Towns with a predominance of second homeowners have seasonal quirks to their real estate markets. Sales activity is driven not only by the time of year when most visitors descend, but also by the season when potential buyers hope to get the most use out of their homes. Pinpointing when demand ebbs and flows is the first step in deciding when to put a vacation home on the market.
On Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where second-home buyers flock for summers on the lakes or winters on snowmobiles, the busiest sales months are from March to October. Putting a house with lake frontage on the market in the dead of winter will not attract many buyers, said Jeff Dohl, the owner of Yooper Land Realty in Iron River, Mich. Buyers want to see the house when the lake shore is not piled high with snow.
If a property must be listed in the colder months, Mr. Dohl said, selling it requires elbow grease: At one listing last February, he shoveled and drilled through several feet of ice and snow to the ground level for the benefit of two potential customers from Chicago. “They wanted to see the beach,” he said.
And while buyers are looking for lake homes in the warmer months, by late fall, Mr. Dohl, said, there are more buyers on the lookout for hunting cabins. “It shifts gears,” he said. “You move more into camps and hunting properties out in the wilderness.”
Sales activity on the East End of Long Island is driven by year-end bonuses, usually distributed in December and January. Many buyers look to close on homes by April in order to be moved in by summer, though sales are still strong throughout the summer season, too.
In Sedona, Ariz., the opposite is true; there is little foot traffic from second-home shoppers in the hottest months. “We don’t get a lot of second-home buyers over the summer,” said Lon Walters, a Sedona real estate agent. “Spring is absolutely the biggest time. It’s double of anything over fall.”
And in Truckee, Calif., 12 miles north of Lake Tahoe, sales traditionally peak after the Fourth of July, when cold summer fog settles over the San Francisco Bay area, the home base of most vacation-home buyers. The selling season goes through the winter ski season.
Rich Harter, the owner of Pacific Crest Properties, says some owners take their properties off the market if they don’t sell by the start of ski season; that way they can rent out the house to skiers. “A lot of sellers are under the misconception that winter is a slow sales time,” he said, “but that is erroneous. We sell a lot of homes in the winter, especially if there is good skiing.”
Realtors say that second-home sellers have an advantage because their homes generally have less in the way of belongings and furniture. “Vacation homeowners typically don’t have as much clutter,” said June Slusser, the owner of Coldwell Banker High Country Realty in Blue Ridge Ga. “That is so important in showing.” She noted that many of the cabins she sells are outfitted with high-end log furniture, and those that are not, are increasingly staged to create a cozy mountain atmosphere.
Those looking for a summer home want to see houses set up to look like warm-weather retreats even in the cooling days of fall, brokers say. Second homeowners in the Hamptons might not open their swimming pools until Memorial Day, and might close them up for the winter by mid-September, but Cathy Tweedy, a vice president at the Corcoran Group in Bridgehampton, recommends that sellers stretch the season. “The earlier they can open the pool and start landscaping the better,” she said. “And the longer they can keep it going, the more attractive the property.”