Evanston · Seller strategy
The best month to sell a house in Evanston
We ran every Evanston house that went under contract from January 2023 through September 2026 and closed — 1,223 of them — and sorted the results by the month each one was listed. April and May come out ahead by a modest margin, and they are also the busiest months for accepted offers. We ran the same study on 1,880 condominiums and townhouses.
Part of our Evanston series: see what it is like to live there on the Evanston community page, and this month's prices and supply on the Evanston market statistics page.
The answer
April and May, by a modest margin
1,223 Evanston single-family detached homes that went under contract between January 2023 and September 2026 and closed, grouped by the month they were listed. Listings per month: January 82 · February 126 · March 134 · April 149 · May 154 · June 136 · July 105 · August 84 · September 83 · October 70 · November 52 · December 48. Source: MRED.
Chart one
What you get for your house, by the month you list it
Median sale price as a percentage of asking price, grouped by list month. The scale starts at 94% so the differences are visible.
March through June closed above 100%, with April and May highest. July, August, September, December, January and February each closed at a median of exactly 100.0%, and October and November were slightly below, at 99.3%. On a $749,000 list price, about the median in this study, the observed April and October median sale-to-list ratios differ by roughly $25,000. That does not mean changing the listing month would make the same house sell for $25,000 more: the months contain different homes.
Chart two
How fast it goes, by the month you list it
Median days from listing to accepted offer.
These are medians, and the median hides a long tail: across the whole period 57% of Evanston houses went under contract within eight days, but about one in four took more than three weeks and about one in eleven took over two months. A median of six days does not mean your house sells in a week — it means half of them do. October, November and December listings took noticeably longer in this data: medians of 11, 25.5 and 20.5 days.
Chart three
When buyers actually sign
How many houses were available each month, how many went under contract, and how many showings each listing drew.
Homes available during the monthHomes going under contractShowings per listing (right scale)
Monthly figures
| Month | Homes available | Under contract | Showings per listing |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 63.7 | 19.3 | 8.6 |
| February | 75.0 | 27.3 | 9.1 |
| March | 78.3 | 34.3 | 9.6 |
| April | 87.3 | 38.7 | 8.0 |
| May | 86.0 | 37.7 | 6.7 |
| June | 85.7 | 35.3 | 6.6 |
| July | 80.0 | 25.3 | 6.0 |
| August | 80.0 | 24.3 | 5.2 |
| September | 85.3 | 25.3 | 5.6 |
| October | 79.0 | 25.7 | 5.3 |
| November | 66.0 | 15.0 | 4.3 |
| December | 56.3 | 15.3 | 5.4 |
In Evanston, buyer activity and supply rose together in spring, but showing activity peaked earlier. Showings per listing were highest in February and March, about 9 to 10 per listing, when roughly 70 to 80 detached houses were available each month. Contracts climbed to about 34 to 39 a month from March through June, roughly four in ten of the houses available, while supply rose to about 85 to 87 from April through June. From July on, contracts fell to about 24 to 26 a month with supply still near 80, so only about three in ten available houses went under contract, and each listing drew about 5 to 6 showings. November and December were the quietest months, at about 15 contracts each.
April and May are the busiest months for accepted offers in Evanston, at about 38 to 39 a month, and they are also the listing months with the strongest observed results. Here, as in Wilmette, volume and outcome point to the same part of the year.
Monthly averages for 2023, 2024 and 2025, detached houses. Homes available during the month: houses for sale at the end of the previous month plus new listings that month (MRED via InfoSparks), so each house counts once whether it went under contract, stayed on the market or was withdrawn. Under contract: MRED closed and pending sales by contract month. Showings per listing: MRED via InfoSparks; showing data comes from ShowingTime and counts only showings scheduled through ShowingTime.
What it means
Where April and May differed
Most spring contracts were homes listed that same month: 71% of the homes that went under contract in April were April listings, and 23% were March listings still on the market; in May the figures were 66% and 24%. So the spring results belong mainly to homes that came out in spring.
April and May differed most at the bottom of the range. About a quarter of May listings and three in ten April listings sold below asking, compared with four in ten in every other month combined. At the top, the 75th percentile sale-to-list was about 108% for both months, against about 105% for the rest of the year, and 57% of April and 60% of May listings sold above asking, against about 48%.
The pattern was not uniform. Split into lower, middle and upper thirds by list price, April listings led clearly among middle-priced houses ($585,000 to $925,000), but among the lowest-priced third January listings did as well, and among the highest-priced third June did better. Year to year, April listings had the highest median in 2025 and 2026 so far, and May in 2023; in 2024, June led and April and May were mid-table.
Why that is, this data cannot tell us. Plausible reasons — buyers aiming to move over the summer, sellers bringing well-prepared houses out in spring — are guesses, and we would rather say so than dress one up as a finding.
In this data, about four in ten Evanston houses listed outside April and May sold for less than asking. Among May listings it was about one in four.
149 April and 154 May listings across four springs, the two largest monthly samples in the study. A modest edge that has not held every year or at every price level; not a rule.
Important caveats
What this does not mean
- It does not mean wait. Every month closed between 99.3% and 102.7% of asking in this data, and the spring lead is small. If you need to move in September, move in September. A spring difference in this data is not a reason to hold a house off the market for months.
- Spring works best when the house is ready. April and May performed best in this Evanston data, but timing alone does not overcome poor preparation or pricing. If spring is the target, preparation should start early enough for the house to be genuinely ready to launch.
- Late-year listings took longer. October, November and December listings had median times to contract of 11, 25.5 and 20.5 days, and about half of October and November listings sold below asking. That is an observed pattern in this data, not a rule about any single house.
Condominiums and townhouses
Spring is steadier, December is slowest
We ran the same analysis on 1,880 Evanston condominiums and townhouses, more than the detached study because attached homes are most of Evanston's market. Every month had at least 65 listings. Medians barely move, almost every month closed at exactly 100.0% of asking, so the clearer differences are in how often homes sold below asking and how long they took. The results are shown by season for readability.
For condominiums and townhouses, listings from February through May had the fewest sales below asking, about a third, and the quickest contracts. Autumn was softer, with about half selling below asking, and December listings had the weakest observed results of any month: 69% sold below asking and the median took 30 days to go under contract, from 65 listings. Within spring, no single month stood clearly apart.
For buyers
Read the same chart backwards
From the buyer's side, autumn showed the clearest signal in this dataset: about half of the houses listed in October and November sold below their asking price, and they took longer to go under contract, which can leave more room to negotiate. For condominiums and townhouses the pattern was similar and stronger in December, when 69% of listings sold below asking.
The trade-off is selection: spring brings the most listings, while autumn and winter bring fewer homes to choose from.
Thinking about a spring listing?
Preparing for an April or May listing starts in February. There is no cost to starting the conversation early.
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