What day of the week should I list my home?

With home sales in the gutter, anyone thinking of selling a home today can use all the help they can get, starting with what day of the week to debut.

Serious sellers know that it is important to make repairs, stage well, and showcase their home online with professional photos, but there isn’t a consensus about which day of the week you should list your home for the best results. This is evidenced by the fact that new listings on the market are spread pretty evenly between Monday and Friday, with each day getting between seventeen and nineteen percent of the total share of listings (Saturday and Sunday are much lower at five to seven percent).

Since you only get one chance to make a first impression with your listing, we decided to dig into our data to find out whether putting your home on the market on a certain day of the week is correlated with sales success. We pulled the data on over a million listings spread throughout the nation over the last twenty-one months, and here’s what we found:

• Homes listed on Sunday get marginally more online views.
• Homes listed on Friday are toured 19% more.
• Homes listed on Friday or Thursday sell for slightly closer to original list price.
• Homes listed on Friday are 12% more likely to sell in 90 days.

The difference in views and sale-to-list ratios were not very dramatic across the week, but in the tours and sales categories, Friday was the clear winner. For the most tours and the best chance of selling your home, list it on a Friday. If you are the kind of seller that is more interested in online views than actually selling your home for a good price, listing on Sunday is a great plan. But since we’re pretty sure that kind of seller doesn’t exist, we’re confident in recommending Friday as the seller’s best day to list their home.

So why would Friday be such a great day to put your home on the market? Our theory is that since home buyers tend to tour homes on the weekends (Saturday and Sunday have 2.5x as many tours per day than Monday to Friday), homes listed on Fridays are the freshest in buyers’ minds when they’re making their weekend plans. It also seems likely that many home buyers sort their weekend “must see” lists by date listed, going to see the freshest homes first so they have the best chance of getting in on a potential good deal before other buyers. These factors put homes listed on Friday in front of more touring buyers on the weekend (which our touring data bears out). More tours leads to more offers, and more offers leads to a better price and a better chance of selling.

That’s our theory, now let’s hear yours! Also, for your viewing enjoyment, we have compiled our findings into the convenient chart form below. Note that while the sales data is based on all listings, the data on views is based only on views at Redfin.com, and the touring data is based only on homes that our agents took our customers out to see.