Northbrook · Seller strategy
The best month to sell a house in Northbrook
We ran every Northbrook house that went under contract from January 2023 through September 2026 and closed — 1,204 of them — and sorted the results by the month each one was listed. April and June come out ahead by a modest margin, and autumn listings did least well. We ran the same study on 916 condominiums and townhouses.
Part of our Northbrook series: see what it is like to live there on the Northbrook community page, and this month's prices and supply on the Northbrook market statistics page.
The answer
April and June, by a modest margin
1,204 Northbrook single-family detached homes that went under contract between January 2023 and September 2026 and closed, grouped by the month they were listed. Listings per month: January 88 · February 102 · March 123 · April 152 · May 177 · June 123 · July 121 · August 81 · September 72 · October 63 · November 67 · December 35. Source: MRED.
Chart one
What you get for your house, by the month you list it
Median sale price as a percentage of asking price, grouped by list month. The scale starts at 94% so the differences are visible.
Most months closed at a median of 100.0% or a little above, with June and April highest. September, October and November were slightly below, and November lowest, at 98.8%. On a $798,500 list price, the median in this study, the observed June and November median sale-to-list ratios differ by roughly $16,000. That does not mean changing the listing month would make the same house sell for $16,000 more: the months contain different homes.
Chart two
How fast it goes, by the month you list it
Median days from listing to accepted offer.
These are medians, and the median hides a long tail: across the whole period 59% of Northbrook houses went under contract within eight days, but about one in five took more than three weeks and about one in thirteen took more than two months. February through July listings had a median of five or six days; January, November and December listings took nine. A median of six days does not mean your house sells in a week — it means half of them do.
Chart three
When buyers actually sign
How many houses were available each month, how many went under contract, and how many showings each listing drew.
Homes available during the monthHomes going under contractShowings per listing (right scale)
Monthly figures
| Month | Homes available | Under contract | Showings per listing |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 66.7 | 16.7 | 10.3 |
| February | 80.0 | 30.0 | 13.4 |
| March | 81.7 | 31.7 | 13.0 |
| April | 93.0 | 34.7 | 12.3 |
| May | 106.3 | 39.7 | 10.4 |
| June | 104.3 | 36.7 | 8.3 |
| July | 100.3 | 28.7 | 7.0 |
| August | 88.7 | 23.7 | 7.1 |
| September | 88.3 | 23.0 | 6.9 |
| October | 84.3 | 24.7 | 7.5 |
| November | 75.3 | 18.0 | 8.0 |
| December | 55.3 | 14.7 | 6.3 |
In a typical year, about 67 detached Northbrook houses were available in January, rising to about 104 to 106 in May and June and easing to about 88 in August and September before falling to about 55 in December. Contracts peaked at about 40 in May, roughly 37% of the houses available, with April and June at about 34 to 37. They fell to about 23 to 25 a month from August through October and about 15 in December. Showings per listing peaked earlier, at about 13 per listing in February and March, when fewer houses were on the market, and ran about 7 from July through September.
In Northbrook, the months when buyers sign the most contracts, April through June, are also the listing months with the strongest observed results, and autumn listings met thinner buyer activity.
Monthly averages for 2023, 2024 and 2025, detached houses. Homes available during the month: houses for sale at the end of the previous month plus new listings that month (MRED via InfoSparks), so each house counts once whether it went under contract, stayed on the market or was withdrawn. Under contract: MRED closed and pending sales by contract month. Showings per listing: MRED via InfoSparks; showing data comes from ShowingTime and counts only showings scheduled through ShowingTime.
What it means
Where April and June differed
Most spring contracts were homes listed that same month: 71% of the homes that went under contract in April were April listings, and 24% were March listings still on the market; in June the figures were 58% and 31% (May listings). So the spring results belong mainly to homes that came out in spring.
April and June stood out at both ends of the range. About 58% of April and June listings sold above asking, against about 47% in every other month, and about a third sold below asking, against about four in ten. Autumn listings were the clear exception: about half sold below asking.
The pattern was not uniform. Split into lower, middle and upper thirds by list price, April led among the highest-priced houses ($935,000 and above), February and April tied among middle-priced houses ($665,000 to $930,000), and among the lowest-priced third August and June listings did best. Year to year, April listings had the highest median in 2024, June was second in 2025 (behind November, from 18 listings), and in 2026 so far July, May and June led; in 2023 several spring and summer months tied at 100.0%.
Why that is, this data cannot tell us. Plausible reasons — buyers aiming to move over the summer, sellers bringing well-prepared houses out in spring — are guesses, and we would rather say so than dress one up as a finding.
In this data, about half of Northbrook houses listed in September, October and November sold for less than asking. Among April listings it was fewer than one in three.
152 April and 202 autumn listings across nearly four years. A modest edge that has not held every year or at every price level; not a rule.
Important caveats
What this does not mean
- It does not mean wait. Every month closed between 98.8% and 100.8% of asking in this data, and the spring lead is small. If you need to move in September, move in September. A spring difference in this data is not a reason to hold a house off the market for months.
- Spring works best when the house is ready. April and June performed best in this Northbrook data, but timing alone does not overcome poor preparation or pricing. If spring is the target, preparation should start early enough for the house to be genuinely ready to launch.
- Autumn listings were softer. September, October and November listings sold below asking about half the time, against about a third for April and June listings. That is an observed pattern in this data, not a rule about any single house.
Condominiums and townhouses
Spring is strongest; winter and autumn are softer
We ran the same analysis on 916 Northbrook condominiums and townhouses. Every month had at least 20 listings, but monthly medians barely move, so the results are shown by season for readability.
Attached homes in Northbrook sold below asking more often than detached houses in every season, nearly half the time overall. Spring listings did best, with the fewest sales below asking and the quickest contracts; winter and autumn listings closed a little below asking at the median and took about two weeks to go under contract.
For buyers
Read the same chart backwards
From the buyer's side, autumn showed the clearest signal in this dataset: about half of the houses listed from September through November sold below their asking price, and they took a little longer to go under contract, which can leave more room to negotiate. Condominiums and townhouses listed in autumn sold below asking about six times in ten.
The trade-off is selection: in a typical November about 75 detached houses were available in Northbrook, against about 105 in May and June.
Thinking about a spring listing?
Preparing for an April listing starts in January. There is no cost to starting the conversation early.
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