What Day of the Week do Most Buyers Look at Homes?

Updated 7/2025.

The real estate market is truly a market. Pricing fluctuates, and knowing how to play the market can yield big rewards. Smart decisions can result in tens of thousands of dollars in profit, even hundreds of thousands. 

So, how do you play the market right? There are some clear steps you can take right out of the gate. For example, a benefit of the greater Portland real estate market is that there is a best time of the year to sell a home and a best time of the year to buy a home, and both have remained pretty consistent over the last few decades, regardless of whether the overall market is rising or falling. Additionally, there are ideal days for sellers to list a home and prime days for homebuyers to tour and find a new place. Knowing them ensures that you, as a seller or buyer, achieve the best results. 

Here is a breakdown of selling and buying traits to help you maximize your profits during a sale. 

Most Sellers List their Homes for Sale on Thursdays

Statistics from RMLS.

Sellers list on Thursdays because most of the buyer traffic for the week happens over the long weekend – Thursday through Monday. Also, most sellers list on Thursday because home buyers typically will only wait so long to hear back on their offer before they pull it to look for something else (home buyers will typically not put out more than one offer at a time, as they don’t want to be double committed). Traditionally, in the Portland real estate market, most home buyers tour the home over the long weekend and expect to hear back on their offer by the end of the weekend, typically Monday.

A Zillow study concluded that homes initially listed on a Thursday sold faster and were more likely to sell above their list price than if the home had been listed on any other day of the week. They found that nationally, 21% of homes were listed on a Thursday, as many as 1/3rd of homes listed in some major metros.

Most Buyers View a Home for Sale on Sundays

Most homebuyers tour properties over the long weekend, from Thursday to Monday. Sunday is the most popular day because it is typically toward the end of the offer-collecting period for the seller, giving the buyer or buyer’s agent an idea of how the home is performing. This means that the buyer has a chance (typically) to see the home before the seller makes a final decision and writes up an offer.

The Slowest Days of the Week are Tuesdays and Wednesdays

As a seller, you’ll find that the least buying traffic occurs on these two days. Your home may be on the market for more than one week, so if you experience slow results on these two days, don’t worry. As we’ve shown above, the majority of home buyer traffic occurs from Thursday through Monday each week. 

Ranking the Days of the Week for Home Buyer Traffic

Let’s take a closer look at which days of the week rank best. 

The Best Day to List a New Home is Wednesday or Thursday

Based on the buyer traffic day rankings above, you may think that Sunday would be an ideal day to start a new listing, but this does not take into account two critical delays. The first delay happens after a Realtor (or another person) lists a home in the MLS. It is the time it takes the MLS to syndicate the listing properly across thousands of real estate websites (like Redfin and Zillow). This isn’t a huge amount of time, but it can take the better part of a day for some websites to update properly.  

The second factor is even more important. The buyer and the buyer’s agent will need time to find the listing online and then schedule a time to see the property (coordinating with any interested family members and friends, their own agent, and the home’s availability to be shown).

These reasons are why, historically, most agents find that Thursdays are the best days to list. This gives websites plenty of time to update, and buyers and buyer’s agents have plenty of time to find the home and arrange for a showing over the weekend. Zillow research backs this up. Their report (linked above) also found that homes listed on Sundays took eight days longer to sell than homes listed on Thursdays and were less likely to sell for above the asking price. Sunday, in fact, is probably the worst day of the week to start a listing, followed closely by Monday.

Still, Thursday isn’t the only day worth considering. Redfin conducted a report that said homes that were listed on Wednesday sold for an average of $2,023 more in their study than homes listed on any other day, while also noting that homes listed on Thursdays sold the fastest and were also the most likely homes to be sold (and not fail to sell). 

The key takeaway here is that no study recommends any day other than Wednesday or Thursday for starting a new home listing. As you can tell from our RMLS home buyer traffic reports, this also makes perfect sense locally.

How Many Showings Does it Take to Sell a Home?

We have written reports on this. Find out the average number of days it takes to sell a home in the Portland metro area.

Finding Up-to-Date Numbers on Today’s Home Buyer Traffic

We produce monthly Portland metro real estate market reports to keep buyers and sellers informed about the market and make informed decisions about buying and selling. One key indicator we look at in those reports is current home buyer traffic numbers. The link in the start of this paragraph shows our latest monthly report to find out the current level of home buyer traffic in the real estate market. 

How to Sell Your Home Faster and For More

Listing your home on the best days and time of year goes a long way to ensuring strong buyer demand, but there are other factors worth analyzing as well. For example, knowing the current market conditions in your specific suburb keeps you uninformed of local trends and buyer demand, which you can then use to your advantage. We have in-depth articles on each area of Portland, and monthly suburb reports highlight specific areas throughout the city, providing additional insights to help you price the home at the right time and at the right price.

We also have an entire section on our website devoted to which home traits help you sell your home for more. From simple improvements such as home high-performing interior colors to home additions like bedroom suites, swimming pools, and ADUs, we cover many areas.

One of the biggest factor is having a knowledgeable local expert at your side. Licensed here since 2003, my small team has completed over 2,000 local home sales in Oregon and SW Washington. We stay current with research and remain ahead of the curve, and our reasonable fees help you save even more. Our maximum charge in the Portland area or SW Washington to sell a home is 1.7%. We strategically invest more in increased marketing for our homes online and cover the costs of professional photos, 3D tours, and more. We top it off with a cancel anytime policy for no charge. 

Learn more about our pay less and get more selling services here, call 503-714-1111, or simply chat with the bot on this site.

Buy a Home with the Best

Not only do we have dedicated selling agents, we have specialized top 1% buyers agents on our team as well. No matter the type of property you’re looking for (condo, detached, farm, commercial, land, multi-family, specialized), we can help. Call 503-773-0000 or chat with our bot today.