“Days on Market” and “Cumulative Days on Market” provide a piece of the real estate puzzle for buyers and sellers in greater Cincinnati.

The numbers were pulled from the Multiple Listing Service of Cincinnati.   The Days and Cumulative on Market cover singled homes.  The data for 2018 is from January 1st through September 30th.

Realtors® look at DOM as an indicator of the average number of days it takes to sell a home.  The CDOM number reflects some (but not all) the average cumulative number days it takes for homes to sell. It’s confusing because listings are sometimes canceled or the listing contract and the property is relisted within 30 days.  When this happens 2 sets of numbers appear in the MLS. 

DOM is the actual number of days on the current contract.  CDOM is the count of the total days the property is listed.  Some listings are pulled off the market for 31 days and relisted in order to fool the CDOM count.  Most buyers and agents know what’s on the market so the “ploy” really isn’t effective.

The numbers above reflect average number today and you wondered many single-family homes were for sale for an extended period of time.  Using data from CincyMLS, the chart below shows days and cumulative days for single family homes which were on the market the longest. 2108 covers the year through the end of September.  So far the record for this year is close to 1500 days and nearly 2000 cumulative days. 

As a point of comparison to today’s real estate market 2008, the worst year in current history, the average days on market 82.  Twice what it is today -with twice the amount of single family homes for sale.

What’s Important

The key to understanding today’s market is to compare the DOM, the number of homes for sale and pricing to previous months before setting a listing price. 

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