How to Market a Listing During Major Holidays

Most agents slow down during Thanksgiving week, the stretch between Christmas and New Year's, and the days surrounding Memorial Day or Fourth of July. That slowdown is actually an opportunity. Buyers who are searching during a holiday are serious. They have cleared time in their schedule, they are not casually browsing, and they face less competition from other buyers who are also taking the week off.

The challenge is that standard marketing tactics lose effectiveness when people are traveling, distracted by family gatherings, and less likely to answer their phone. Your job is not to market harder during holidays, it is to market differently. The agents who figure that out do not just keep deals moving, they close listings that other agents cannot.

Understand Which Buyers Are Still Active

Holiday buyers fall into a few consistent categories. Relocating employees with a job start date do not get to pause their search because it is December 26. Investors looking to close before year-end for tax reasons are often most active in the final two weeks of December. Buyers whose previous deals fell through are also still actively searching because their timeline did not reset when the calendar flipped.

Knowing your likely buyer lets you write copy and choose channels that reach them specifically. A relocation buyer needs neighborhood context and school district details because they cannot drive the area on a whim. An investor needs cap rate context and gross rent multiplier, not lifestyle language about morning coffee on the patio. Pull your showing request data and ask your seller clients who has already toured so you can identify which buyer type is most active on that particular property.

Once you know who is still looking, adjust your MLS description and social captions to speak directly to their situation. A line like "Investors: this one closes before December 31" does more work than a generic call to action during a holiday week.

Adjust Your Distribution Strategy, Not Just the Listing

Email open rates are different during holidays depending on the specific holiday. Thanksgiving Day itself tends to perform poorly, but the Wednesday before and the Sunday after are both above average for open rates because people are traveling and checking their phones. Schedule your listing announcement email for Wednesday morning before a Thursday holiday, and send your follow-up on Sunday afternoon.

Social media consumption goes up during holidays because people are sitting in airports, waiting for family dinners to start, and filling dead time on their phones. Paid social ads during the week of Christmas can cost less than they do in peak fall market months because fewer advertisers are running campaigns. If you have a listing that needs movement, allocating even $150 toward a Facebook or Instagram carousel ad during that window can generate more impressions per dollar than the same spend in October.

Open houses require a different calculation. A Christmas Eve open house is almost always a waste of time. But a Saturday open house between December 27 and 30 can draw motivated buyers who are home from holiday travel and ready to make decisions before the new year. Talk to your seller about scheduling around the actual holiday versus the full holiday week.

Write Copy That Matches the Season Without Being Gimmicky

There is a version of holiday listing copy that reads like a greeting card and helps no one. Sentences about Santa stopping by or ringing in the new year in the new home belong in the trash. What actually works is copy that acknowledges the timing in a practical way without making the property description feel like a seasonal promotion.

For a December listing, you can note that the heating system was replaced in 2023 and the home has been consistently warm across multiple winters, which is a real detail that a buyer in cold weather cares about. For a summer holiday listing, note that the covered porch faces north and stays shaded from noon onward, or that the lot has mature trees that keep the rear yard 8 to 10 degrees cooler than the street. These are seasonal details that are true, specific, and useful rather than decorative.

Avoid staging the home with heavy holiday decor for photography if the photos will stay on the MLS past the holiday. A listing photo with a Christmas tree in the corner looks dated by January 3 and signals to buyers that the home has been sitting. If you are shooting new photos, shoot them without holiday staging so the images stay current through the winter market.

Keep Communication Moving When Everyone Else Goes Quiet

Sellers get anxious when their home sits during a holiday week with no activity. The agents who manage holiday listings well communicate proactively rather than waiting for their sellers to call. Send a brief update on Tuesday before a holiday weekend that covers what has happened in the past week, what you are doing during the break, and what the plan looks like for the week after. Three sentences is enough. The goal is to prevent the 7 PM Thursday call wondering why nothing is happening.

For buyers and buyer agents who have shown the property, a holiday is a natural follow-up moment. A short text or email on the day after a major holiday, when people are easing back into routine, can prompt a decision that stalled. Something direct like: "Wanted to check in after the holiday. Still a lot of interest here and the seller is motivated to move this week." That message sent on the 26th of December does more work than the same message sent on the 15th.

If you use a CRM, tag your active showing contacts on holiday listings and set a follow-up task for the day after the holiday. That task takes thirty seconds to create and it is the kind of systematic follow-up that converts stale interest into offers.

Set Expectations With Your Seller Before the Holiday Arrives

The most common holiday listing problem is not low buyer activity, it is a seller who was not prepared for the pace shift. Have a direct conversation before any major holiday that covers two things: what typical showing volume looks like during that window, and what your specific plan is to keep the listing visible. Sellers who understand the market cycle do not panic. Sellers who were told the listing would be flying and then see zero showings over a four-day weekend become difficult to work with.

If the listing is going live right before a major holiday, discuss whether it makes more sense to launch the week after. A listing that hits the MLS the day before Thanksgiving gets buried under holiday noise and may burn through its "new listing" momentum before serious buyers see it. In most markets, waiting five days to launch after a holiday will outperform a holiday-week launch by a meaningful margin.

When the timing is not flexible, for example when a seller needs to close by year-end, build a written marketing plan that covers each day of the holiday window. Specific ad spend, specific email send dates, specific social post schedule. A seller who sees a concrete plan does not need reassurance every two days. Montaic can generate all the content pieces for that plan, from the MLS description to the social captions to the email copy, from a single property input so you spend your time on strategy rather than writing.