What Day of the Week do Most Buyers Look at Homes?

Updated 10/2024.

The real estate market is, truly, a market. Prices go up and down by the week. Playing the market right as a home seller can earn a tens of thousands more in a home sale (even hundreds of thousands). Playing the market right as a home buyer can in the reverse, save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here is our greater Portland real estate market there is a best time of the year to sell a home and a best time of the year to buy a home that has stayed pretty consistent over the last few decades, whether or not the overall market is rising or falling.

Not only is there a best and better time to sell or buy a home in, there is an idea time as a seller to list a home on the real estate market and there is a prime day of the week home buyers are out there touring to find a new place.

Most Sellers List their Homes for Sale on Thursdays

Sellers list on Thursdays because most of the buyer traffic for the week happens over the long weekend – Thursday through Monday. Also most sellers list on Thursday because home buyers typically will only wait so long to hear back on their offer before they pull it to look for something else (home buyers will typically not put out more than one offer at a time as they don’t want to get double committed). Traditionally in the Portland real estate market, most home buyers will tour the home over the long weekend and expect to hear back on their offer by the end of the long weekend – Monday.

Zillow conducted a study in 2021 which concluded that homes initially listed on a Thursday sold faster and were more likely to sell above their list price, than if the home had been listed any other day of the week. They found that nationally 21% of homes were listed on a Thursday as as many as 1/3rd of homes were listed on a Thursday in some major metros.

Most Buyers View a Home for Sale on Sundays

Most home buyers tour properties over the long weekend, Thursday through Monday, with Sunday being the most popular. Sunday is a great day to tour a home because typically it is toward the end of the offer collecting period for the seller and the buyer or buyer’s agent will have an idea of how that new home on the market is performing. It gives the buyer a chance (typically) to see the home before the seller makes a decision and write up an offer.

The Slowest Days of the Week are Tuesdays and Wednesdays

No traffic mid-week? Don’t worry. As we’ve shown above the majority of home buyer traffic occurs Thursday through Monday of each week.

Ranking the Days of the Week for Home Buyer Traffic

The Worst Day to Start a New Listing is Sunday

After reading the above, one may think Sunday is an okay day to start a new listing because buyer traffic is so high on Sundays. However, this does not take into account two very important delays. The first delay is the time a Realtor (or another person) lists a home in the MLS and the time it takes to syndicate properly across thousands of real estate websites (like Redfin and Zillow). This isn’t a huge amount of time, but it can take precious hours. The second factor is even more important and represents the buyer and buyer’s agent delay. It might take them a while to find the home in the first place, and then a while longer to schedule a time to go see the property. This is yet another reason why Thursday tends to always be the best day of the week to list. Listing on Thursdays gives the web plenty of time to update and the buyers and buyers agents plenty of time to find the home and arrange for a showing.

Zillow research backs this up. Their 2021 report (linked to above) also found that homes listed on Sunday took 8 days longer to sell than homes listed on Thursdays and were less likely to sell for above asking prices.

The Best Day to List a New Home is Wednesday or Thursday

We already mentioned above how Zillow reported that homes listed on Thursday sold faster and were in more bidding wars than homes listed on any other day. But Redfin conducted a report that said homes that were listed on Wednesday sold for an average of $2,023 in their study than homes listed on any other day, while also noting that homes listed on Thursdays sold the fastest and were also the most likely homes to be sold (and not fail to sell at all). What is most important to mention here is there is no study that recommends any day other than Wednesday or Thursday to start a new home listing. As you can tell from our RMLS home buyer traffic reports, this also makes perfect sense locally.

How Many Showings Does it Take to Sell a Home?

We write an annual report on this too. Find out the latest average number of days it takes to sell a home in the Portland metro area.

Finding Up-to-Date Numbers on Today’s Home Buyer Traffic

We write monthly Portland metro real estate market reports. In those reports one of the key indicators we’re looking at is current home buyer traffic numbers. Simply check out our latest monthly report to find out the current level of home buyer traffic in the real estate market. Use the link in this paragraph, you won’t have to scroll down far to find the latest monthly report.

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