If you own a luxury home in the Catalina Foothills or Oro Valley, you have likely heard the term "The Season." Unlike the general housing market, which often peaks in summer, Tucson's high-end market operates on a unique calendar driven by weather and migration patterns. (To see how seasonal inventory levels affect your specific home value, check out our Ultimate 2026 Guide to Selling Your Home in Tucson.)
For sellers in the $800,000+ price point, listing at the wrong time can mean months of stagnation. Here is your strategic calendar for selling luxury real estate in 2026.
The "Snowbird Window" (January – April)
Status: PRIME SELLING TIME
The Why: The vast majority of cash buyers for Tucson luxury homes come from colder climates (Midwest, Canada, Pacific Northwest). They are physically here during these months. They want to buy a home while they are experiencing the weather.
The Strategy: List in mid-January. Your landscaping looks lush, the weather is perfect for open houses, and the buyer pool is deepest. This is when bidding wars happen in District 16 and Stone Canyon.
The "Shoulder Season" (May – June)
Status: GOOD FOR FAMILIES
The Why: As the snowbirds leave, the local buyers emerge. Families wanting to move into the Catalina Foothills School District (District 16) or Amphitheater District need to secure a home before the new school year starts in August.
The Strategy: If you miss the Snowbird window, pivot your marketing to highlight "Family Features" like proximity to BASIS or Catalina Foothills High School, rather than just "Lock and Leave" features.
The "Monsoon Lull" (July – September)
Status: CHALLENGING
The Why: It is hot. Luxury second-home buyers are not visiting Tucson in 105-degree heat. Listings that hit the market now often accumulate "Days on Market" (DOM), which can make the listing look "stale" by the time the buyers return in winter.
The Strategy: Unless you must sell, wait. Use these months to prep your home, paint, and handle repairs so you can launch fresh in October or January.
The "Early Bird" Window (October – December)
Status: RISING OPPORTUNITY
The Why: The weather cools down, and the early wave of winter visitors arrives. Inventory is often lower right before the holidays, meaning less competition for your home.
Summary: Timing is Equity
Selling a $1.5M estate in July vs. January can result in a significantly different final sales price. Don't fight the calendar; leverage it.
Curious if now is the right time for your specific property? Contact Oliver Realty for a timing analysis, or see our track record of sold luxury listings.
Click here to read the full transcript
(0:00) I'll give you a little bit of bonus info on this blog post about what our thoughts are for selling a house in the Catalina Foothills or Oro Valley. Any of the higher-end areas of Tucson, they definitely follow... or you can optimize for the windows based on the type of home that you have more than anything else.
(0:23) So, like the snowbird season—January, February, March, sometimes April depending upon the weather and the rest of the country—that's prime for condos, small single-family houses, townhouses. Just imagine people come out here and they spend a week or more in the sunshine and they're like, "Why don't I just get a place here?" That really motivates them, especially when they go back and they realize it's still 35 degrees. So we like to sell those type of properties at that time just because the buyer window is the best.
(1:00) I'd also say that if you can jump the other inventory—meaning if you have one of these type of homes, a smaller single-story or condo—you want to come on the market earlier in January or maybe even December. Because as the year rolls on—February, March, April—every day there's more houses that are coming on the market. And they're not only just random houses; they're people that have been saying, "Okay, after the holidays, after January, after whenever, I'm going to put my house up for sale." So these are typically the highest quality properties that you're competing with. So ideally, you would sell your house before then.
(1:44) Now as the year ticks on—May, June, and even July—now you're running into more of the houses with the pools. I can tell you right now, houses with pools just sell better when it's hot outside. It's not rocket science. You get somebody that's out there looking at homes, it's 105 degrees. Even though they don't really want the maintenance, the cost, everything that goes with a pool, it sure would be nice to have a pool when you come home from work. So that is a main driver. Properties with pools just do better generally in the hotter months.
(2:22) Now later in the summer—July, August, and early September—that's what we would call kind of like the leftovers. You get a lot of houses that tried to get on the market, they were late to market. A lot of the best buyers already bought something because they were motivated, right? They weren't waiting six months to buy; they were waiting six days or six weeks at the most. So you get into kind of a little bit of a lull there in July and August really. September starts to change a little bit. But you will have houses that are overpriced that are sitting on the market for tons and tons of days. You'll have buyers that are kicking tires and they're not the most serious buyers. Don't get me wrong, there are still some serious buyers, but it's just the quality of the buyer traffic is kind of lacking usually that time of year.
(3:17) And that wheels us back around to October, November, December. October is a great month for selling houses. I think about every type of house sells well in October. As you get into the holidays, again, your larger single-family homes—I'm talking four or five bedrooms, pools, three-car garages—those tend to taper off a little bit as that market just goes into holiday mode.
(3:43) But there's still lots of motivated people that are getting job transfers or they need a bigger house for whatever reason or they need a smaller house for whatever reason. And so those people that are looking at homes during the holidays are your most serious. They're the most ready to pull the trigger. Generally speaking, they're not negotiating as hard because they have some motivating factor that is pushing them out into the marketplace when they know that more than likely the inventory levels aren't as high. You have a lot of people that will take their home off the market during the holidays because they don't want to deal with people coming in and going through their house when they're trying to do holidays and have maybe family over or different events, parties that they have planned, and they just don't want that.
(4:31) So again, less inventory, but buyers still out, and that time of year will get you the most high-quality traffic. So anyways, that's a summary of kind of what the Tucson area home selling calendar looks like. If you have questions, I'm Michael Oliver. Call us or email us, we're pretty easy to find, and we'll see what we can do to help you out. Thank you so much for listening.
