Winnetka · Seller strategy
The best month to sell a house in Winnetka
We ran every Winnetka house that went under contract from January 2023 through September 2026 and closed — 667 of them — and sorted the results by the month each one was listed. April comes out ahead by a modest margin, with June and July close behind. March is the busiest month for accepted offers.
Part of our Winnetka series: see what it is like to live there on the Winnetka community page, and this month's prices and supply on the Winnetka market statistics page.
The answer
April, narrowly
667 Winnetka 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 47 · February 80 · March 77 · April 93 · May 85 · June 74 · July 50 · August 29 · September 49 · October 51 · November 16 · December 16. * November and December have fewer than 20 listings each, so their results are directional. 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.
April, July, June and May all closed above 101%; April was the only month above 102.5%. August, September and October each closed at a median of exactly 100.0%. * November and December had 16 listings each; December's 97.2% is the only figure below 100%, and with so few sales it is directional. On a $1.8 million list price, about the median in this study, the observed April and August–October median sale-to-list ratios differ by roughly $48,000. That does not mean changing the listing month would make the same house sell for $48,000 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 60% of Winnetka houses went under contract within eight days, but about one in five took more than three weeks and about one in eleven took over two months. A median of six days does not mean your house sells in a week — it means half of them do. February listings took longer than the spring months (10.5 days), September a little longer (8), and December, from 16 listings, longest at 13.5.
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 | 32.3 | 11.0 | 9.5 |
| February | 44.7 | 13.0 | 10.9 |
| March | 51.0 | 24.3 | 7.3 |
| April | 52.3 | 20.7 | 9.2 |
| May | 63.7 | 20.7 | 7.4 |
| June | 60.7 | 21.7 | 5.7 |
| July | 50.3 | 16.0 | 4.7 |
| August | 39.3 | 8.0 | 3.3 |
| September | 51.0 | 12.3 | 5.6 |
| October | 51.7 | 16.7 | 5.4 |
| November | 34.7 | 9.3 | 3.8 |
| December | 27.7 | 5.3 | 4.0 |
In Winnetka, buyers sign earlier in the year than supply peaks. Contracts were highest in March, about 24 a month, nearly half of the roughly 51 houses available, and showings per listing were highest in January and February, about 9.5 to 11. Supply kept rising after that, to about 61 to 64 houses in May and June, while contracts held at about 21 a month, so the share going under contract fell to about a third. August was the quietest month: about 8 contracts from 39 available houses and about 3 showings per listing. September and October brought a second, smaller rise in contracts.
March is the busiest month for accepted offers in Winnetka, but April listings had the strongest observed results. Volume and outcome answer different questions: March is when the most houses go under contract; April is when listings did best in this data.
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 differed
Most April contracts were homes listed in April: 77% of the homes that went under contract in April were April listings, and 14% were March listings still on the market. So April's results belong mainly to homes that came out in April.
April's edge showed at both ends of the range. At the top, the 75th percentile sale-to-list was 111.4% for April listings against 107.8% for all other months. At the bottom, 24% of April listings sold below asking, compared with 35% in every other month combined, and 60% sold above asking, against 52%.
It held across price levels: split into lower, middle and upper thirds by list price, April listings had the higher median sale-to-list in each third, though in the upper third the gap was small. It did not hold every year. April listings had the highest median of any month in 2024 and 2025, but not in 2023, when July led and April was at 100.0%, or in 2026 so far, when June, July and March listings have done better.
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 one in three Winnetka houses listed outside April sold for less than asking. Among April listings it was about one in four.
93 April listings across four springs, the largest monthly sample in the study. First in 2024 and 2025, not in 2023 or 2026 so far. A modest edge, not a rule.
Important caveats
What this does not mean
- It does not mean wait. Every month with 20 or more listings closed between 100.0% and 102.7% of asking in this data, and April's lead over June and July is small. If you need to move in September, move in September. April's difference in this data is not a reason to hold a house off the market for months.
- April works best when the house is ready. April performed best in this Winnetka data, but timing alone does not overcome poor preparation or pricing. If April is the target, preparation should start early enough for the house to be genuinely ready to launch.
- Late summer and autumn were softer. Nearly half of September listings (49% of 49) sold below asking, and August through October listings closed at a median of 100.0%. That is an observed pattern in this data, not a rule about any single house.
For buyers
Read the same chart backwards
From the buyer's side, late summer and autumn showed the clearest signal in this dataset: houses listed in August, September and October closed at a median 100.0% of asking, and 43% sold below their asking price. November and December listings were few, 32 in all, and 44% of them sold below asking.
The trade-off is selection: spring brings the most listings, while autumn and winter bring fewer homes to choose from.
Thinking about an April listing?
Preparing for an April listing starts in February. There is no cost to starting the conversation early.
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