Days on Market penalties

One of the most important statistics offered via the MLS is the Days on Market – the number of days a particular property has been on the market is a good guide to the seller’s motivation, an indication as to whether they may be more willing to negotiate, etc. However, with every system comes those who try to “game” the system, by withdrawing a property and re-listing it, to make it appear as if a property is new, or “fresh” on the market.

Any system with no form of punitive measure to deter this behavior is potentially worthless.

From an agent in the Charlottesville area:

I won’t mention names, but… I know one agent who changes the listing agent to another one of her partners and then relists the property so that it looks like she has been fired and a new one brought on. It doesn’t benefit anyone to have this kind of practice.

Behavior and practices such as this damage the credibility of the MLS system and opens up more cracks in the MLS armor. For this reason, I was and am quite pleased that my secondary MLS, MRIS, just came out with the following announcement regarding fines:

Sweet. Rules without enforcement are merely requests. As this is a previously scheduled post and I wrote it a couple of days ago, this discussion at BHB will hopefully have a bunch of comments by now.

Technorati Tags: mls, real estate, realtor, realtor.com