The Selling Seasons of San Francisco
Focus on Our Changing Calendar
Written, July 2023
San Francisco’s housing market is seasonal with the appropriate twin peaks of activity in the mid to late spring (April/May) and in the fall (September/October) with the quietest times being in August and over the winter holidays. After fitful start to housing market activity throughout January, we’re usually humming away by February. There is usually a dip in sales activity in April right around tax time and then the market stays consistently strong until a possible dip near Memorial Day, a dip around the 4th of July and, by the end of the month, we’ve entered into August’s annual disco nap.
The fall market is more compact and assured as the big push of listings come the weekends after Labor Day. There’s usually a dip right around the October tax filing deadline (surprised anyone?) with the remainder of any new listings coming on the market by the beginning of November that coasts all the way down to the holidays. Repeat.
This year, 2023, has been different.
Setting prices and inventory levels aside for the moment, our selling calendar started off later this year because of all those atmospheric rivers we had that rained out open houses and pushed preparation and updating back into February. This year’s April tax pause didn’t happen either because the filing deadline got pushed back to October. Fed meetings also played their part to alter the calendar with rates ramping up before each meeting (save the last one where there was a pause in rate rises). But the biggest contributor to the slowing in activity is likely to be the new 3-day weekend that comes with Juneteenth. People love a 3-day weekend and sales activity will slow as people go out of town rather than to open houses. This year’s 4th of July also falls on a Tuesday which will likely eat up people’s attention both the weekend before and after.
Other dates to watch out for if You Want to Succeed in San Francisco real estate in 2023:
The Fed’s rate-setting Open Market Committee meets again in late July and will announce any rate changes on July 27, which means that mortgage rates will start to increase (if that’s what it looks like they’re going to do) around the middle of the month. Lucky for us, the next Fed meeting after that will be in September with rate announcements on the 20th.
For those of you looking in the Sunset or Parkside, count the weekend of August 11 out as that’s when Outside Lands is this year. Between festival goers, concerts and traffic open houses, if any, are likely to take place during the week before or after the chaos.
The nice thing about the fall selling season is that Labor Day is much earlier this year on September 4th, so expect a bevy of new (and recycled) listings to come out by the weekend of the 8th.