorten their contingencies.

So how do you force buyers to come through your home at the same time?

You list your home days before your open house and have your listing agent declare to all agents and buyers, “No showings until Saturday and Sunday.”

In an active real estate market, EVERYONE is set up to receive alerts of new listings.  Whether buyer agents are working with buyers or buyers are searching online themselves, buyers get alerts when new listings come online. If your home was listed with a great agent, you will receive immediate interest and demand from buyers to come and see your home.

This is your opportunity to create powerful competition.  How do you feel when you find something you really want, only to find out you have to wait for it?  We hate that!  Everyone does.  When we find something we want, we want it now!

This is exactly how your home buyer will feel when they find your listing, only to find out they can’t see it right away. They may be a little frustrated, but that is good.  This is how you create fierce competition for your home sale.  You make buyers wait a bit.  Not too long, but not too short.

And this is how you determine the best day of the week to list your home…

You want your new listing to hit the market on a Wednesday.  As soon as your listing is officially posted on your local MLS a chain of events starts happening.  A good real estate agent will have alerts set up for buyers to get an email or text as soon as a matching property hits the MLS database.  Starting Wednesday night and into Thursday, the most likely buyer for your home will have been alerted by their agent. Buyers also set up alerts and scour MLS databases themselves.

At this point, all of these interested buyers will realize they cannot see your home until Saturday at the earliest.  For those who are busy on Saturday, they will have Sunday as a fall back option.  And this brings up another important point, an outstanding agent will also do the following.  Your agent will individually mention to all interested buyers and buyer’s agents, that you will not accept an offer until Sunday night.  This will allow you to entertain offers from all interested parties from both days of open houses. This will also create a sense of anxiety from buyers as they will realize double the amount of people have actually walked through and this creates the all important competition you are looking for.

So now you know one of the best secrets in real estate.  You now know the best day of the week to list your home. Wednesday. Hump Day. Miercoles. Oy!

 

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About the Author

David Haug is a Madison WI real estate agent. He is passionate about helping clients, customers, and friends succeed in residential real estate. He is also a raging Badger fan. #OnWisconsin Baby! Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidnhaug/

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