Wait for Spring, or List Now? Why We Told a Seller Not to Wait

Every fall we get the same question from sellers: list now, or wait for spring? Nine years out of ten we say wait. This year our answer changed, and the reason has nothing to do with the season and everything to do with what your buyer can afford.

Here is the whole argument, including the part that argues against us.

The rule we normally follow

Real estate has a calendar, and it is driven by families rather than by markets. Our standard guidance is that sellers do best listing in spring and early summer, and buyers do best shopping in fall and winter.

The reason is attention. Late September is back to school. Then it is Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Year. A family that is thinking about report cards, travel, and holidays is not touring homes on a Sunday afternoon. When spring arrives, that same family re-engages, and the buyer pool refills.

That is why we point our buyers at the fall and winter. Fewer people are competing for the same house, sellers who are on the market in November are usually on the market for a reason, and negotiating leverage sits on the buyer's side of the table.

The pattern is visible in the local numbers. San Diego closed sales fell 17.1 percent year over year in August, and pending sales fell 12.0 percent. The slow season is real, and it is already here.

So the default answer to "should I list in October" is no.

What changed this year

On September 16 the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate by a quarter point to a target range of 3.75 to 4.00 percent. It was the first increase since 2023, and the vote was unanimous.

The increase itself is not the issue. What matters for a seller is what the Fed said about the road ahead. In the committee's own projections, 16 of 18 participants expected at least one more increase before the end of the year, and four of them saw room for two. Markets have since priced in another quarter point in December, with more expected into 2027.

Mortgage rates have not waited for December. The Freddie Mac 30 year fixed average has moved every week this month:

That is 32 basis points in three weeks, and it happened while the slow season was already underway.

One clarification worth making, because it gets muddled constantly. The Fed does not set mortgage rates. The 30 year fixed tracks the 10 year Treasury and the spread investors demand on mortgage bonds. What the Fed controls is the expectation, and expectations are exactly what is moving right now. You do not need to predict the December meeting to notice that the cost of borrowing has already risen for four straight weeks.

What a quarter point does to the person buying your house

This is the part most sellers have never been walked through, and it is the part that decided the recommendation.

Take a San Diego detached home at the county median of $1,075,000 with 20 percent down, which is an $860,000 loan.

Now flip it around, which is the view that actually matters to you. Hold the buyer's monthly payment fixed at what it was on September 3 and ask what that same payment buys:

Every quarter point removes roughly 2.5 percent of what your buyer can pay. Not what they are willing to pay. What the lender will let them pay.

If you list in April and two more quarter point increases have passed through by then, the buyer who could have afforded your house in September is now approved for about $85,000 less. That buyer does not disappear. They just move down a tier, and your house is competing for a smaller pool of people.

That is the interest rate shock, and it does not announce itself. It shows up as fewer showings and offers that come in lower than you expected, and by then the cause is three months in the past.

The trade, stated honestly

Waiting for spring buys you a larger audience. It costs you whatever rates do between now and then. So the question is not which season is better. It is which of those two effects is bigger for your specific house.

There is a second factor working in the same direction. Everyone who decides to wait for spring lists in spring. The supply that is missing right now arrives all at once in March and April, and you compete with it. At the moment you are not competing with much:

Fewer buyers are shopping, but there is also very little for them to choose from, and prices held up through the slowdown. August closings dropped by roughly one in six and the month's median still rose 7.1 percent. A thin market with motivated buyers is not the same thing as a bad market.

When we would still tell you to wait

The argument above is not universal, and we would be doing you a disservice to present it that way.

Wait for spring if your home is not ready. A house that goes on the market before it is prepared accumulates days on market, and that number follows the listing for the rest of its life. Getting it right is worth more than getting it early. Our pre-listing repair checklist is the place to start, and if working through it takes you into next year, then it takes you into next year.

Wait if you are buying as well as selling in this market. Rising rates cut both ways. If your next purchase is a San Diego home financed at the same rates, moving quickly on the sale protects the sale but does nothing for the purchase, and the two may roughly cancel.

Wait if the timing genuinely does not work. School years, job starts, family situations, and renovation schedules are real constraints, and no rate forecast is worth forcing a move you are not ready to make.

And be clear-eyed about the forecast itself. Nobody knows where rates go. The Fed's own projections are projections, they have been wrong before, and if rates flatten or fall from here then the seller who waited for spring will have made the better call. What we can say is that the risk is currently one-directional in the committee's stated expectations, and that the last four weeks moved against buyers rather than for them.

What we are telling sellers this fall

Our guidance right now is to list rather than roll the dice on where rates go between here and spring.

Go back to the county median for a moment. At $1,075,000 with 20 percent down, a buyer carrying today's payment of $5,739 into a spring market where two more quarter point increases have landed is approved for about $1,023,000. That is roughly $52,000 less, a 4.8 percent haircut on what they can borrow, and it happens without the buyer changing their mind about anything. The higher your price, the larger that gap is in dollars.

Put plainly: waiting for spring does not put your house in front of a bigger audience at the same price. It puts it in front of a bigger audience at a lower one.

We are equally candid about the cost of going now. Fall traffic is thinner than April traffic, and at a price point above the $750,001 to $1,000,000 band that is the most liquid part of the county at 36 days on market, it is thinner still. That is the real price of the decision rather than a detail to wave away.

What offsets it is how little there is to compete with. Detached inventory is down 20.7 percent year over year, supply is at 2.3 months, and detached listings are selling in 35 days at 98 percent of original asking price. A smaller pool of buyers looking at a much smaller pool of houses is a different proposition than a slow market.

So the trade comes down to a few weeks of thinner showing traffic against buyer purchasing power the Fed has already told us it intends to remove. For most of the sellers we are advising right now, the weeks are the cheaper thing to give up.

Whether the same answer fits your house depends on your price point, your condition, your timeline, and whether you are buying on the other side. Those are four questions, not one, and they are worth twenty minutes on the phone before you commit to a season.

If you want us to run your specific numbers, send us a note or call or text Richard Ricasata at (619) 318-3400.

Rate data: Federal Reserve FOMC statement and Summary of Economic Projections, September 16, 2026; Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, weeks ending September 3 through September 24, 2026. Local data: Greater San Diego Association of REALTORS Housing Supply Overview and Monthly Indicators, August 2026. Payment figures are principal and interest only on a 30 year fixed loan at 20 percent down, and exclude taxes, insurance, HOA dues, and mortgage insurance. Rates above 7.03 percent are illustrations of the increases currently projected, not predictions. Nothing here is a forecast of future interest rates.