Every year around this time, sellers who've been on the market since late summer start asking me the same question. Showings have slowed. The kids' schedules are packed. Family is coming in for Thanksgiving. And the idea of keeping the house showing-ready through December sounds exhausting.
So: should you pull it and relaunch in January?
Sometimes, yes. But the conventional wisdom — "nobody buys a house over the holidays" — doesn't match what actually happens in the Charleston market. Here's what the local data shows, and how I'd make the call.
Where the Charleston market stands right now
Here's where the tri-county market sat at the close of September 2026, compared with September 2025:
- Median sales price: $430,000, up 1.8%
- Closed sales: 1,486, up 5.5%
- Pending sales: 1,339, up 5.9%
- New listings: 2,005, down 0.8%
- Active inventory: 5,799, up 2.7%
- Average days on market: 53.5, up from 51.0
- Months supply of inventory: 3.76
- Percent of original list price received: 95.5%, essentially flat year over year
Read those together and you get a market that is genuinely healthy on the demand side. Closed sales and pending sales are both up more than 5% from a year ago. That is not a market where buyers have disappeared.
What has changed is the pace and the leverage. Homes are taking about two and a half days longer than they did last September, and sellers are netting 95.5% of their original asking price. Buyers are showing up — they're just taking their time and negotiating.
One more detail worth noting, because it sets up everything below: active inventory peaked in August at 5,998 and has already started falling. September came in at 5,799. New listings are down slightly year over year and well off their spring highs. The seasonal thinning has begun.
All of this is happening against a rate backdrop that keeps getting harder. Freddie Mac's weekly survey put the 30-year fixed at 7.28% as of October 1, 2026 — up from 7.03% the week before, and up from 6.34% a year earlier. The Fed raised rates in September for the first time since 2023 and signaled another increase is possible before year-end. The next Fed meeting is October 27–28.
What actually happened in Charleston last holiday season
The best way to answer this question isn't national advice — it's what our own MLS recorded month by month. Here's how last fall and winter played out across the tri-county region:
Buyer activity dipped, but didn't disappear. Homes going under contract ran 1,264 in September 2025, rose to 1,446 in October, then fell to 1,174 in November and 1,036 in December before rebounding to 1,408 in January. December was the slowest month for new contracts — and more than a thousand Charleston-area buyers still went under contract during it.
Competition dropped faster than buyers did. This is the part that matters most. New listings fell from 2,145 in October to 1,660 in November and bottomed at 1,360 in December — the lowest month of the year.
Run the comparison from the October peak:
- New contracts fell about 28% from October to December
- New listings fell about 37% over the same stretch
Sellers left the market faster than buyers did. Active inventory followed, dropping from 5,786 in October to 5,229 by December and 5,009 by January. If you stayed on, you were competing against a shrinking pool of homes for a buyer pool that shrank less.
Days on market climbed through winter — and peaked after the holidays. Average days on market ran 51.0 in September 2025, 53.6 in October, 51.9 in November, 55.5 in December, 58.2 in January, and 59.6 in February. The slowest stretch wasn't December. It was January and February — exactly when the "fresh start in the new year" crowd relaunches.
Negotiation was toughest in late fall. The percentage of original list price received bottomed at 94.9% in November 2025, then recovered to 95.3% in December and January.
Put it together and the story is clear: fewer buyers in December, but meaningfully fewer competing listings — and the worst days-on-market readings of the whole cycle land in January and February, not over the holidays.
Who's actually buying in Charleston in December
The buyers left in the market during the holidays tend to be the ones with a reason to move now, not someday:
- Relocation buyers with a job starting in January — and Charleston continues to draw steady relocation from the Northeast, Midwest, and beyond
- Military families with PCS orders into Joint Base Charleston, who don't get to choose their timeline
- Buyers visiting family over the holidays who use the trip to tour homes
- People with year-end financial motives — bonuses, a lease expiring, a closing they want wrapped up before tax season
- Buyers who lost a house in the fall and are ready to act
These are serious buyers. They're not touring your house because it's something to do on a Saturday. That's the quiet advantage of a holiday listing: fewer showings, but a higher share of them are real.
And Charleston has one advantage many markets don't: winter here is mild. Nobody is trudging through snow to see your house, and a sunny 60-degree December afternoon on a porch is a pretty good showing.
When staying on the market is the right call
I'd generally keep the house active if:
- It's priced correctly. If your price is aligned with recent closed sales, you want to be in front of the holiday buyer pool while competition is thin.
- It's in good showing condition. A clean, move-in-ready house stands out even more in December, when inventory is thin.
- You need to sell. A relocation deadline, a contingent purchase, or carrying two mortgages all argue for staying visible.
- It's only been on the market a few weeks. Pulling a fresh listing throws away momentum you've already paid for in photography and marketing.
