How Many Home Showings to Sell a Home?

Updated 12/2024.

My clients want to know, how many showings on average does it take to sell a home? So for a number of years now I’ve been writing a local research report on the topic. Thankfully, we do have access to the necessary data through RMLS. We get daily buyer traffic reports and inventory reports. The smart lockboxes we use locally record every home buyer showing. The MLS records when an offer is finally accepted and the homes goes into pending status.

If you’re curious on the average number of days it takes to sell a home (annual reports), we have that for you.

If you’re curious what the current real estate market is up to in the Portland, Oregon metro area, we write up-to-date monthly reports.

Portland buyer activity count from 2014 to today

As one can easily see, home buyer traffic increases from January to April and then stays high and fairly level through August before it starts dipping in September and continues to dip through December. These seasonal real estate market trends are strong and consistent. Overlay this chart with seasonal inventory trends and you’ll know when it is the best time of year to sell a home and when it is the best time of year to buy a home.

How many active home buyers are touring in Oregon right now?

The above report is a snapshot of daily home buyer traffic in Oregon, as covered by RMLS. In Oregon RMLS covers the entire Portland metro and most of the northern half of the state. The majority of the traffic captured in the chart above happens within the greater Portland metro area.

How much inventory is for sale in Oregon at that same time?

The above graphic gives us an inventory snapshot for the same coverage area we get our buyer traffic reports from.

Let’s do the math for November 2024. How many showings did it take for a home to go pending in Oregon?

Number of showings in November 2024, approximately: 65,142.
Number of active listings that received those visitors: 9,414.
Number of showings that resulted in a pending sale in November: 2,609.
RMLS estimated time to sell through all the homes = 3.4 months.

Number of showings (65,142) to sell through inventory estimated at 3.4 months = 221,482 buyer showings.

Take 221,482 showings and divide by active listings (9,414) and you get 23 showings to sell a home on average.

From 2020 to today the average number of showings to sell a home has ranged from 17 – 29.

How to Best Avoid the Hassle of Showing Your Home

1. If possible sell the home vacant. I know it isn’t always possible for many homeowners. However, if you can possibly swing it, we had done the research locally that shows, year over year, vacant homes sell better than owner occupied homes. See the reports for yourself.
2. If you need to stay there, try if you can, to be out for the first weekend (or as much as you can during the day). Typically the only time a home has a rush of buyers visiting it is the first weekend. If a home doesn’t sell in the first weekend, typically the showing requests after that are one a day or one every few days. Read our report here on what day of the week do most buyers tour homes, for more information.
3. Thankfully all of the Realtors in our area use the same showing-scheduling software. This means I can make home showings as easy as possible on my clients. We can block out dates and times that don’t work in advance, we can set required notices. We can make every showing subject to seller approval. There are a whole range of options we have to work with to make the experience as comfortable as possible for our clients.

Work with an Experience Real Estate Agent

Licensed since 2003, my small team has completed over 2,000 local home sales. We can help set your expectations for the real estate market, consulting on the particularities of your home and exact location. We charge 1.7% commission in the greater Portland metro area, provide top-notch marketing tools, and back it up with cancel anytime contracts for no charge. If you’re thinking of selling your home in the next twelve months, we’d love to connect! Give us a call at 503-714-1111 or chat with the bot on this site.