Length of time on the market?

Question

When a property is on the market for a long amount of time, this means the price may have come down. On the other hand, the property may not be interesting to others.

How should one look at the amount of time a property has on the market? What does it signal, is it general good or bad?

Russell Brazil · Answer

This is very much specific to the nieghborhood. In my own market, Washington DC....there are areas where a house will not be on the market for more than 4 hours....and there are other neighborhoods where it takes 30 days to find a buyer even when priced appropriatly. Real estate is so incredibly hyper-local sometimes its hard for some people to wrap their mind around it.

David Faulkner · Answer

I have had good luck with property that has been on the market a very long time or a very short time. Your best deals will generally come from stuff that has been on the market 0 days (never went on the open market). As for on the market a very long time, I try to get the "story" of why it was on the market so long and tailor my strategy accordingly. If it has been on a long time and the sellers still don't seem to be overly motivated, I'd move on for now. Otherwise, if I get the sense that they are motivated, if they are still overpriced, then I will either put in an offer on the low side of reasonable with a letter explaining why my offer is what it is and see if/where they counter, and/or I'll keep an eye on it and wait for price reductions get it within the realm of realistic. When watching price reduction history, you can normally see a fairly consistent pattern of $X drop every Y days ... you can use that to time when you put in the offer just before a price drop to a reasonable price and put your offer in a bit lower than that. You can also watch this to sense motivation, like if they break the trend and capitulate to dropping it $3X after 0.5*Y days then you should put in an offer quickly. If you pay close attention, there may be other catalysts to hint to you that the time is right.

Joe Villeneuve · Answer

There are two different TOM to use. as a buyer, you look at the total time from first listed to now. this tells you how negotiable the seller might be... especially if there are a lot of pendings.

rhe most important one sets the strike price. This is based on the sold comps. You look at the price sold, and count from the time it was first listed at that price to the time it was removed

Account Closed · Answer

Well in that case I mean relatively.

If a property is on the market much longer than properties normally go.

Length of time on the market?

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