TO all things, there is a season. So the Bible says but is there really a fixed pattern of seasons when it comes to selling houses?
This article was featured in our Property West Cork Winter 2024 supplement – you can read the full supplement here!
From a distance, the business of buying and selling property is a mere financial transaction but to those on the ground involved in the process, the sums being exchanged are large and each transaction is very much personal.
Back when I was involved in the auctioneering business in West Cork in the late 1990s/early 2000s, there were patterns of activity throughout the year that coincided with the seasons but those patterns were already beginning to change.
People involved in selling houses from an earlier era again would always tell me that it used to be very clearly defined – that the Spring kicked off the start of the activity, everything got hectic in summer before dying down in autumn and remaining very quiet throughout the winter.
In that sense, the business of the estate agent didn’t differ greatly from other businesses in West Cork – all in harmony with nature’s life cycle, in fact.
One thing that did alter the spin was the advent of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland and the rise of Ryanair. Both started to really have an impact around the same time. In the case of the Peace Process, it meant that overseas market (which is proportionately much more important in West Cork than in, say, Cork City) was swelled with the ranks of British buyers who hadn’t previously considered a move to Ireland.
At the same time, Michael O’Leary’s low-cost flights model began to alter the way people from the UK travelled. Instead of paying €150 in July, they found that they need only pay €20 in September or October.
Andy Donoghue at Hodnett Forde Property Services in Clonakilty finds that recent patterns have broken away from the traditional seasonal patterns to a certain extent.
'What we always say is that there’s no down-time anymore,' says Andy.
'In fact, the only difficulty with Autumn, Winter and Spring is getting the property photographed right. With the full-time residential homes, it’s full-on all the time. People don’t care what time of year it is. On the holiday-home side of the market, you have different buyers.'
This cohort, he says, follow a more seasonal pattern but it depends on the buyer.
'It’s not unusual for a sale to be agreed in Christmas week, for example,' says Andy.
'They’ll get the keys in the Spring and have the use of it for the summer… So even with the holiday home market, there is no down-time either.
'I think that, during the Covid time, people got very used to the ‘click-to-purchase’ scenario,' says Andy. 'In fact, I think that if people could buy a house from their bed at ten-o-clock at night, they would. Also during Covid, properties sold very quickly – within weeks or even days of going up online… people’s attention span seemed to be shortened and they seemed to be more snappy, but I think that has softened since.
'Getting the right shots of the property is so important and if the house is in a coastal location, you’re aiming to have the light just right on a sunny day and the tide in. That’s really tricky to do in the winter – you’re looking at a photo of a house with no leaves at all, as opposed to a photo of the house with green leaves around it.'
For Denis Harrington at Harrington Estates in Bantry, however, while there have been different patterns attributed to changes in air fares or the advent of people who believe that the colder months are the ones when it’s more of a buyers’ market, the seasons are still very important markers when defining how busy things are.
'I would say that the winter season remains clearly defined – a time when have few visitors and fewer successful transactions,' says Denis. 'In recent years, this is normally from some point in November until mid to late February. Thereafter, the season improves continuously from March to July and stumbles through August.
'The Spring/early Summer is the best proven season, and this is seen in the prices achieved during that period; the target prices or guide prices being bettered, as well as the overall sales growth.'
The Autumn season, Denis says, is the time of year when there is most variety of activity. This year, for example, it is performing well, particularly with buyers from Continental Europe.
'In summary, I would say that the best seasons are the longer days and better weather conditions. The quiet season has the shortest days and least favourable weather conditions.'
So there you have it: while changes in technology, transport business models and even a slight ‘brain reset’ induced by the Lockdown era measures, Mother Nature still knows best – even in the property market.
This article was featured in our Property West Cork Winter 2024 supplement – you can read the full supplement here!
