Disclosed is a method and system for selecting a target base station for handover of a wireless communication device, where the selecting is based at least in part on a consideration of the target base station's typical control-plane signaling latency in a core network, and particularly based on a comparison of control-plane signaling duration of multiple candidate target base stations. For instance, where all of the base stations are configured to engage in a particular control-plane signaling transaction from time to time, at issue could be which of the candidate target base stations typically engages in that control-plane signaling transaction the quickest.