How Long Does It Take to Sell a House? (2026)

How is the market shift affecting days on market?

It can take an average of 25 to 65 days to sell a house in today’s single-family home market — and sometimes longer, depending on where you live.

Time on market has increased over the past few months (April 2025–January 2026), and current rates have seen a slight increase to 6.55%. Monthly home sales have been fluctuating, showing buyer sensitivity to affordability.

Historical data indicates that how fast homes sell is highly dependent on seasonality. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) reports a median of 33 days on the market in June, compared to 44 days between October and December.

Although the market has slowed compared to the white-hot conditions seen from mid-2020 through mid-2022, the latest reading (30 days) is still lower than historical data. In February 2012, the typical home spent 69 days on the market, and in January 2020, it was 82 days.

Remember, available days on market and time to close data represent averages taken from large groups of home sales. Some lenders may be able to close faster, in as little as 30 days.

Large lenders typically have a lot more internal red tape to deal with before they can fund a loan and write a check. On the other hand, smaller local lenders often have shorter closing times because they tend to be nimbler and more adept at navigating the quirks of their local market.

How long does it take to prep the home?

Pennie Carroll, a top real estate agent in Des Moines, Iowa, says the amount of time it takes to prepare a house for sale varies based on how much work and maintenance the homeowner has done in the past. Still, she estimates an average of about a month to get the house ready.

“The process usually starts with the agent coming to the house and providing guidance on what needs to be done — and, more importantly, what doesn’t need to be done,” she says.

“Sometimes sellers can waste time on things that aren’t necessary or won’t do anything to help speed up the sale.”

“I can have a house staged, photographed, and listed within 48 hours,” says Jamie McMartin, a HomeLight Elite Agent and top-selling real estate agent in the Houston metro area. “But typically, it’s a three- to five-day process.”

McMartin walks us through how she accelerates the selling timeline when appropriate:

How can I sell my house faster?

Whether you’re in a financial predicament or need to relocate for work, working with a cash buyer quickly is an excellent strategy if you need to sell your house fast.

If you request an offer from an iBuyer company or house-buying company without putting your house on the market, you can expect to receive an offer in as little as 24 hours and close in as few as one to three weeks.

Since cash buyers prefer to purchase properties as-is, sellers can also lop off any time they usually would have spent on listing preparations.

Cash also eliminates any lender involvement, cutting out the lender-ordered appraisal and creating a more straightforward path to settlement.

See how the main aspects of the timeline compare below:

Interested in requesting a cash offer? Consider starting with HomeLight’s Simple Sale platform, which provides cash offers for homes in almost any condition nationwide. Sellers can receive an offer within 24 hours and close in as little as 7 days. No staging. No showings. No open houses.

One thing to remember is that the offer received from a direct buyer is likely to be less than market value, and sometimes significantly so. So, you have to weigh a faster sale against a potentially lower offer amount.

What factors impact how long it takes to sell a house?

Several variables, including where you live, supply and demand, buyer preferences, seasonality, and property condition, can impact how long it takes to sell a house. Let’s take a closer look at some of the top factors below.

Location

Although national metrics provide a broad indication of how the housing market is performing and whether it’s in or out of balance, real estate varies at a local level depending on supply and demand, housing needs for the area, resident income, net population influx or outflow, and employment opportunities, to name only a few factors.

Below, we’ve rounded up time to contract data from MLSs for five major metropolitan markets so you can get a sense of the variance.