From summer to spring: a shift in US housing market seasonality

Hu, Yihan and Selcuk, Cemil ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2267-604X 2026. From summer to spring: a shift in US housing market seasonality. arxiv.org arXiv. 10.48550/arXiv.2605.21358

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Abstract

The US housing market exhibits pronounced seasonal cycles: prices and sales rise through spring, peak in summer, and decline through autumn and winter. Since 2021, this pattern has shifted earlier in the calendar year, with spring strengthening at the expense of the traditional summer peak. A leading explanation for housing market seasonality is the search-and-matching model of Ngai and Tenreyro (2014), which links these cycles to household mobility through a thick-market mechanism. In this framework, periods with higher mobility generate thicker markets and higher prices and transaction volumes. Viewed through this lens, a shift in the seasonal cycle of prices and sales raises the question of whether the timing of household moves has changed. Did residential mobility shift earlier in the calendar year after 2021?...

Item Type:	Working paper
Date Type:	Published Online
Schools:	Schools > Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	arXiv
ISSN:	2331-8422
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 May 2026
Date of Acceptance:	1 May 2026
Last Modified:	27 May 2026 16:29
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187193

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