# How to plan Q4 when buyers slow down but motivated sellers do not > The fourth quarter is not dead, it is filtered. Fewer people are looking, and the ones still out there have a reason that will not wait until spring. Strategy · 2026-10-09 · 5 min read Every October the same thing happens. Showings thin out, your phone gets quieter, and the agents around you start talking about the market being dead until spring. Some of them mentally check out around Thanksgiving and do not come back until the second week of January. That is a real opportunity, and not for the reason motivational posts suggest. It is not that hustling through the holidays makes you tough. It is that the fourth quarter has a genuinely different composition of buyers and sellers, and the strategy that works in May is the wrong one for November. ## Fewer people, better people Casual buyers stop looking in the fourth quarter. The person who was browsing on Sunday afternoons out of curiosity now has holidays, travel, and family taking up every weekend. That is most of the volume drop. Who is left is a very different group. Someone touring homes in the second week of December has a reason. A job start date, a lease ending, a family situation, a tax consideration, a house they already sold. Nobody spends a December Saturday looking at homes for fun. > Your showing count drops in the fourth quarter. Your percentage of showings that mean something goes up. Those are not the same metric and only one of them pays you. ## The sellers are the real story Buyers get most of the attention in this conversation, but the seller side is where the fourth quarter gets interesting. A seller who is still on the market in November has been through the spring, the summer, and the fall. They are tired, they have probably had at least one price conversation, and they are far more open to hearing what actually needs to change. And a seller who chooses to list in November is telling you something loud. They are not testing the market. Nobody tests the market during the holidays. They need to move, which makes them exactly the kind of client who transacts. This is why the fourth quarter is a listing-focused quarter for most agents. Expired and withdrawn listings from the fall are the single richest vein available, and [a win-back plan for expired listings](/blog/win-back-plan-for-expired-listings) is the way to work it. ## Where to actually spend the hours With fewer showings on the calendar, you have something you do not have in May: time. The mistake is letting that time evaporate into busywork and holiday drift. Point it at four things. 1. **Motivated sellers.** Expired listings, withdrawn listings, and anyone in your database who mentioned moving this year and did not. This is the highest value use of a quiet week. 2. **Your database, personally.** The holidays make personal outreach natural rather than awkward. A November note is welcome in a way a random June note is not. 3. **January's pipeline.** Every appointment you set in December becomes a January closing. The agents who have a strong first quarter built it in the fourth. 4. **The systems you never have time for.** The buyer FAQ page, the follow up sequence, the touch plan. Quiet weeks are when infrastructure gets built, and it pays for the entire next year. Notice that three of those four produce results in the next quarter, not this one. That is the correct trade for a fourth quarter, and it is the trade most agents refuse to make because it does not feel like closing business. ## The two-week rule around the holidays Be realistic about the calendar. Roughly the last two weeks of December are genuinely slow, and pretending otherwise leads to a frustrating stretch where you feel like you are failing at something that was never available. Plan for it explicitly. Do the heavy outreach in October and the first three weeks of November. Use the last stretch of December for the personal, no-pitch touches and for the planning work. Then come back hard in the first week of January, when almost everyone else is still easing in. Deciding this in October is what makes it a strategy instead of a slump. [Planning your slowest week](/blog/plan-your-slowest-week) covers how to use that quiet stretch deliberately. ## What to say when someone says they will wait until spring You will hear this constantly in the fourth quarter, from buyers and sellers both. Do not argue with it and do not pressure. Give them the honest trade-off and let them decide. For a seller: in the spring you will have more buyers and considerably more competition, because every neighbor who is thinking about it lists in April. Right now you have fewer buyers and almost no competition, and the ones looking are serious. Neither is wrong, they are just different bets. That answer is true, it respects them, and it makes you the person who explained the choice rather than the person who pushed. Half of them will still wait until spring, and they will call you in March. ## The fourth quarter plan Write this in early October, before the drift starts. A quarter you planned is a completely different experience from a quarter that happened to you. ```q4-plan.txt OCT 1 - NOV 20 THE PUSH expired + withdrawn listings worked ____ / week database calls, personal ____ / week goal: appointments set for Dec + Jan ____ NOV 21 - DEC 12 THE NARROW WINDOW serious buyers only. every showing means something. listing appointments with motivated sellers. keep the follow up cadence. do not coast. DEC 13 - JAN 1 THE QUIET STRETCH (plan for it) personal touches, no pitch, to the whole sphere BUILD: one system you never have time for [ ] buyer FAQ page [ ] follow up sequence [ ] touch plan [ ] next year's numbers JAN 2 BACK HARD, before anyone else prospecting plan already written in December WHEN THEY SAY 'WE'LL WAIT TILL SPRING' "In spring you get more buyers and a lot more competition. Right now, fewer buyers but almost no competition, and the ones looking are serious. Neither is wrong. They're different bets." MEASURE appointments set, not showings held. Q4 is a quarter you fill January with. ``` _Push through November 20, narrow through mid December, build during the quiet stretch, back hard on January 2._ The agents who have a strong January did not get lucky. They spent a quiet December setting appointments and building the thing they had been meaning to build since March, while everyone around them was talking about the market being dead. Write your version of this plan in the first week of October. The hard part is holding the outreach cadence through a month that gives you every reason to coast, which is exactly what [Coachmark](/#how-it-works) is built for: a clear move each morning and a check-in that notices when the week starts slipping. --- Coachmark · https://coachmark.io