It's a reasonable question... especially if you are thinking about listing your home for sale over the next few months...

Will we see fewer buyers signing contracts to buy homes over the Fall and Winter months?

The graph above takes a look at contract activity over the past five years to calculate the average number of contracts signed per month.

A few things to note...

[1]  The busiest months for contract activity are March through October... where we are seeing an average of 132 contracts signed per month.

[2]  Of those months, March through May are the busiest of the busy... with over 140 contracts per month.

[3]  Between November and December, contract signing activity drops off somewhat... but only down to an average of 98 contracts per month.

Thus, between November and February we do typically see 25% fewer contracts being signed per month... but it's not a 50% drop off, there are still a meaningful number of buyers signing contracts to buy.

It's also worth noting that...

[1]  Buyers are somewhat limited in how many homes they can contract to buy based on how many homes are listed for sale.  Thus, lower contract numbers in November, December, January and February might also be related to lower numbers of listings.

[2]  Holidays in November and December probably artificially reduce the number of listings and contracts during those months.