The Best Time to List a Home All Year Is Coming Up. Are You Ready?

You'll need to get moving to capitalize on it.

You'll often hear that timing the stock market is a strategy that doesn't tend to work out well for investors. But timing the real estate market is a different story.

In some cases, the timing of your property listing could spell the difference between a higher sale price and a lower one. If you're eager to sell your home this year, you may want to get your listing ready soon.

Should you list your home in mid-April?

The week of April 10-16 is the best time to list a home this year, according to Realtor.com. The reason? Historically, home prices have been 1.4% higher that week than the average week during the year. If 2022 follows this trend, the national median listing price the week of April 10-16 could end up being $5,000 higher than on the typical week.

It's also worth noting that spring is generally considered a good time to list a home. For one thing, you've got the weather working in your favor -- whereas it's harder to show off a home's curb appeal during the winter.

Also, spring is when parents in particular tend to buckle down on the home search front. Why so? Parents with children in school tend to like to move during the summer so as to not disrupt the academic year. If a given family makes an offer on a home in mid-April, it may be looking at closing on a mortgage in mid-June and moving in July or August, which is generally easier than moving when school is in session.

Are you ready to list your home?

If you've been thinking of selling your home this year, you may want to aim to have your listing ready to go by the week of April 10-16. But there are some steps you may need to take to get there.

First, line up a real estate agent (unless you intend to sell your home without help). A good bet is to get recommendations from people in your town who recently put their homes up on the market and had a good experience with the professionals they worked with.

Next, do a run-through of your home and identify obvious areas in need of work. If you have stained bedroom carpeting and a crumbling fence, those are a couple of repairs you'll need to tackle before welcoming prospective buyers to look at your home.

Finally, start decluttering as soon as you can. The process of storing and removing excess belongings can take weeks. And if you're hoping to have a listing ready by April 10, you don't have all that much time -- so get moving as soon as you can.

There's no guarantee you'll snag a higher offer on your home by listing it the week of April 10-16. But if you were hoping to list your home this spring anyway, then you may as well try to capitalize on the opportunity to walk away with more money.