If you are considering selling your home over the Christmas period you may have encountered some estate agents Christmas leaflets or social media campaigns from national agents claiming Christmas is the best time to sell.

Having looked through some recently arrived estate agents Christmas leaflets at one of our client’s houses, as well as several social media campaigns from national agents, I’m beginning to feel a lot like the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale “The Emperors New Clothes”.

The Christmas holidays are the absolute lowest autumn/winter point for activity on Rightmove.

Yes, millions of people are on Rightmove over Christmas but its a fraction of their usual traffic.

Any “seasonal surge” is really just the public getting back to normal patterns and it happens after New Year not Christmas.

When you first put your property on the market, you get a honeymoon period of a fortnight or so when you generally get the best activity – the property is fresh and new, buyers have received alerts from various websites about it and viewings are at their peak.

If you put your property on the market on Boxing Day, that honeymoon period is going to be:-

a) during the lowest activity point within a 6 month period and
b) exactly when most people have better things to be doing than viewings!

Whilst I admire the creativity of thinking and the sheer chutzpah of some agents marketing departments to spin a narrow selection of statistics to their own advantage, the truth is you’re better off waiting until mid January to launch your property to the market. You’ll get tens of thousands more potential views in the crucial first few weeks of marketing AND you’ll be able to relax and enjoy your holidays.

Happy Christmas from all at Mather Marshall