From Hayley Severson: My fiancé Isaac and I have been on the hunt for a house in Milwaukee for years. Of course, when fantasy comes before money, you start your shopping a little early.
In late fall 2023, we decided to pursue the idea of purchasing a house in the winter/early spring of 2025. If you have purchased a house before, or even if you haven’t, you may be thinking: why on earth? Moving in a Wisconsin February sounds like a slushy nightmare, and there can’t be any good houses to buy during the winter because everyone waits until May to list, right? Well, the former point we know and regretfully accept. But the latter is one we set of to explore: are there houses worth buying in winter? And do their prices, potentially lower than a summer listing price, make up for the lack of inventory?
Enter: spreadsheets.
Isaac and I began what we called the Chart and the Rubric. The chart is pretty simple: every house that went onto market in a neighborhood we were interested in each month, roughly January through March, was charted in our spreadsheet.
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| January house log |
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| February house log |
March house log
Notice how our hypothetical ask price was getting less competitive with the real sold price as the months went on? Interesting! That said, we hypothesized that we were getting pickier with each house we saw, so that bias should be accounted for (apologies, no double blinding here).
You will notice the “Rating” score in column G. This is the individual house’s results from the Rubric: a scoring system we created to consistently compare houses against our preferences.
The rubric items are weighted by importance to us, and all houses receive a pass or fail on each item. Location was our most important factor in buying a house, so a pass on location resulted in seven points; items like great backyard/kitchen/bathroom (i.e. required little changes/maintenance) were essentially bonus points and only garnered 1-2 points in the weighted score. Once each house either pass or failed the item, the weighted points were averaged out and created a final score.
Now, if you recall, the goal was to see if there are enough quality houses, for a good price, on the market in January-March to make moving through the winter sludge worth it. So, analysis:
This is our chart of number of houses by location (Wawa = Wauwatosa, BV = Bay View, SW = Shorewood), then the number of houses by location with a final rating of 4.12 or over.
This is a score histogram of all properties listed in January through March.
Finally, the share of properties with a score of 4.26 and above by month of listing.
So, what did we learn?
- Inventory in our interested neighborhoods remained consistent enough across the months.
o January: 18 (caveat: some of these properties were listed before January, but remained for sale in the month)
o February: 15
o March: 20
- Cumulative ratings remained consistent across the months.
o January: avg. 4.065 (3.07-4.78)
o February: avg. 4.063 (3.12-4.78)
o March: avg. 3.98 (3.33-5)
Conclusion: the evidence points to a high likelihood of available properties listed in January-March, in our interested neighborhoods, with at least a 4.0 rating. While inventory may not be as high, the quality of listed properties is sufficient to explore winter shopping – and perhaps take advantage of a less competitive market.
I would be remiss to not acknowledge that our experience is one shaped by the current state of the market, which is influenced by high interest rates, existing low inventory, and exponentially growing property values. We were very lucky to have the time and finances to be this over prepared and selective in our home buying experience.
So, you’re wondering… what did we do with all this data and knowledge? Are we off to explore the market this January, take our spreadsheets to open houses, and rubric every candidate we see?
Uh… no. We bought a house in December. It happens, you know?
Thank you for taking the time to read through an information professional’s process for buying a house. We are aware that we perhaps use spreadsheets as a coping mechanism, and I would recommend you don’t ask me about our working spreadsheets for planning a wedding. However, since others have asked, if you would find this data useful for your own house shopping journey we would be happy to pass it along – and have you join our dark, twisted world of formulas and rubrics!
