Relisting Discontinued – True Dat!
"Truth is its own reward"…. Plato
"There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known" …. John Lennon
Today’s topic centers why it’s truly important to know the true "Days on Market" of a listing.
RE Infolink, the governing body for our county’ MLS (and four other counties) has just ruled to discontinue the practice of "re-listing". What is "re-listing"? It’s when an actively marketed property, marketed by the same broker, is assigned a new MLS number — and essentially, its Days on Market (DOM) counter is set back to "0".
Relisting was originally intended as a tool that allowed sellers to respond to market feedback. For example, if a feature of a property appeared to discourage buyers, the property could be temporarily removed from the market to make adjustments, then returned to active status. In many cases, such adjustments would substantively change the potential buyers’ perceptions of the property — prompting the seller to position it as a new listing (complete with a new MLS number).
More recently, relisting as been viewed as potentially confusing to all parties involved (both consumers and real estate professionals).
The original solution was to display both DOM and Continuous Days on Market (CDOM) — which definitely in my opinion was a good start. Smart realtors, if they keep abreast of their local inventory, can recognize which houses have been relisted (the sixth sense of being able to say "you’re not fooling anybody saying that that’s a new listing" ). CDOM helped make it even more plainly clear for the less clairvoyant. DOM and CDOM aren’t visible to the general public — so having a good agent to represent a buyer’s best interest is key, since CDOM can play a big factor in what price a buyer offers.
Now, though, REIL has voted to eliminate relisting altogether (unless a listing contract is expired and a new contract is created after more than 30 days). I think this is good for two reasons first, it gives potential buyers more "truthful" information. No listing agent will readily admit trying to pull the wool over a buyer’s eyes — relisting an old stale listing brings that listing to the "top of the list" of new properties, and it can sometimes generate more interest than it would at the bottom where it was 150 CDOM. This can be deceptive, so the elimination of relisting is good for this scenario. Additionally, monthly, quarterly, and yearly home sales statistics often use DOM as one of the key barometers of health of regional real estate markets. If those oh-so-critical DOM numbers are getting skewed by relisted (and stale) properties, then that just masks the reality of what’s going on in any particular local market.
Realtor, Marathon Man, "Man of a Thousand Voices".
