Two Clocks on the Home Search: NAR’s 10 Weeks and Zillow’s 3-to-4 Months

Ten weeks is NAR’s midpoint for active searching, not a schedule. The only published distribution runs on a different clock — Zillow’s total elapsed time from first search to purchase — and it stretches from under a month to past six.

The ten-week number, and what it actually counts

The figure comes from the 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, published November 4, 2025. The wording in NAR's own highlights is flat: "The number of weeks a buyer searched for a home remained steady at 10 weeks compared to last year." The sample is 6,103 buyer responses covering closings between July 2024 and June 2025, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.25 percent at 95 percent confidence. It is an annual survey of people who already bought, asked to recall how many weeks they searched. That makes it a measure of active searching, and it is a median — the middle value, not an average and not a forecast.

What makes the flatness interesting is how much else in the same report moved. In the 2025 edition the first-time buyer share fell to 21 percent, the lowest since 1981. All-cash buyers hit 26 percent, an all-time high, against a figure that ran under 10 percent from 2003 to 2010. The median first-time buyer age reached 40. Median seller tenure was 11 years. And 56 percent of buyers named finding the right property as the hardest part of the process — not financing, not paperwork. The population behind the median has changed considerably. The median itself has not.

The one distribution we actually have

A median tells you where the middle sits. It tells you nothing about how wide the thing is. Zillow's Consumer Housing Trends Report 2025 publishes the full spread, and the spread is the part a buyer can actually use. Fielded April through September 2025 with roughly 10,200 successful-buyer respondents, it breaks out: under one month, 11 percent; one to under two months, 18 percent; two to under three, 19 percent; three to under four, 15 percent; four to under six, 15 percent; six months or more, 22 percent.

Read that as a shape rather than a ranking. The biggest bucket is the open-ended one at the far right: 22 percent, more than one buyer in five, spent half a year or longer. Among the fixed-width buckets the biggest is two to three months, at 19 percent. There is no modal experience here worth calling typical. If you are planning against a number, plan against a range.

Source: Zillow Consumer Housing Trends Report 2025 (buyers), fielded April–September 2025, approximately 10,200 successful-buyer respondents. This series measures total elapsed time from first search to purchase, which is a different measure from NAR's active-search weeks below and should not be compared directly to it.

Two lenses, not a discrepancy

NAR says 10 weeks. Zillow's median is 3 to 4 months. It is tempting to treat that as a gap somebody needs to explain, and it is not one. NAR's question is about active searching, answered once a year by buyers who have closed. Zillow's question is about the whole elapsed stretch between deciding to look and signing — including the month you stopped to rethink your budget, the six weeks you waited for spring listings, the pause while a lease ran out. Different instrument, different panel, different season, different wording.

Neither one is wrong, and averaging them would produce a number that measures nothing. The useful move is to know which clock you are on. If you are asking how many weeks you will spend genuinely hunting, the NAR figure is the closer analogue. If you are asking when you will have keys, the Zillow distribution is the one to plan around — and its right tail is long.

Four flat years, and a longer history behind them

The weeks series is short and notably boring: 8 weeks in 2020, 8 in 2021, then 10 in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Four consecutive readings at the same value. Further back, NAR has said buyers searched "over 12 weeks" during the 2009 to 2013 stretch, but per-year values for that period are not published in the highlights, so the chart below starts where the reliable annual figures do.

Source: NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 2020–2025 editions. Each point is that edition's median weeks searched for buyers who closed in the prior 12 months, so the 2025 point covers July 2024 through June 2025. Per-year values before 2020 are not published in NAR's highlights; the 2009–2013 period is described only as "over 12 weeks."

Fewer homes, and a weeks figure that stopped falling

The two series do not cover the same window, and over the long run they do not diverge. NAR describes 2009–2013 searches as running "over 12 weeks"; by 2020 the median was 8. Homes viewed fell over that same long stretch too, from 12 in 2009 and 2011 to 8 in 2021. What is distinctive is only the short recent window: since 2020 the weeks median has ticked up from 8 to 10 and stayed there, while the homes-viewed series has no published readings after 2021 to compare it against.

One plausible read covers one side of that picture. Internet use in the home search climbed from 80 percent in 2006 to 95 percent or more by 2021, and of the 8 homes the typical 2021 buyer counted as viewed, 3 were seen only online — a virtual tour, a video, or an online open house, with no in-person visit at all. Online pre-screening is the obvious candidate explanation for the smaller count; treat it as an inference from those two facts rather than a finding. That changes what "viewed" means in the 2021 figure, and it is worth remembering before comparing 8 in 2021 against 12 in 2009.

