If it moves, track it...

September 28, 2006

Tracking the real estate market in an attempt to understand what is really going on is an unending quest of the Guide. A recent subject in the blog world that received a tremendous amount of attention is the practice of "re-listing." Simply defined: deliberately withdrawing a listing, changing something (usually price) and re-entering into the MLS as a new listing. Some say this is a misleading practice. Others say it's just marketing.

Our MLS (MRIS) in the greater DC Metro area solved this problem long ago. We track two important numbers: DOMM and DOMP. DOMP is the total time a listing has been active regardless of how many times it was "re-listed" (as long as the tax ID address is the same). DOMM is the time a specific listing has been on the market. A property must be off the market for 180 days before DOMP will be reset to zero.

There are those that will always try to game the system for some marketing or client advantage and do so regularly. I'll let others pass judgement on the ethical issues of "gaming." I don't see that it really gets anything accomplished. Most good agents and buyers are smart enough to see through gaming activity. One of the most frequent questions we get on our listings is "how long has it been on the market and why?" We tell the truth.

I have cautioned our readers about re-listing as it effects the inventory trends and original list price in the data we publish. So, starting today we are tracking re-listing activity in the Daily Market Watch. Some definitions:

Under "New Activity" "Activity in last 30 days"

• Listings: these are all listings that were listed in the last 30 days from today.
• Re-List: same as Listings except, if DOMP is greater than 30 days it gets counted here.

So, Re-Lists are contained in Listings. For Fairfax today, re-lists are about 27% of new listings (look at DOMP in the table). For Loudoun, re-lists are about 35% of new listings. These could be intentional re-lists for marketing purposes or they can be simple an expired or withdrawn listing coming back on the market with new terms or a new agent.

Comment on If it moves, track it.... Follow this article is off. More articles like this one filed in: Market Conditions (with charts)