Are Real Estate Numbers Real or Bogus?
April 28th, 2009 categories: Sales, West Chester Ohio
Glad you asked that question.
The Multiple Listing Service of Greater Cincinnati (MLS) as well as other MLS systems throughout the country spew out reports of days on market and list price/ sale price ratio based on incorrect assumptions.
Our local MLS “Days on Market” (DOM) is data based on the current listing only. So if I put my home up for sale in April, 2008 and extended the contract and then signed a new listing contract in February -the counter for days on market began in February. Assuming the home sold April 2nd, the DOM would be 61 days (not the actual 355 days).
The same is true for List Price- the MLS calculates the ratio based on the last list price in the system-not the original list price of the property.
In West Chester 11-4 bedroom homes closed between April 1st through April 20th. According to MLS the List/Sale price ratio was 96.70%. In reality, after checking the individual property histories for the 11 sales- the List/Sale Price ratio was 90.17%. If I go one step further and remove the new construction home that sold for more than asking price, the list/sale ratio was actually 87.85%.
Current real estate data doesn’t provide buyers or sellers with totally accurate information.
Next time you need accurate data about current market conditions- ask for the original list price-not the current list price- and actual number of days on market. Both of these numbers are available by reviewing the property history for each property. Remember that the process is labor intensive and time consuming- so please don’t ask your Realtor for the data about every house.
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