Winter Homebuying Advantages Explained

Ready for a home search with less noise and more truth? We dive into why winter is the smartest season to buy and how cold weather turns every house into an open book. With fewer competing buyers and more motivated sellers, you gain leverage on price, timing, and repairs—while the low temperatures reveal what glossy listing photos won’t.

We walk through the exact checks that matter when the mercury drops. Frost patterns in the attic expose ventilation problems and hidden moisture. Long furnace runtimes hint at insulation gaps or system inefficiency, and seasonal utility bills help benchmark performance. We explain how a 20-degree temperature difference supercharges thermal imaging, letting you spot missing insulation at rim joists, cold corners behind drywall, and leaky window assemblies that you’d never notice in spring. You’ll also learn why some hairline cracks and truss uplift are normal winter movement, and which crack patterns raise a flag.

Safety gets its moment too. If a wood-burning fireplace is on your wishlist, a chimney scope is non-negotiable before you strike a match. We share practical advice on timing that inspection, negotiating responsibility, and staying safe until the flue is cleared. Outside, we talk curb appeal realism: snow covers weeds and patchy grass, letting you focus on the fundamentals like grading, roof condition, and drainage instead of being swayed by landscaping. Add in seasonal perks—more responsive lenders, off-peak mover rates, and service providers eager to work—and you’ve got a powerful strategy to buy smarter, not harder.

If you’re weighing whether to wait for spring, this conversation might change your mind. Subscribe for more buyer-savvy insights, share with a friend who’s house hunting, and leave a review to tell us your biggest cold-weather home question.

Chapters

• 0:01 Cold Weather Banter
• 0:32 Why Winter Favors Buyers
• 1:20 Attic Ventilation And Frost Clues
• 3:46 Heating Performance And Utility Checks
• 6:10 Negotiation Power In Winter
• 9:30 Air Leaks, Insulation, And Thermal Imaging

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:01

Hey everybody, it's Jim and Laura here, and it is cold out. Laura hates cold.

SPEAKER_01: 0:08

I hate winter.

SPEAKER_02: 0:09

I l I like winter. I like the fruit. I know because you're a sick sick man. Sexy man?

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

Sick, sick man, because you like the cold.

SPEAKER_02: 0:18

I I heard definitely. But anyway, I like snow, plain the snow. I mean it's it's to me it's refreshing. You can do deliver cold exposure and not get wet. It's healthy. I'm not frosty the snowman.

SPEAKER_01: 0:32

I don't care.

SPEAKER_02: 0:32

But for people buying houses, I I think this is the best time of year to buy a house. A lot of people wait like, nope, we're not gonna look for a house till springtime, and people don't list their house until springtime and summer.

SPEAKER_01: 0:48

That's why you should buy it. There's no competition.

SPEAKER_02: 0:51

Yeah, winter's fantastic. First of all, there's lower competition to buy the house.

SPEAKER_01: 0:57

So you especially in weather like this when nobody wants to go out, you know, like me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02

We had a snowstorm, so everybody you know stayed home last weekend. Nobody looked. If you went out and actually had an agent out went out with you who's gonna brave that that weather, you're probably gonna be the only person putting offers in.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19

That is awesome. But here's one thing that I as a home inspector, that winter time is like a stress test on the house.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

Why is that, honey?

SPEAKER_02: 1:30

Because during the during the summer, during any other time of the year, one of the things we look for is attic ventilation. Because you have if you have too little attic ventilation, you can get uh moisture buildup, and that leads to condensation, and then that can lead to mold, rotten, all kinds of issues. We always look for roof leaks, which we can find in the attic typically. But during the winter time, this is where some of the ventilation issues become very evident because often inside the attic, you really can't see if the vents, especially the soft vents, are completely blocked. It's hard to see that sometimes. During the winter time, especially when it's in the like right now, it's 14 degrees outside, but if when it's like this cold, like below 30s, in the 20s, especially when you get down to the teens and single digits, any type of ventilation, I mean uh like heat loss into the attic space or lack of ventilation of the attic, it's far easier that you will see frost up in the attic.

