Twice as many homes sell in June as in February
Windsor-Essex sales swing from roughly 240 homes in a winter month to roughly 480 in a summer one, and the pattern has repeated three years running. What thirty-six months of WECAR figures show about timing, and the one thing they still cannot tell you.
In the three years to July 2026, the busiest month in Windsor-Essex saw 504 homes change hands and the quietest saw 226. Both were ordinary months in the same region, with the same houses on the same streets. (Source: WECAR, August 2023 through July 2026.)
That range is wider than most people expect, and it has a practical consequence: the number of buyers looking at your home, and the number of homes competing with it, are not constants you can ignore when you choose a listing date.
View as a table
| Aug ’23 | 434homes sold |
|---|---|
| Sep ’23 | 353homes sold |
| Oct ’23 | 367homes sold |
| Nov ’23 | 319homes sold |
| Dec ’23 | 226homes sold |
| Jan ’24 | 276homes sold |
| Feb ’24 | 326homes sold |
| Mar ’24 | 401homes sold |
| Apr ’24 | 452homes sold |
| May ’24 | 464homes sold |
| Jun ’24 | 456homes sold |
| Jul ’24 | 467homes sold |
| Aug ’24 | 463homes sold |
| Sep ’24 | 422homes sold |
| Oct ’24 | 451homes sold |
| Nov ’24 | 370homes sold |
| Dec ’24 | 242homes sold |
| Jan ’25 | 262homes sold |
| Feb ’25 | 307homes sold |
| Mar ’25 | 342homes sold |
| Apr ’25 | 416homes sold |
| May ’25 | 491homes sold |
| Jun ’25 | 471homes sold |
| Jul ’25 | 504homes sold |
| Aug ’25 | 430homes sold |
| Sep ’25 | 381homes sold |
| Oct ’25 | 461homes sold |
| Nov ’25 | 370homes sold |
| Dec ’25 | 261homes sold |
| Jan ’26 | 267homes sold |
| Feb ’26 | 237homes sold |
| Mar ’26 | 352homes sold |
| Apr ’26 | 437homes sold |
| May ’26 | 424homes sold |
| Jun ’26 | 476homes sold |
| Jul ’26 | 470homes sold |
Source: WECAR monthly reports, August 2023 through July 2026. Figures are a snapshot taken when this post was written, not live — the numbers on the community pages are current.
The pattern repeats, which is what makes it worth trusting
One year of monthly data shows you a shape. It does not tell you whether the shape means anything — a single odd winter produces the same picture with no seasonality involved at all. Three years is where it starts to be worth something, and the three winters here look like each other:
- December sales: 226 in 2023, 242 in 2024, 261 in 2025.
- January sales: 276 in 2024, 262 in 2025, 267 in 2026.
- Peak month: 467 in July 2024, 504 in July 2025, 476 in June 2026.
(Source: WECAR, August 2023 through July 2026.)
Every year the trough lands in December or January somewhere in the low 200s to high 200s, and every year the peak lands between April and July somewhere in the mid 400s to low 500s. The ratio between them is close to two to one in all three years.
Homes take longer to sell in winter, but not dramatically longer
The second series is the median number of days a sold home spent on the market.
The vertical axis spans 11–27, not zero to 27 — it shows the movement in the series, not the size of the numbers.
View as a table
| Aug ’23 | 14days |
|---|---|
| Sep ’23 | 15days |
| Oct ’23 | 14days |
| Nov ’23 | 15days |
| Dec ’23 | 20days |
| Jan ’24 | 21days |
| Feb ’24 | 15days |
| Mar ’24 | 12days |
| Apr ’24 | 12days |
| May ’24 | 11days |
| Jun ’24 | 14days |
| Jul ’24 | 14days |
| Aug ’24 | 17days |
| Sep ’24 | 18days |
| Oct ’24 | 19days |
| Nov ’24 | 18days |
| Dec ’24 | 20.5days |
| Jan ’25 | 22days |
| Feb ’25 | 15.5days |
| Mar ’25 | 13days |
| Apr ’25 | 14days |
| May ’25 | 14days |
| Jun ’25 | 14days |
| Jul ’25 | 19days |
| Aug ’25 | 17days |
| Sep ’25 | 20days |
| Oct ’25 | 19days |
| Nov ’25 | 21days |
| Dec ’25 | 27days |
| Jan ’26 | 25days |
| Feb ’26 | 20days |
| Mar ’26 | 17days |
| Apr ’26 | 16days |
| May ’26 | 16days |
| Jun ’26 | 17days |
| Jul ’26 | 20.5days |
Source: WECAR monthly reports, August 2023 through July 2026. Figures are a snapshot taken when this post was written, not live — the numbers on the community pages are current.
The same seasonal shape appears, and again in all three years: 21 days in January 2024, 22 in January 2025, 27 in December 2025 against 11 days in May 2024, 13 in March 2025, 16 in April 2026. (Source: WECAR, August 2023 through July 2026.)
Two things are worth pulling out of that.
The first is that the winter penalty is real but modest. Eleven or twelve extra days matters if you are carrying two mortgages. It is not the difference between selling and not selling.
The second is that even in the slowest month in three years, the typical home that sold did so inside a month. Homes that sit for a season are not the average — they are a separate group, and what usually separates them is price, not the calendar.
The median sold price does not follow the same curve
Here a tidy story would over-reach, so it is worth being plain: sales volume has a clear seasonal shape in this data and the median sold price does not.
February 2026 makes the point. It was the quietest month of the past year at 237 sales, and its median of $515,000 came in above March, May and July of the same year — all of which sold considerably more homes. (Source: WECAR, August 2023 through July 2026.)
The reason is the one that comes up whenever the median is discussed: it answers what was the middle price among the homes that happened to sell, so it moves with the mix of what sold. A month weighted toward entry-level homes produces a lower median without any individual house losing value. The like-for-like measure is the MLS® HPI benchmark, tracked alongside the median on the market report, and it is much flatter than the median across these same three years.
What three years still cannot tell you
The honest limit: these thirty-six months all sit inside one interest-rate cycle, and the sale-to-list ratio fell from 107.3% in August 2023 to 100.1% in July 2026 across them. (Source: WECAR, August 2023 and July 2026.) That is a market changing character underneath the seasonal pattern, not a stable backdrop.
So the seasonality is well supported and the level is not. "June is busier than February" has held three years running. "June 2027 will look like June 2026" is a forecast, and not one this site makes.
What it actually changes
If you are selling, it changes less about whether to list than about what to expect after you do. A December listing is not a mistake; it is one that should be priced knowing fewer buyers will see it and it may take an extra week or two. The lever that matters far more than the month is the asking price — which is why that conversation is worth having against recent comparable sales rather than against what the neighbours are asking. That is what a written valuation is for, and it is a different exercise from an automated estimate.
If you are buying, the quiet months are the ones with fewer people beside you, and the homes still listed in them have often been listed a while — which is a conversation you can have. The trade is selection: fewer new listings arrive in December.
And if you want to know what one specific house on one specific street actually sold for — the number none of this region-wide data can give you — that can be looked up.
Every sold figure here comes from the Windsor-Essex County Association of REALTORS® monthly reports, August 2023 through July 2026. The MLS® listing feed used elsewhere on this site carries no sold data at all; every price in it is an asking price.
