We all know that spring and summer are the prime seasons for house hunting. As temperatures cool, so do housing markets—for the most part. But some markets manage to buck the seasonal trend. We wanted to know: Where? And why?
First, let’s look at the deep freeze. When we crunched the numbers for all U.S. counties, we found that fully 80% report that starting in September, it takes longer to sell a home. Sometimes a lot longer. The most extreme case in 2014 was Midland County in Michigan, where median days on market skyrocketed from 21 in June to 83 three months later.