Thursday, March 27, 2008

South Bay-Beach Cities: Days on Market...The Last Word.. Hopefully..



Yesterday Manhattan Beach Confidential posted about the Days on Market Controversy and how the new MLS is handling the situation. The truth is that for the last few months since the change over the new MLS seemed to be having worse problems then the old MLS. However an update on CDOM was recently clarified for all agents. This is the statement about MLS policy on the matter:


On March 20, 2008, MRMLS will turn on the Cumulative Days on Market (CDOM) counter. CDOM tracks the total days a property has been on the market without a sale. CDOM counts the total days on market for each time a property is listed and continues counting until the property is Canceled/Expired for 60 days, no matter which agent or broker lists the property.
For example, if a property was listed on January 1st, expired 90 days later, and re-listed by the same or another agent within 60 days, at midnight, the CDOM counter will display “91” and the Days on Market (DOM) will show “1.”




As of this week the new policy should be in place. I'm sure there will be a few glitches and a few will find a way to ignore the policy. Overall I think the guidelines should satisfy almost everyone. There will be two numbers.. DOM and CDOM. You can make changes, update a listing or even re-list to get it more attention from the real estate community but the total CDOM will continue to be shown as part of the listing information.




Buyers will be able to check the history of a property as the CDOM will be posted for all properties. I hope this change by the MLS will be viewed as a positive step for the consumer. The new MLS has a few flaws.. especially in how they do their statistical information but overall they seem to be pretty responsive in meeting the requests of the members. The system isn't perfect but it is improving.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Kaye, I'm not sure this is a solution. It depends on where an average consumer can get CDOM info. I have just tried the MRMLS public search page and there is nothing on those display pages about DOM or CDOM – very minimal. The fees for ZipRealty and Redfin appear to rely on DOM, not CDOM. It would be interesting if MRMLS were to allow those sources to publish CDOM.

Also, reading between the lines, it would appear this new statement is a backing-down or even abdication of MRMLS's "data integrity policy" prohibiting re-lists. I didn't put the words in their mouths, but they were harsh toward the practice.

My faith was already broken. Have they actually reversed course here?

Kaye said...

MC Watcher,
I sure hope they haven't.. There was a large blurb about the fact that the system was finally in place.

I had been wondering as there seemed to be a number of listings that would be canceled and then show up next day as new. The news item from Matrix indicates that they will be keeping track.

I didn't realize that you didn't get CDOM on the public site. We should be doing that on public and agents sites.

Anonymous said...

At SoCalMLS, the requirement to reset the CDOM clock is 90 days off the market. (Unless there is a transfer of ownership, like a trustee sale, then it goes back to "0".)

I am on the OCAR MLS committee and we have battled this around at meetings for the past year or so.

Kaye said...

Hi Vicki,

I'm curious as SoCal MLS was not posting DOM on clinet info sheets.. so am wondering if that has changed.. 90 days is pretty long.. how's that working out with agents and sellers?

Anonymous said...

I don't think anybody is even thinking about it anymore. It takes so long for the MLS committee to come to a conclusion, then make a recommendation to the Board of Directors, and then they have to kick it around a few months, and by the time anything gets decided, everyone has forgotten what they wanted or why.

In reality, almost every buyer will ask their agent "how many days?" It's a factor that should be reviewed when making an offer, to help make negotiating decisions, but otherwise, it's pretty meaningless.

Anonymous said...

Hi Kaye.
I sure wish that the public listings showed DOM/CDOM as well as the MLS broker open house directory - it would be nice to know when you were driving around how long certain properties have been on the market as they aren't always "new."
Also - you mention statistical info - my sister and I just called the Board and the MRMLS about "contingent" listings. The DOM counter keeps going if you put a property into contingent status vs. pending. This makes a big difference when you are looking at how long it took a property to sell. If the agent never puts the property into "pending" it will add all the days under contract to the "marketing" days. Really throws off the statistics.
Kelly Evans

Kaye said...

Kelly,
The public listings should show DOM/CDOM.. I don't understand why they don't. But there are many things with the new system I don't understand or like about their reports.

I suspect the reason the clock keep ticking on contingency status is because "technically" the property is still available for sale whereas pending implies that all contingencies have been lifted and property is "sold" pending loans, appraisals being completed.