There’s no bigger game than The Big Game, is there? (Yes, we are allowed to say Super Bowl, as it turns out.) All of your friends and family gathered around the TV, yelling at football players, laughing at a fresh batch of Doritos commercials, chowing down on – statistically speaking – four buffalo wings per person? It’s the best!
And there’s another reason why our team here at Real Group marks the Super Bowl on our calendars every year: For real estate pros, it’s a big deal. And if you want to sell your home, we suggest you pay attention to the Super Bowl too; in our experience, the day after the big game is a magical time for home listings.
What makes it so special? You see, the Super Bowl, held in early February, marks the start of the spring season for real estate. While we’d argue that there are some strategic upsides to selling in the winter, there can be no denying that it’s the slowest period of the year, for buyers and sellers alike. For buyers, there are fewer listings on the market to choose from; for sellers, the unpleasant weather, the busy holiday rush, and the dearth of options means that fewer people will be looking to buy at all.
In our experience, the period between Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl is one of the least fertile for real estate; once the championship rings are handed out, however, buyers seem to emerge from hibernation and the spring season – one of the best times of the year for sellers – begins in earnest.
While April to June is often thought of as the hottest period for real estate transactions, serious buyers tend to get started earlier in the spring. Their eagerness to get the deal done is often a major boon for sellers who hit the market at the right time. There’s also less competition for sellers in February and March, before the market really heats up; banks are also less burdened with applications and inquiries at this time, too, meaning that your paperwork is likelier to be at the top of the pile.
In every calendar year but one, for the last twelve, we saw more contracts in either March or April than any other month for the full year on the north side of Chicago. The lone exception was Covid-19's impact on the 2020 spring market, effectively shifting it back two months in reaction to Chicago's early-March lockdown. This graph shows the last six years of data for the Chicago neighborhoods that we work in the most. It also shows that trend has softened a bit in the last couple of years, a fact real estate brokers will anecdotally share, but it is still very much accurate.
And capitalizing on early spring with the Super Bowl strategy isn’t just a theory! Like a Hail Mary pass on third and long, we’ve seen it succeed in action.
Story time! Our team once had a listing that went on the market at the beginning of the winter season, late November/early December. Though the property was listed at the right price based on market conditions, no one was biting. The issue wasn’t the property or the price, but simply a lack of buyers at that particular moment.
Rather than panic, we held out.
“Watch,” our own Jason Finn told the apprehensive client. “Right after the Super Bowl, you’ll get an offer.”
He was right. No more than 20 minutes after the game, Real Group received an offer on the listing. The next day, Monday, a second offer came in. And so, just like that, we went from no traffic to a multiple-bid situation in less than 24 hours.
So, when it comes to the Super Bowl, football stars don’t have to be the only big winners! Have any questions? Want to talk to the Real Group team about putting your Chicago home on the market? Drop us a line today to get started!