When taking it off the market makes sense
Pulling the listing can absolutely be the right move if:
- It needs work you haven't done. If buyers keep flagging the same issue — the roof, the kitchen, a moisture problem — the holidays are a good window to fix it and relaunch with a better product.
- It's overpriced and stale. If you've had months of showings and no offers, the market has already given you its answer. Relaunching in January with a new price and new photos can reset how buyers see it. Just understand that the reset only works if something actually changes. Relisting the same house at the same price rarely fools anyone — and you'd be relaunching into the slowest days-on-market stretch of the year.
- Your household genuinely can't manage it. If you're hosting family for two weeks, have young kids home from school, or are dealing with something hard, your peace of mind has real value. A listing that's shown poorly because the house is chaotic can do more harm than a pause.
- You're not actually committed to selling yet. If you'd take a strong offer but aren't motivated, a pause costs you very little.
The middle ground most sellers don't know about
It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Stay on the market, but control the showings. You can block out specific dates — Thanksgiving week, the days around Christmas — and require advance notice at other times. Buyers can still see the listing, save it, and schedule for after the holiday.
Refresh the listing instead of pulling it. A price adjustment, new photos, or an updated description can bring the listing back to buyers' attention without a withdrawal.
Before you pull it, ask how the MLS will count your days on market. Many MLS systems track cumulative days on market across withdrawals and relists within a certain window, which means taking a house off for a few weeks may not give you the clean "new listing" reset you expect. I can walk you through how our MLS handles it for your specific listing.
Read your listing agreement. Temporarily withdrawing a listing is not the same as canceling the agreement, and the terms matter. Talk with your agent before making a change.
A few Charleston-specific holiday listing tips
- Photograph before you decorate — or be ready to update photos after. Christmas decorations in listing photos in March date the listing instantly.
- Decorate lightly for showings. Warm and welcoming, not so full that buyers can't see the rooms.
- Show off the outdoor space. Our mild winters are a selling point. Stage the porch, the patio, and the firepit.
- Keep it bright. Days are short. Turn on every light before showings.
- Keep the heat comfortable. A cold house reads as a drafty house, fair or not.
The timeline math
A home that goes under contract in mid-December typically closes in late January, given a standard financed closing timeline in South Carolina. That puts you moved and settled before the spring market even begins — and before the wave of new spring listings arrives to compete with you.
Waiting for spring has a real trade-off: more buyers, but also more sellers. In 2026, new listings ran above 2,700 in both March and April. You'll have much more competition for attention than you would in December.
And there's no guarantee the rate environment improves by spring. Rates have moved the wrong direction for sellers over the last several weeks, and the Fed has signaled another increase is possible this year. Rates could come down by spring — or they could go higher. Nobody knows, and I'd be skeptical of anyone who tells you they do.
What I'd say is this: if higher rates are shrinking your buyer pool, that argues for reaching the buyers who are qualified today rather than betting on a larger, cheaper buyer pool several months from now.
Numbers to verify before you rely on them
- The September 2026 figures above are pulled directly from Charleston Trident MLS as of October 8, 2026. CTAR's official September market report had not yet been published when I wrote this — their most recent posted report was August 2026. When the September report goes up, the headline numbers may differ slightly from mine. Aggregators and official reports use different cutoff dates, property-type groupings, and definitions of "pending," so small gaps are normal. For reference, CTAR's published August report showed a $431,500 median, 1,614 closed sales, and 51 days on market, against my MLS pull of $430,000, 1,608, and 51.8 for the same month.
- All figures cover the full tri-county MLS region across all residential property types. Individual neighborhoods can look very different — Mount Pleasant and Summerville are not the same market.
- Last year's seasonal pattern is one year of data. Seasonality is consistent in Charleston, but not identical year to year.
- Mortgage rates move weekly. The 7.28% figure is Freddie Mac's survey average as of October 1, 2026, for borrowers with strong credit and a standard down payment. Your quote will differ.
- Cumulative days-on-market rules vary by MLS. Confirm how yours handles withdrawals before pulling the listing.
The bottom line
Should you take your house off the market for the holidays? If it's priced right, showing well, and you need to sell, the data says stay on. Charleston buyers don't disappear in December — pending sales are running ahead of last year, and competing listings thin out faster than buyers do.
If the house needs work, is overpriced, or your household genuinely can't handle it, pulling it and relaunching with real changes is a legitimate strategy. Just make sure something actually changes when it comes back, and know that you'll be relaunching into January and February — the slowest-moving weeks on the calendar.
If you're on the market now and trying to decide, send me your address. I'll pull your showing activity, the comps, and how similar homes in your neighborhood did last winter, and give you a straight recommendation.
Article written by :
Dustin Guthrie, Realtor
(843) 697-7757
[email protected]