SPEAKER_01: 2:41

Yeah, that's that's a wild picture. If you've never seen that, it's cool. It's bad. It does look cool.

SPEAKER_02: 2:48

It does look well, well, you can have a decently vented attic space, but when it's like single digit and you got a little bit of moisture come up through, and the moisture will come up through your drywall, it will come up through the little cracks in your attic space, and when it touches the very cold underside of the roof or the nails that are going through the roof, you're gonna get frost. It's because the moisture is gonna condense because it's cold enough. But this is the worst uh I don't want to say worst time for the house, but is the most likely time for condensation to build up in the attic space because of the moisture issues.

SPEAKER_01: 3:24

It's a stressful time for the house.

SPEAKER_02: 3:27

So, yeah. So if you're doing a house and you get inspect and there's really not a ton of frost up in the attic space, it's performing well because this is the hard time of the year. You're never gonna see frost spring, summer, fall up in your attic space because it's not gonna get cold enough really for that to happen. Also, if you're at a house and it's cold as it is and the furnace constantly runs, all right. That gives you a little information about the insulation of the house or the efficiency of the furnace. A little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01: 3:58

And that also means you should probably check on the utility bills and find out what they are at the different seasons.

SPEAKER_02: 4:04

Yep. So this is great test great to make your stress test the the heating system, your attic ventilation, your walls, your there's probably gonna be little tiny cracks in the walls because the house dries up because the dry air and wood shrinks a little bit. So you get a little bit of movement cracks. If there's no big movements or anything diagonal, it's just normal cracking, not a big deal. Our old house, man, we get a crack in the office there every winter.

SPEAKER_01: 4:36

Top of the like where the ceiling and the top of the wall met.

SPEAKER_02: 4:40

Yep, right there.

SPEAKER_01: 4:40

And it would just like a little gap. What's that?

SPEAKER_02: 4:42

Truss uplift, truss uplift, just because the design truss is that will lift up a little bit and makes that little gap between the wall, the roof wall junction. Not a big deal. It's it's that movement is normal, and you could usually hide that in some ways.

SPEAKER_00: 4:57

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SPEAKER_02: 5:22

But when it's off season for you to buy a house, you have more negotiation power because the sellers they know there's there's not much competition for their house.

SPEAKER_01: 5:35

Well, and let's face it, if the house is for sale in the wintertime, there's a need there. They need to offload it at this point in time. So they're going to be more likely, you know, like if the house is in contract to work with you, because they need to sell it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:49

And they actually probably are more motivated sellers.

SPEAKER_01: 5:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 5:52

If they waited till summer to list their house or late spring, okay, they probably got some time that they can work with. You're selling in the winter, you're motivated.

SPEAKER_01: 6:04

So first that's my assumption.

SPEAKER_02: 6:06

I think winter is the fantastic time of the year to buy a thing, buy the house. Also, down in the basement, if you feel cold air coming in from the top of the foundation where it meets meets the bandboard, yeah, where the joys meet, you can feel air filtration. This is a great time of year to be able to get the floor.

SPEAKER_01: 6:24

Shouldn't that have insulation there?

SPEAKER_02: 6:25

It should. It should. And they all don't. And I've I've seen some that have insulation, but you can feel the wind coming in.

SPEAKER_01: 6:32

Oh.

SPEAKER_02: 6:32

So this is also a great time of year to have thermal imaging done. Because ideally, and you can't control this, but there should be at least a 20 degrees difference between outside and inside the house to look for missing insulation or um air leakage. This is a perfect time of year to do that.

SPEAKER_01: 6:52

Another thing that they should check is if the house has any wood-burning fireplaces and get a chimney scope done, which, you know, always safe, always better to be safe than sorry with the chimney. If you don't have it scoped, if you don't have it looked at, don't use it.

