What You Don’t Know About Real Estate Won’t Hurt You

Apparently, that’s what the Southern California Multiple Listing Service (SoCalMLS) thinks when it comes to publishing the DOM or “Days on the Market”. Of course, if you’re an agent, you have access to this information. However, if you’re a buyer, you won’t be seeing them in your client reports.

Here’s how the DOM works. A seller may contract with an agent to list the property for a specified length of time – say 90 days. When those 90 days are up, the DOM will reset to zero once the seller renews the contract. So they have something called CDOM or “Cumulative Days on the Market” to give an accurate picture of exactly how long a home has been sitting on the market. Incidentally, the SoCalMLS decided to remove its CDOM figures as well. A Daily Breeze article that came out last week reports more details.

The “Days on Market” category is no longer included in reports that real estate agents share with clients, who can use the information as a negotiating tool. Directors of SoCalMLS – which is the Southern California Multiple Listing Service – made the decision last summer to exclude that data.

“With the changing market, there has been much discussion, contention and even litigation over Days on Market and Cumulative Days on Market figures,” a statement on the group’s Web site says. “One view is that it hurts sellers; another is that it helps buyers.

“To that end, the SoCalMLS (directors), after getting input from MLS committees and other practitioners, have decided to remove the DOM and CDOM fields from all client reports.”

The reasoning cites that agents are better equipped to explain what the true DOM means to the client. That’s kind of interesting. I don’t know about you all, but tell me what DOM and CDOM stand for and I can pretty much figure it out for myself what that means in terms of how long that house has been on the market and what that means in a real estate transaction. What do you all think?

If you want to read the full article, click here.