You were all pretty excited about my post yesterday suggesting that home sales weren’t really all that seasonal. Admit it. You were enthralled.
Unfortunately, I only had data for new home sales, not the much larger number of existing homes sold each month. Well, today I have it. Here it is:
It appears that there’s a bit more seasonality in sales of existing homes than in sales of new homes. I’d guess that this is a supply-side thing: builders want to sell new homes whenever they’re finished, while homeowners wait until spring to sell their homes. Is this because most of us don’t want to sell in winter? Or because realtors tell us that markets are terrible in winter, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy? I don’t know. But perhaps realtors don’t like trudging around in the snow any more than the rest of us.
In any case, if you add up both new and existing homes, here’s what you get:
- Spring: 26.5 percent of all home sales
- Summer: 29.6 percent
- Autumn: 24.1 percent
- Winter: 19.8 percent
In other words, winter sucks, but spring, summer and autumn are all about the same.
