How Many Showings to Sell a Home? 2021 Update

The Portland real estate market has been quite volatile since the advent of COVID 19 in early 2020. No one predicted the seller’s market we are in now. After COVID 19 hit, home became more important than ever to the entire country, somehow at the same time dramatically decreasing inventory and dramatically increasing buyer demand. While we are in the traditionally hot spring sellers season, it feels hotter than anything I’ve experienced as a local sellers agent since 2003. Inventory should increase over the span of the year and this fall should be a much easier time to buy in the Portland real estate market.

How many buyers will come through my home before it sells?

Many homeowners are watching the news and getting their homes ready to sell this summer, and they want to know how many people, how many showings, are they going to have to endure before their property sells. This article will run the numbers and try to give you the best idea possible.

Also, keep this trick in mind to reduce your home selling hassle:

Typically we put our client’s homes on the market on a Thursday in advance of the weekend. We ask the sellers if they can leave for the weekend (if at all possible). Since showing hours here traditionally are between 8am and 8pm every day, the most ideal scenario is for the homeowner to be out of the house by Friday 8am through Sunday 8pm. We don’t need them to take off Thursday, as there typically aren’t many showing requests on Thursday, the same day it is propagating across thousands of online sites. We list on Thursday so that the client’s home is on every major Oregon MLS (three of them) and all the thousands of third-party real estate sites before the weekend hits (when the vast majority of home buyer traffic happens). Also we know that most homebuyers, if they make an offer right away, will wait the weekend, they will wait until Monday for the seller to decide. There is a game at play here. If the seller accepts an offer too quickly they might have lost out on tens of thousands of dollars. But if the seller waits too long to decide on an offer, buyers will start pulling their offers back. So ideally, we list on Thursday, sellers are gone Fri. to Sun. and then when they come back the seller, with our guidance, picks the best offer for them on Monday. I’ve run this scenario hundreds of times and it is a best-case scenario, hassle-free experience for my clients. Also, for those home sellers that are quite concerned about COVID 19 and home buyers in mass touring their property (even while the homeowner is gone) we can schedule a pro. cleaner (talking full cloud sanitation) to come out sometime Monday before the clients get back to ensure the home is safe and ready for their return.

How many showings to sell a home in Portland?

In order to determine this, we have to figure out how many Portland homes are for sale and how many buyers are out looking at them.

How many home buyers are touring?

Thankfully, RMLS locally shows us home many home buyers are out touring each week. Each number below basically represents a lockbox being opened for a home showing.

You can see, for example, that the long weekend has the greatest number of showings (Friday through Monday). You can also see that there were nearly 25,000 showings in Oregon the week of 4/4/2021. Also keep in mind that the vast majority of these recording showings are for the Portland metro area, as Salem has its own primary MLS system (WVMLS) and Bend has its own (MLSCO). So while the chart says it is for all of Oregon, RMLS’s primary metro coverage area (by far) is Portland.

How many homes are for sale?

Taking the above chart into account, we see there were 23,894 showings from 3/29 to 4/4. In that same timeframe, 1139 homes went pending. Additionally, within that same timeframe 2841 homes remained active for sale. So, those 23,894 home showings were distributed among a total of 3,980 homes. That puts each home at an average of six showings a week (6.0035).

How long before a home sells?

In the greater Portland real estate market, the average number of days it took to sell a home in the last month was 29, according to RMLS.

The average home in Portland is shown 25 times before it sells in 2021.

So if there are approximately 6 showings every 7 days and the average home is on the market 29 days, then the average number of showings to sell a home in Portland in 2021 was 25.

Are homes selling with fewer showings in the COVID 19 world?

No. We’ve been running the numbers for a few years now to find out how many showings on average it takes to sell a home. One might think that home buyers are viewing less homes per sale now, that home buyers are vetting homes more carefully online before seeing them in person, but that simply is not the case. The average number of showings it takes to sell a house has stayed the same over the last few years, wavering between 20 and 25, with 25 in 2021 being the high point. Why is this? I think there is one very simple and not encouraging answer: home buyers keep getting beat out in multiple offer situations so they end up viewing more homes because their offer keeps getting rejected. Whenever this insane seller’s market ends (and it will) hopefully we will finally see fewer showings per sale. I want the industry to show fewer showings per sale because of the advances in 3D homes, photos, floorplans, and home data that Realtors are now displaying to market homes more effectively. See our top-ranked home selling program for more.

We sell homes faster and for more.

Regardless of the market we pay extra to market our homes online so they are seen more often and sell faster. If every house is selling the first weekend with multiple offers, we get more offers. Getting the best exposure per home sale, and presenting the best picture of the home is important in any market. Every home buyer you reach or compel is another potential competing offer for your home. That is why we pay extra to list all our client’s homes in multiple MLS systems and we pay extra to the top online real estate portals for more exposure. Find out everything we do to sell our clients homes faster and for more here.