Property guru Sarah Beeny is urging prospective sellers to get their houses market ready and up for sale ahead of the Christmas rush for a potential festive purchase.

Sarah Beeny property expert and presenter of popular Channel 4 television shows, including Property Ladder and Double Your House for Half the Money, says the figures don’t lie – the festive period is one of the busiest times of the year for house hunting.

With so many people having time off over the Christmas holidays, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s an upsurge in interest at this time of year. On Christmas Day in 2014, Rightmove recorded over a million house-hunters visiting the website. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense considering the amount of people that have new mobiles or tablets for Christmas presents and spend the day browsing the web. However, it’s worth noting that those searching on Christmas Day were actually serious about buying as over 10,000 people took time out from their turkey sandwiches to actually email agents on Christmas Day.

On Boxing Day it got even busier, with page views jumping to over 25 million – up 21% on 2012 – and views peaked on New Year’s Day, with over 38 million page views recorded.

Sarah Beeny says: People often think December’s a quiet time in the property market calendar and hold off selling until January, but these stats show that putting your house up for sale ahead of the festivities can pay dividends.

People who are looking to move have more time to search for properties and research the market over the festive period, so it is a great time to sell. You will get a head start on anyone not ready to make the most of the increased activity and generate mass interest in your property.

Most people think that this is a quiet time of year, but vendors who list their properties in late November and December get a significant amount of buyer interest over the festive period. People viewing properties in these months tend to be the serious ones, including people that need to buy for a particular reason, such as starting a new job in the New Year.

With an extended period of time off work and an iPad in hand, potential buyers’ search will have already started before the New Year. Presumably some buyers need a distraction from family get-togethers!

As a result, it is clear that marketing your property before Christmas can give you a real head-start, and expose your property to significant numbers of active buyers searching during the festive period.