Two gaps belong in plain sight. Homes-viewed data for 2022 and 2023 is not available, and that hole should stay a hole. And the median of 7 homes viewed that circulates widely in summaries of the 2025 edition could not be confirmed in NAR's own published highlights — so it is flagged here as unconfirmed and not used anywhere else in this article.

What a buyer should do with the spread

Three things fall out of this cleanly. First, budget a range, not a date. No published distribution exists for NAR’s active-search weeks, so the honest planning input is Zillow’s elapsed-time spread: 22 percent of buyers took six months or more from first search to purchase. That is a different clock from NAR’s ten weeks, and a plan built on a single point estimate from either one has no slack in it. Second, look at where the search now starts. In Zillow’s 2025 data, 52 percent of buyers said their first step was contacting an agent, while only 4 percent started with an in-person tour; the most common second step was an in-person tour, at 28 percent. Those are 2025 readings with no prior-year comparison published here. And 94 percent said an agent helped them get into or tour a for-sale property at least once. Screens narrow the list. Doors still decide it.

Third, expect it to feel harder than the timeline suggests. Zillow found 45 percent of buyers described the process as at least somewhat stressful. Zillow separately reports stress running higher among first-time buyers, 66 percent, than among repeat buyers, 56 percent. Those two shares are a different cut and do not average to the 45 percent figure, so read them as two findings rather than a total and its halves. Meanwhile Zillow puts the median number of offers submitted at 1 in 2025, down from 2 across 2022 and 2023. Separately, 56 percent of NAR’s buyers named finding the right property as the hardest part of the process. Two surveys, two questions — but read together they point the same way, toward the search rather than the bidding as the part that hurts.

Which is where the practical question sits: how quickly can you get from a listing that looks right on a screen to standing inside it. That gap is what Tourzy is built to shorten — whether you tour with your agent, who 88 percent of NAR's buyers used, or on your own. The data does not say every buyer should see fewer homes or more. It says the screening step is now doing real work, and the step after it is the one that settles the question.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a home search actually take?

It depends on which clock you mean. NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers puts the median active search at 10 weeks, and states that it remained steady at 10 weeks compared to last year. Zillow's 2025 Consumer Housing Trends Report measures something different, the total elapsed time from starting the search to purchase, and lands at a median of 3 to 4 months. Both are medians, which means half of buyers finished faster and half took longer.

Why do NAR and Zillow report different search lengths?

They are not measuring the same thing. NAR asks buyers, through an annual survey of people who already bought, how many weeks they searched, which captures active searching. Zillow surveys about 10,200 successful buyers, fielded April through September 2025, and captures total elapsed time from the first search to the purchase, including the pauses. Treat them as two lenses on the same process rather than a discrepancy that needs reconciling.

What share of buyers search for more than six months?

In Zillow's 2025 data, 22 percent of buyers reported six months or more between starting their search and buying. At the other end, 11 percent finished in under a month. The largest single bucket is the open-ended one: 22 percent took six months or more. Among the fixed-width buckets the biggest is two to three months, at 19 percent. No single bucket holds even a quarter of buyers, which is why the median describes the middle of the distribution rather than a typical experience.

How many homes do buyers look at before they buy?

The confirmed NAR figures show a long decline. The median was 12 homes in 2009 and again in 2011, the historical peak, and roughly 9 in the 2004 to 2006 period. It was 9 in 2020 and 8 in 2021, which NAR itself called the lowest since it began tracking in 1987. Figures for 2022 and 2023 are not available, and a widely circulated median of 7 homes for 2025 does not appear in NAR's own published highlights.

Has the home search gotten faster now that so much of it happens online?

Not by the weeks measure, at least not recently. Homes viewed fell from a median of 12 in 2009 and 2011 to 8 in 2021, and 3 of those 8 were seen only online through a virtual tour, video or online open house. Weeks searched fell over the long run too — NAR describes 2009–2013 as over 12 weeks against 8 weeks in 2020 — but since 2020 it has gone the other way, to 10 in 2022, where it has stayed through 2025. Online pre-screening is the usual explanation offered for the drop in homes viewed; the weeks figure is a separate series.

Sources: NAR, Highlights from the 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (published November 4, 2025; 6,103 buyer responses covering July 2024–June 2025) and NAR's summary of the same edition; Zillow Consumer Housing Trends Report 2025 (buyers); homes-viewed history from RISMedia summarizing NAR research. Note on scope: homes-viewed figures for 2022 and 2023 are not published, and per-year weeks-searched values before 2020 are not in NAR's highlights.