How Many Showings Does It Take to Sell a House on Average?

You’re about to put on a cup of tea and curl up with a good book when you get a text from your real estate agent: “Buyer wants to see the house tomorrow. Does 1 p.m. work for you?” You stop mid-relaxation to vacuum, clear countertops, and ask the kids to please put away their toys.

During the appointment, you take the dog to the park and come back an hour later to find the buyer’s car still in the driveway. So you walk around the block again … and again, until the coast is clear. Exasperated, you wonder: “Phew, I don’t know how much longer I can do this. How many showings on average does it take to sell a house?”

Expect to show your house 10 to 25 times to sell it

The number of showings required to sell your home will depend on factors such as the level of competition in the market (is there a surplus or lack of inventory?), whether the home is priced correctly, and if you’ve taken measures to fix up and stage the home to impress.

You could show the house just once or a handful of times and receive multiple offers. Or, your home could be on the market for six months or more, leading to several dozen showings. However, real estate experts estimate that the typical house will be shown somewhere between 10 and 25 times.

Showing averages

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the typical U.S. home spent 26 days on the market in April 2024, four days longer than the same period last year.

With this figure in mind, if you schedule one to three showings per week, you’ll likely show your house four to 11 times before it goes under contract. If you’re in a hot market, you might field five to seven showings a week, resulting in 19 to 26 showings before your listing goes from “active” to “pending.”

The NAR SentriLock Home Showings Report indicates that home showings were up 3% year-over-year in April 2024. The frequency of showings increased the most in the Northeast (+26%), followed by the South (+9%), and the West (+2%). The Midwest recorded the only decline in home showings at -4%.

Do you have to show your home?

When you’re selling a house while living in it, showings are one of the most inconvenient steps.

Sight-unseen offers from buyers have increased in recent years due to the development of virtual tours, video listings, and digital walkthroughs. However, this trend was more pronounced during the pandemic housing boom, when the competition was fierce, and travel was somewhat restricted.

Given the current market’s high home prices and elevated mortgage rates, today’s buyers want to be sure they’re making a sound investment — and that means touring properties in person.

“Yes, we have more closings without the buyer seeing the home but the reality is that they’d prefer to see it before they write an offer,” says Michelle Harrington, a top real estate agent based in Bellingham, Washington.

Is there any way to avoid showings?

You’re not alone in dreading the lack of privacy and added stress of showings, and there is an alternative.

In recent years, a group of companies called iBuyers have made it easier to sell your house almost completely online and without the need for showings. iBuyers use technology to value homes and provide near-instant offers on homes they’re willing to buy, typically those in good condition in areas with homogenous housing.

HomeLight offers iBuying services through our Simple Sale platform. If you’d prefer not to market your home, you can request a no-obligation cash offer from Simple Sale.

With Simple Sale, you can skip repairs, staging, and even showing your home. Tell us a bit about what type of home you’re selling, how much work it needs, and how soon you want to sell.

Then, we’ll present you with an all-cash offer within 24 hours. If you accept the offer, you can close the sale in as little as 10 days. You can also avoid the dreaded double move by selecting a move-out date that fits your schedule, up to 30 days after closing. We provide cash offers for homes all over the country in almost any condition.

Below, you can hear about how Baohan Wu, a seller who used Simple Sale to sell his high-rise apartment, closed within three and a half weeks and what he thought of the process overall.