When pulling house off market, how long is long enough?
By Jessica Swesey, Friday, February 15, 2008.Bookmarking Sites
How do you define "days on market" for property listings? It would seem that number would be a pretty simple one to track -- uh, the number of days since the home was first listed for sale?
Wrong. The answer is "it depends."
Back in 2006, Inman News looked at some brewing controversy over days on market as it pertained to a practice known as "re-listing," in which agents pull listings off the market and re-list in order to reset the number of days on market to zero and make the listing look newer in the eyes of other agents and buyers.
That period between pulling a listing and putting it back on the market could be called "days off the market," or "time out." And this week, a related issue has come up in Washington, D.C., where a local business journal is reporting that MRIS, the major MLS serving the area, has decided to decrease from 180 to 90 the number of days a property is required to be off the market before the MLS resets the days on market number to zero when it is re-listed.
The Washington Business Journal quotes a local buyer's broker, Stephen Israel, as saying, "It's absolutely a knee-jerk reaction to the market… It's great for the seller who can't sell their house, they get a clean slate in 90 days instead of 180." Israel is president of Buyer's Edge in Bethesda, Md.
MRIS told the Journal it was simply part of an ongoing policy review and that the 180 days was an arbitrary figure selected in 1993.
Regardless, days on market is a contested issue among industry participants. In some cases, agents have said this information can easily be misinterpreted and penalizes sellers by making the house seem like there's something wrong with it. Other brokers, such as ZipRealty, display the information on every listing they have data for. (See reader's reactions to the topic of re-listing.)
What do readers think? Is this a move that aims to mask market conditions in which homes may be extremely difficult to sell? Or is this change simply adjusting the off-market period to a more reasonable time frame?
Remember that we're in an era of increased demand for transparency, and while moves like this may not intend to deceive, they could be interpreted that way.
UPDATE: A local Washington, D.C. area Realtor, Heather Elias, has shared more details about the MRIS change in the comments section below.
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Submitted by Anonymous on February 15, 2008 - 11:37am.
I'm a Realtor who operates within the area that MRIS serves. It should be noted that while the "Days On Market for Property" (DOMP) policy just changed, in MRIS it also shows a "Days on Market for MLS Number" (DOMM) number too. So for each listing, there are two numbers. DOMP shows the total number of days a property has been marketed (now, without being taken off for more than 90 cumulative days between listings); while DOMM shows the number of days with that specific listing number.
MRIS is also set up so that agents can easily click on a property's history from the listing, so you can see how many different times it has been listed, whether those listings were expired, withdrawn, or sold.
From a consumer's standpoint, I'm not sure which of the numbers (if any) show on sites that consumers are searching; but any agent can easily see the true picture of how long a home has been for sale. The policy change really makes no difference; relisting a property doesn't ever change the DOMP to zero, just the DOMM.
The two number system was put into place, I believe, to make sure that the 'relist to get to zero' technique didn't mislead local buyers about the actual days on market.
Submitted by Anonymous on February 15, 2008 - 12:46pm.
Heather -- thanks for providing some more details on this. From what you say, sounds like this was meant to clear confusion about days on market.
Submitted by Anonymous on February 15, 2008 - 1:44pm.
Jessica-- Yes; thankfully MRIS has been very responsive to fixing loopholes and safeguarding the consumer from misleading information. Given the number of listings they manage, that's no small feat! =)
I know every MLS system does things differently, but I like that I can easily research the past history on a property; takes away the 'shades of gray' and makes it very clear. Thanks for pointing out the change in the policy, I'm sure we will soon see how it affects listings and agents here.
Submitted by Anonymous on February 15, 2008 - 8:14pm.
There are dozens of posts over at ActiveRain on this topic, one of which I started in December.. Our MLS is currently debating the topic and I made my post in order to give them some information to help them make their decision. Bottom line, Days on Market should reflect the number of days that a home is "available to be purchased" regardless of what company has the listing. The "reset" time period is moot as any Good agent will be able to look at property listing history and figure the whole days on market out on their own. Wait.. did I just say that REALTORS® bring value to the home buying process? YES I did!
Submitted by Anonymous on February 18, 2008 - 7:02am.
In the Northern Illinois area, what we call Cumulative Market Time has been a very contentious issue. When MLSNI added to listings, so (obviously buyer agents) were all for it. Others, who understand the clinet relationship, state license law and realtor code of ethics believe it to be flat wrong to include. The MLS is hijacking the listing content by adding this information. It is the only data not entered byu the listing agent. The NAR MLS Handbook, section 15 specifically states that members CANNOT be required to give up any rights to the listing content for inclusion in the MLS. Where the listing is concerned, there is only one client - the seller. Read article 1 of the realtor code and in Illinois, read Article 15 of the state license law. The data is available for competent agents to use when needed. It has no place in the listing. I suppose if we want to give up our realtor status we could get away for the COE and the fundamental responsibilities of realtors, but I don't think we can pick and choose which part of the license law we want to obey.
Submitted by Anonymous on February 18, 2008 - 7:05am.
I am a real estate broker on the San Francisco Peninsula and our MLS service has DOM "days on market" and CDOM "cumlative days on market". A property listing history is also available for each property. Combine that with an agent who knows the market and NO buyer will be confused or unaware how long a particular property has been on the market.
Submitted by Anonymous on February 18, 2008 - 9:15am.
Even more important than days on the market is number of days since last price adjustment.
Submitted by Anonymous on February 18, 2008 - 9:30am.
I am a long time agent in the Seattle area and I just want to chime in on this one. I don't see days on market as a benefit to the sellers.(with out sellers there is no market) Anyone who has been around for any length of time has seen days on market stretched out by failed sales due to financing, buyers remorse, sellers decision to take property off market for a period of time, difficult showing arrangements or any number of other issues that don't have anything to do with the quality of the home. It's a negative tag that hinders showings, sollicits low offers and suggests problems with what might be a great property. All the market time information is already available, why make days on market such a prominent item?
Submitted by Rick Belben on June 22, 2008 - 5:30pm.
In Orlando a home use to be reset to 0 days whenever it was relisted. As with anything it was abused by some who continually withdrew a listing then would enter it again as a new listing so it would not show a high number of days on the market. Now a home has to be off the market for 30 days to get the DOM set to 0.
Rick Belben
Amerivest Realty of Central Florida
Orlando Real Estate
Orlando MLS