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How is the market shift affecting days on market?
It can take an average of 25 to 65 days to sell a house in today’s single-family home market — and sometimes longer, depending on where you live.
Time on market has increased over the past few months (April 2025–July 2025), with current rates hovering around 6.6%, leaving homeowners reluctant to sell and give up the ultra-low mortgage rates they acquired during the pandemic housing boom. Current economic conditions also leave buyers in wait-and-see mode, impacting the median number of days on market.
Historical data indicates that how fast homes sell is highly dependent on seasonality. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) reports a median of 33 days on the market in June, compared to 49 days between December and February.
Although the market has slowed compared to the white-hot conditions seen from mid-2020 through mid-2022, the latest reading (58 days) is still lower than historical data. In February 2012, the typical home spent 69 days on the market, and in February 2018, it was 76 days.
Remember, available days on market and time to close data represent averages taken from large groups of home sales. Some lenders may be able to close faster, in as little as 30 days.
Large lenders typically have a lot more internal red tape to deal with before they can fund a loan and write a check. On the other hand, smaller local lenders often have shorter closing times because they tend to be nimbler and more adept at navigating the quirks of their local market.
How long does it take to prep the home?
Pennie Carroll, a top real estate agent in Des Moines, Iowa, says the amount of time it takes to prepare a house for sale varies based on how much work and maintenance the homeowner has done in the past. Still, she estimates an average of about a month to get the house ready.
“The process usually starts with the agent coming to the house and providing guidance on what needs to be done — and, more importantly, what doesn’t need to be done,” she says.
“Sometimes sellers can waste time on things that aren’t necessary or won’t do anything to help speed up the sale.”
“I can have a house staged, photographed, and listed within 48 hours,” says Jamie McMartin, a HomeLight Elite Agent and top-selling real estate agent in the Houston metro area. “But typically, it’s a three- to five-day process.”
McMartin walks us through how she accelerates the selling timeline when appropriate:
| Listing prep: Staging, photography, listing description, 3-D tours, and for-sale sign in the yard | 3–5 days, but in some cases as few as 48 hours |
| Listing launches: Listing goes live, ideally on a Wednesday, with a day or two buffer to generate showing interest | 1 day |
| Showings and open house: Showings are available starting Friday, with open houses on Saturday and Sunday | 3 days |
| Offer review and counter offers: Ideally received by Sunday night and finalized by Monday at 5 p.m. | 2 days |
| Inspection period: Inspector completes report and amendments negotiated | 5–7 days |
| Appraisal period: The Appraiser visits the property and submits a detailed report to the lender | 8–10 days (after the buyer pays the lender an appraisal fee) |
| Appraisal-related negotiations (if necessary) | 1–2 days |
How can I sell my house faster?
Whether you’re in a financial predicament or need to relocate for work, working with a cash buyer quickly is an excellent strategy if you need to sell your house fast.
If you request an offer from an iBuyer company or house-buying company without putting your house on the market, you can expect to receive an offer in as little as 24 hours and close in as few as one to three weeks.
Since cash buyers prefer to purchase properties as-is, sellers can also lop off any time they usually would have spent on listing preparations.
Cash also eliminates any lender involvement, cutting out the lender-ordered appraisal and creating a more straightforward path to settlement.
See how the main aspects of the timeline compare below:
| Sell directly for cash | Listing process | |
| Sale timeline | 7–30 days | 99 days (including 58 to accept an offer, 41 to close the loan) |
| Home preparations | 0 days | 30 days |
| Time to get an offer | As few as 24 hours | 66 days |
| Appraisal | 0 days | 8–10 days |
Interested in requesting a cash offer? Consider starting with HomeLight’s Simple Sale platform, which provides cash offers for homes in almost any condition nationwide. Sellers can receive an offer within 24 hours and close in as little as 7 days. No staging. No showings. No open houses.
One thing to remember is that the offer received from a direct buyer is likely to be less than market value, and sometimes significantly so. So, you have to weigh a faster sale against a potentially lower offer amount.
To create that buzz among buyers, we make sure the property is decluttered and staged correctly so that the listing photos draw in the offers and the right buyers.
Jamie McMartin Real Estate Agent
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Jamie McMartin Real Estate Agent at Compass Currently accepting new clients
- Years of Experience 18
- Transactions 4307
- Average Price Point $408k
- Single Family Homes 4114
What factors impact how long it takes to sell a house?
Several variables, including where you live, supply and demand, buyer preferences, seasonality, and property condition, can impact how long it takes to sell a house. Let’s take a closer look at some of the top factors below.
Location
Although national metrics provide a broad indication of how the housing market is performing and whether it’s in or out of balance, real estate varies at a local level depending on supply and demand, housing needs for the area, resident income, net population influx or outflow, and employment opportunities, to name only a few factors.
Below, we’ve rounded up time to contract data from MLSs for five major metropolitan markets so you can get a sense of the variance.
