A stale listing in a slow season is a different animal entirely.

A house that sits unsold for a couple of months in a busy season tells buyers something is wrong with it. The same house sitting through a slow season tells them much less, and sellers who panic at the wrong time end up cutting a price that did not need cutting.

Property moves with the calendar, and the weeks around the December holidays are thin, with offices closing and conveyancers away. The real risk of a slow season is staleness of a different kind. The photos were taken months ago, with the lawn green and the pool clear, and now a buyer arrives to a brown lawn and a pool gone murky. The listing still says the garden is beautiful. That gap between picture and visit does more damage than the weeks on the market ever did.

So the useful work in a slow month is keeping the listing true, with fresh photos and a description that matches what a buyer will actually find. A price cut made out of nerves in December is often a price cut nobody needed.