SPEAKER_02: 7:08

Don't use until you get to get it looked at.

SPEAKER_01: 7:10

Yeah, I mean, if you're, you know, if you're in a negotiation and you know the chimney's the last thing, that's fine. Don't don't get it scoped, but don't use it until you know it's safe. We're more than happy to come back out and and scope, or you know, there's any number of chimney companies that could come out and do a cleaning as they're you know, as they're looking at it and scoping it. You've you've got options with that.

SPEAKER_02: 7:33

Oh, yeah. And a lot of people they don't care about the fireplace. Some people would never use it, they don't care.

SPEAKER_01: 7:39

Which really surprises me because I love fireplaces and watching the fire.

SPEAKER_02: 7:44

Well, we built our house, basically built around this design of a fireplace that we built in because it because the weight of it is definitely more than most. And here's another thing during the wintertime, curb appeal. All right, some people have really bad yards. Oh, that's true. Lots of weeds, this time of year, every yard is white with all the snow, which I like. Laura hates, but I think it's I think it's I think it's nice. I like it. But anyway, to me, it's if if one person has a beautiful yard and somebody else doesn't, you know what? Some people go, no, I don't want the house of the ugly yard. Which you can change easily. Well, not easily, but you can change within a year or two easily. But beautiful white lar yard like everyone, so even playing field based upon the uh so snow is the equalizer. Snow is the equalizer for curb appeal. It really is. It really is as far as like vegetation goes. But no, if you're thinking about buying a house and you're like, ah, it's winter, I don't want to move. Forget, don't worry about the moving. There will be nice days. That's why you hire other people to do it for you.

SPEAKER_01: 8:57

And since it's winter, they would probably be more willing to cut rates for you, also, just so they can get some business.

SPEAKER_02: 9:03

True. Yeah, there are more people, more service business willing to give deals. Yes. And while related to that, lenders, they're not as busy, they can tend to you a little bit faster. I remember hearing in the summer during the really busy buying season that lenders would not get back in touch with the with their clients very quickly because they were just so swamped. Now, nope, they're gonna answer to your calls pretty quickly, at least they should. So, anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 9:37

Winter, perfect time to buy message.

SPEAKER_02: 9:38

Yeah, winter the moving sucks, but that's okay. It's it's so hot, it's oh high, it will be nice in about two weeks, and you just kind of plan that out, hopefully. And besides, if you do have movers, they're gonna carry the heavy stuff for you. So I would not worry about it. So I think that's about it on this one. But uh, yeah, I there's nothing wrong with winter. No, it is the stress test for the house. If you if you have if you're crazy cold and you and you're walking through the house during your home inspection and none of the rooms are like crazy cold compared to the others, that's a good sign, too. That's a good sign, and you can't tell that during during the summer. You really cannot tell that any other time of the year, or the how much wind's whipping through the windows.

SPEAKER_01: 10:25

Do you remember our first house? Oh my lord. The curtains blow the curtains would literally blow in the wind.

SPEAKER_02: 10:36

Oh, yeah, oh yeah, and the windows would rattle.

SPEAKER_01: 10:38

I did not know that until winter.

SPEAKER_02: 10:40

Those those were the original windows from like 1880s at the newest. They held up very well. In fact, I I back when we replaced them, we kept those, and I made you a solar dehydrator with one or two, with one of those, and then I got some others that I'm gonna paint.

SPEAKER_01: 10:57

I'm gonna do some some sun catcher painting with them in the summer.

SPEAKER_02: 11:01

That sounds like a good idea. But anyway, listen, buy buy a house during winter, man, do it. Don't wait till you got a crowd of people in your way.

SPEAKER_01: 11:11

Oh, yeah, you don't want that.

SPEAKER_02: 11:12

Yep, and it is a good good time of the year to trust trust test the house. All right, thank you, everybody.

SPEAKER_01: 11:17

Bye bye.