Is the Real Estate Market Seasonal?

Throughout our time in Real Estate Sales, we have often been asked:

1. Is it a good time of year to sell my home? 

2. Is the Real Estate Market Seasonal?  

As with many questions related to the Real Estate Industry, the best answer is: “It depends.”   However, the market is generally much less seasonal than public perception would make it out to be.  

In general, there are four reasons for selling a home.  These four reasons spell out the acronym TRUE: 

1. Transfer

   Transfer is relatively self-explanatory.  If someone is transferred within their company to a different location, or decides to take a new job offer through a different company at a different location, they need to sell in order to move to another location. 

2. Retire

   Retirement is also an easy category to explain.  People may decide to sell when retiring for a couple of reasons:

   (1) They would like to downsize.  Or,

   (2) They are moving after retirement (most likely to a warmer place than Michigan!).  Included in this category are the ramblers who decide to travel in their retirement, and therefore may want to sell a house to buy a camper, RV, bus, G-Wagon, etc.  

3. Upgrade

   Upgrade is a category that encompasses many different reasons for selling Real Estate.  The most obvious reason under this category would be to “upgrade” to a larger house or property.  However, upgrade applies to almost any means of upgrading a seller’s situation.  For example, if a seller’s current house is too large and they would like to downsize to a smaller house, that seller is upgrading his or her situation. 

   Additionally, “upgrading a situation” may apply to the inability to make payments on a property (including foreclosure, short sale, and bankruptcy). 

   Upgrade may also be applied to Investors, as they may decide to upgrade their situation by selling a property to cash out on equity. 

   Another Upgrade example is divorce.  While divorce has often been construed as a separate category per se, it qualifies for our purposes as upgrading a situation.  

   One last common example of upgrading is buying an additional property, whether a cottage, summer home, hunting property, or property for any other ancillary use.  

4. Estate

   This category is also very common and self-explanatory, in that assets of decedents often need to be sold or distributed to successfully close or fulfill estates and trusts.  

   My father and I handle many transactions related to trusts and estates.  In fact, it is one of our specialties.  Handling estates requires additional knowledge in and understanding of disclosures, trust and estate transfer requirements, property allocation among or between beneficiaries, and other unique facets of this category of Real Estate Sales.  We complete complex work with Title Agencies and Attorneys to ensure that trust and estate sales are handled properly, and do not impede the estate (or trust) closing process. 

An additional category could be buying or selling income property.  I slightly stretched the Upgrade section above to include cashing out on equity, though for practical purposes, Commercial Real Estate (buying properties for investment or income) deserves a separate category.  The TRUE acronym is focused on residential sales, which is mostly what the question of market seasonality is focused on.    

When you think about it, all of these reasons for selling, outlined in TRUE above, point to a Real Estate Market that is not seasonal.  

People transfer at all times of the year.  They retire and expire at all times of the year.  And, for the most part, they upgrade at all times of the year.  While people may feel more motivated to look for a summer home in the summer, this does not have a significant impact on market seasonality.  

Reasons the market still may be seasonal: 

1. Cottage

   As briefly discussed above, summer homes and cottages may tend to be slightly more seasonal than year-round housing, though this is not necessarily the case.  

2. Cold!

   One of the other factors that may lead to slight seasonality is the fact that Michigan is cold in the winter!  From the Realtor® standpoint, we do not love walking vacant land when it is freezing outside (though we still do it once in a blue moon!).  Buyers feel the same in many ways - if it is overly cold, or the roads are icy, buyers may not be quite as motivated to see homes.  However, this is a very insignificant issue when determining the proper time to list a home.  

3. Stock Market 

   While I did entitle this reason “Stock Market,” I am not talking about interest rates or the performance of the actual stock market.  Instead, I am referring to overall supply and demand, and the financial concept of behavioral investing.  While most investing and trading focuses on how rational people would react to global events or movements in stock prices, behavioral investors focus mainly on how real people, who do not necessarily react in rational ways, would react.  

This relates to Market Seasonality in that if buyers believe housing supply (the market) to be seasonal, they may react as if it really is, and their demand may be seasonal as well.     

However, across the board the Real Estate Market is relatively stable, and does not tend to have a significant seasonality.  

I hope that you found this article interesting.  If you have any questions or would be interested in buying, selling, or investing in West Michigan Real Estate, please call us at (616) 888-1394.  

Christian Rasmussen

4 March 2025