Why Every Homewood Seller Needs Navy's 2026 Home Schedule Before They Book a Showing

A seller in Germantown-Homewood pencils in a Saturday open house for the third week of October. Sign in the yard, flyers on the counter, sellers cleared out for the afternoon. What they didn't check first: October 24 is a Navy home game, and it's Homecoming, which means the crowd, the parking crunch, and the street closures around Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium will be heavier than a typical Saturday, not lighter. The open house still happens. It just happens inside a version of the neighborhood that doesn't look like the one in the listing photos.

That is the piece of information most sellers in this neighborhood are missing, not because it's hidden, but because nobody has connected the football schedule to the listing calendar out loud. Homewood sits at the stadium's eastern edge, close enough that the Germantown-Homewood Community Association's own site calls the stadium a fixture "at our eastern perimeter" and notes that Navy typically plays six to eight home games a year. For 2026, the American Conference schedule settled the number at five home Saturdays: September 5 against Towson, October 10 against Tulsa, October 24 against North Texas as Homecoming, November 7 against Temple, and November 21 against Memphis. Every one of those dates lands inside the exact window when Annapolis real estate traditionally sees its heaviest fall traffic.

The mechanism, not just the inconvenience

The friction isn't the noise of a Saturday crowd. It's three specific, documented rules that change how a house shows and how a street behaves on those five days.

First, the march-on. Thirty minutes before kickoff, the Brigade of Midshipmen marches into the stadium, and Taylor Avenue closes from Rowe Boulevard to Gate 5 for the duration, according to the Naval Academy Athletics fan guide. If a showing or a photographer's arrival happens to fall in that window, the usual route in from West Street isn't available.

Second, overnight parking. The stadium's own parking operation states plainly that on the night before a home game, signs go up prohibiting overnight parking in the lots, and any car left overnight is towed.

That single rule is the one sellers are least likely to know about until it costs them.

Leave a car in the wrong spot the Friday night before a Navy home Saturday and the fee is $255 for the tow plus $25 a day in storage, billed by JP Towing Service LLC.

Third, residential permit zones. The streets ringing the stadium are largely residential, and permit-only parking is enforced more visibly on game days than on an ordinary Tuesday. A contractor's truck, a stager's van, or an out-of-town buyer's rental car parked on the street for a Friday walkthrough ahead of a Saturday game can get caught in the same enforcement sweep meant for tailgaters.

None of this is exotic. It's published, it's predictable, and it happens on exactly five known dates a year. The problem is that almost nobody plans a listing calendar around it, which means the friction shows up as a surprise instead of a line item.

What five Saturdays actually cost a listing calendar

Here's where the five dates fall against a typical fall selling season in Annapolis:

Five Saturdays scattered across eleven weeks, right in the middle of the September-through-November stretch when Annapolis sellers usually schedule their best open houses. That's not a reason to avoid listing in the fall. It's a reason to build the calendar around the five dates that are already public instead of discovering them the week of.

For a seller, that means treating each of those five Saturdays the way you'd treat a known street closure or a scheduled utility repair: plan the showing for Sunday instead, confirm the photographer isn't shooting the exterior during the march-on window, and warn anyone driving in for a private tour that they'll want to park in the driveway rather than on the street. None of this requires canceling anything. It requires knowing the date is coming.

The same proximity that creates the friction is already a selling point

Here's the part that changes how a Homewood seller should talk about the stadium, rather than just plan around it. Walkability to Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium isn't only a scheduling headache five Saturdays a year. It's already a marketed amenity the rest of the time.

Short-term rental listings show this cuts both ways. One Homewood cottage marketed as a vacation rental leads with its distance to the rest of the neighborhood, a mile to Church Circle and West Street and a mile and a half to City Dock, treating that walkability as the headline feature rather than an afterthought. Other short-term rentals elsewhere in Annapolis go further and market walking distance to Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium directly, proof that proximity to game day already functions as a selling point somewhere in this market rather than only as a scheduling problem. Commissioning Week, the Naval Academy's graduation stretch that falls right before Memorial Day, is a second example of how the Academy's calendar shapes demand in this part of Annapolis, on a schedule that has nothing to do with football.

That means a Homewood listing can carry two honest, factual lines in the same description: a note on how close the property sits to Church Circle, West Street, and the stadium grounds, and a note that game-day parking rules apply on a short, published list of dates each fall. Buyers who value walkability to downtown and the Naval Academy waterfront are the same buyers who won't be surprised by five Saturdays of increased foot traffic, especially once they know exactly when those Saturdays fall.

What this means if you're listing this fall

If a Homewood listing is going on the market before the end of November, the five dates above are worth pinning to the calendar before the sign goes in the yard. A few practical adjustments follow from that:

Schedule open houses for Sundays during the September-through-November stretch, or for Saturdays that fall outside the five listed dates. Confirm with any photographer or stager that their access window doesn't overlap with the 30-minute march-on closure on Taylor Avenue. If a showing has to happen on a home Saturday, brief the agent and any visiting buyers on where to park, since street spots near the stadium fill early and permit enforcement is heavier than usual. And in the listing copy itself, state the walking distance to Church Circle, West Street, and the stadium grounds as a feature alongside the other walkability points, the same framing local vacation rentals already use to sell that same access.

None of this is disclosure in the legal sense. It's logistics, and logistics are exactly the kind of local knowledge that separates a smooth fall closing from a showing calendar built on guesswork.

FAQ

Does every Navy home game close Taylor Avenue? Yes, for the same short window each time. The closure runs from Rowe Boulevard to Gate 5 for roughly 30 minutes before kickoff, tied to the Brigade of Midshipmen's march-on, according to the Naval Academy Athletics fan guide.

Is permit parking enforced on non-game weekends too? The streets around the stadium carry standard residential parking rules year-round. What changes on the five home Saturdays is the intensity of enforcement and the volume of visitors competing for the same spaces, not the existence of the rule itself.

Should a seller mention the stadium's home schedule in the listing? There's no requirement to, but it's a reasonable, factual detail to include alongside walkability points, since other short-term rentals in Annapolis already market stadium proximity as a feature and a buyer will find the schedule anyway.

If you're weighing a fall listing in Homewood, or trying to figure out how the neighborhood's calendar affects your own timeline, Liz Dooner can walk through the specifics with you, from staging around game-day logistics to pricing your home against what similar Homewood properties have actually closed for this year. A complimentary home valuation is a good place to start.