Kenilworth · Seller strategy
The best time of year to sell a house in Kenilworth
We ran every Kenilworth house that went under contract from January 2023 through September 2026 and closed — 173 of them — and sorted the results by when each one was listed. Kenilworth is too small to name a single best month, so we grouped the months into seasons. Houses listed from December through May did better than those listed from June through November, and autumn listings did least well.
Part of our Kenilworth series: see what it is like to live there on the Kenilworth community page, and this month's prices and supply on the Kenilworth market statistics page.
The answer
December through May, not autumn
173 Kenilworth single-family detached homes that went under contract between January 2023 and September 2026 and closed, grouped by the season they were listed. Listings per season: winter (December–February) 45 · spring (March–May) 58 · summer (June–August) 46 · autumn (September–November) 24. Source: MRED.
Chart one
What you get for your house, by the season you list it
Median sale price as a percentage of asking price, grouped by listing season. The scale starts at 90% so the differences are visible.
Winter and spring listings both closed at a median of exactly 100.0% of asking, summer listings at 99.2% and autumn listings at 94.7%. On a $1.95 million list price, the median in this study, the observed winter-and-spring and autumn median sale-to-list ratios differ by roughly $100,000. That does not mean listing the same house in spring would make it sell for $100,000 more: the seasons contain different homes.
Month by month
| List month | Listings | Median sale-to-list | Sold below asking | Median days to contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JanuaryJan * | 17 | 100.0% | 47% | 13 |
| FebruaryFeb | 25 | 100.1% | 36% | 6 |
| MarchMar * | 18 | 97.9% | 61% | 16.5 |
| AprilApr | 20 | 100.9% | 20% | 6 |
| MayMay | 20 | 100.0% | 40% | 5 |
| JuneJun * | 18 | 100.0% | 44% | 12 |
| JulyJul | 20 | 97.6% | 60% | 9 |
| AugustAug † | 8 | 99.3% | 50% | 13.5 |
| SeptemberSep † | 4 | 98.7% | 75% | 7.5 |
| OctoberOct † | 8 | 94.3% | 75% | 17 |
| NovemberNov * | 12 | 93.3% | 75% | 61 |
| DecemberDec † | 3 | 98.9% | 67% | 28 |
* 10–19 listings: directional only. † Fewer than 10 listings: too few to judge, shown for completeness and never ranked. Only February, April, May and July had 20 or more listings.
Chart two
How fast it goes, by the season you list it
Median days from listing to accepted offer.
These are medians, and the median hides a long tail: across the whole period about half of Kenilworth houses (49%) went under contract within eight days, but about three in ten took more than three weeks and about one in eight took more than two months. Among autumn listings, 29% took more than two months. A median of a week 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 | 13.3 | 3.3 | 5.0 |
| February | 19.0 | 6.0 | 6.7 |
| March | 18.7 | 5.0 | 7.0 |
| April | 18.0 | 6.3 | 4.9 |
| May | 17.7 | 4.3 | 4.7 |
| June | 18.0 | 5.0 | 3.2 |
| July | 17.0 | 4.0 | 4.3 |
| August | 16.3 | 3.7 | 3.1 |
| September | 13.3 | 2.3 | 2.7 |
| October | 12.7 | 2.0 | 3.8 |
| November | 12.7 | 3.0 | 2.9 |
| December | 7.7 | 0.7 | 4.3 |
Kenilworth is a small market, so every bar here is small: about 13 to 19 detached houses were available in a typical month (about 8 in December) and about 2 to 6 went under contract. Contracts ran highest from February through June, about 4 to 6 a month, roughly a quarter to a third of the houses available, with April the busiest at about 6. Showings per listing were highest in February and March, about 7. From September through December, contracts fell to about 2 or 3 a month, and under 1 in December, while 13 or so houses were still available each month from September through November, and showings per listing ran about 3 to 4.
In Kenilworth, the months when buyers sign the most contracts and the seasons whose listings did best line up: activity is concentrated from late winter through spring, and both thin out in the autumn.
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 the seasons differed
The difference was mostly at the bottom of the range. Winter, spring and summer listings all closed near asking at the median, but autumn listings sold below asking three times in four, against about two in five for December–May listings. At the top, the 75th percentile sale-to-list was 106.2% for December–May listings and 100.0% for June–November listings, so bidding above asking was largely a winter and spring event.
The pattern held across price levels: split into lower and upper halves by list price (the split falls at about $1.95 million), December–May listings had the higher median sale-to-list in both. Summer listings had a higher median asking price than the other seasons, about $2.35 million, so part of the summer result reflects which houses were listed then.
Autumn was the weakest season in each full year of the study, 2023, 2024 and 2025, though each year's autumn group was small, six to nine listings.
Why that is, this data cannot tell us. Plausible reasons — buyers aiming to move before the school year, 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, three in four Kenilworth houses listed in autumn sold for less than asking. Among December–May listings it was about two in five.
24 autumn listings and 103 December–May listings across nearly four years. Autumn was the weakest season in each full year, 2023–2025. An observed pattern, not a rule.
Important caveats
What this does not mean
- It does not mean wait. Kenilworth averages about four listings that go on to sell each month. The right buyer for a particular house can appear in any season, and if you need to move in October, move in October. The seasonal 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. December–May listings did better in this Kenilworth 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.
- Small numbers. With 173 sales over nearly four years, a few unusual houses can move a season's figures. Single months are shown in the table for completeness, but most have too few listings to judge on their own.
For buyers
Read the same chart backwards
From the buyer's side, autumn showed the clearest signal in this dataset: houses listed from September through November closed at a median 94.7% of asking, and three in four sold below their asking price. June–November listings as a group closed at a median 97.2%, and 60% sold below asking.
The trade-off is selection: in a typical autumn month only about a dozen detached houses were available in all of Kenilworth, and in December fewer than eight.
Thinking about a spring listing?
Preparing for a spring listing starts in winter. There is no cost to starting the conversation early.
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