Weekly Special | December 18, 2016

A Better Way To Measure Market Time

How long does it take to sell a home in today’s market? Seems like a simple question and most real estate professionals confidently report stats regarding market time as if they know what they are doing.

But they do not. I have never seen a real estate report on market time that addresses the fact that MLS systems fail to account for things such as homes that fail to sell, blatant manipulation of listings by agents to under-report market time, and homes that are relisted multiple times (and only the final listing is used to measure time on the market).

With that being said, the graph above shows how long it took homes to sell in Tallahassee. It includes homes that closed from December ‘15 through November ‘16. Of course, it does not include those that failed to sell or homes that remain on the market. And it only looks at homes that were “fresh,” meaning the first time they were on the market.

Here’s what you can glean from this report:

 Only 1 in 13 homes sells in the first month (of those that do sell)

 53% of homes that do sell go under contract in less than 3 months  1 in 5 homes take 3 to 6 months to sell And finally, what this graph does not show is what happens to the 30% of homes that do not sell during their first listing period.

The original one-page Weekly Special PDF is still available.