An issue that comes up every now and again is the practice of certain real estate agents cancelling a listing that has been on the market for a while and re-listing it right away. The result is a new MLS® number (they are sequential), and a days on market count set to zero, making the listing appear “fresher” than it is. Watch the video below, and comment using the form/link below the video.
Deceptive Marketing by REALTORS® using Days on Market from Tim Ayres – REALTOR® on Vimeo.
–Tim Ayres – Sooke Real Estate Professional
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From a seller’s perspective, I want my agent to do everything in their power to sell my house, and if that strategy needs to include a re-list because we screwed up somehow in our first attempt, so be it. I agree with the comment that doing it every 2-3 weeks seems wrong… to me, it’s a grey area, and with any grey area, the context of the execution is very important.
From a buyer’s perspective, the first thing I look at is the *current* package. If it doesn’t look tempting at first glance, who cares? Re-list again IMO… and go lower faster! If I do want to nibble on the property… then that’s when I get my agent on the case. As long as my agent has the ability to properly assess the current situation of the seller, including being able to look up the history of the place and find every time it’s been listed and not sold (correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you’re able to do this? I’m pretty sure my agent did this for me a number of times…), then it doesn’t bother me too much. In the end, it doesn’t affect anything about the current situation except for the assessment of whether the seller might be open to lowballs. But if I’m planning on lowballing anyway…who cares if they’re open or not? They take it or they don’t.
What I don’t understand is people who aren’t really seriously looking at buying in the short term getting all bent out of shape over this – it doesn’t affect them, and besides, it’s fun to watch in my opinion. It sort of gives you the feeling that maybe the sellers realized they were doing something wrong, and it’s fun to say “what were they thinking!?”
Thanks for your comment, Womp – always appreciated. I have mixed feelings about this also – but I strongly feel that agents should be discouraged from the practice of re-listing properties so quickly after the initial listing. It is confusing to agents and buyers. If there’s nothing wrong with the property other than the fact it’s been on for several months, then I guess I don’t see the harm. Especially if it’s going to be an entirely new marketing strategy – new photos, brochures, videos, websites, etc. But the list for 2 weeks and then re-list has got to stop.
What about the statistical aspect of things – since you are such a fan of them? If I re-list a property that’s been stagnant for 6 months and then it sells in 7 days – that makes me look pretty hot from a stats perspective, and would also give the appearance that the property sold quicker than it actually did. True, it’s not hard to look at the property history, but still – easy to skew statistics in my favour.