In Chicago, the main listing system used by agents and providing data to all the different property search sites is the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI). Market time has long been a hot button when marketing property in Chicago. A listing with a very high market time always begs the question, “What’s wrong with it?”. Could be a number of things inherent in the property or it could simply be that the property is overpriced.
After announcing the removal of the Market Time field on MLSNI agent listing sheets …
The MLSNI Board of Director approved measure to eliminate the Market Time field from all Agent-Detail reports will be active as of 5/16/06. The only way to view Cumulative Market Time will now be via the Property History (LPHR link), Custom Reports, CMA’s and Area Market Surveys.
The field will now return in September of 2006 per a message received yesterday from MLSNI via postcard.  The message…
Due to the unusually high number of re-lists since Market Time was removed, MLSNI’s Board of Directors has reversed its earlier position and has decided to make Market Time Statustics (MT) available on selected reports.
Assume by “re-lists” they mean active listings that were cancelled and then re-listed. Seems that this is true. Because I was curious, I ran a quick unscientific test to validate this. As there are thousands of listings in Chicago, I narrowed the search to 2 bed/2 bath condos, in the Lincoln Park and Lake View community areas, that went off market and were placed in cancelled status between the dates indicated below. The results appear below…
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Last year - From 05/16/05 to 08/16/05 there were 299 cancellations.
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This year -Â From 05/16/06 to 08/16/06 there were 439 cancellations.
So why an increase in cancellations/re-lists? Two distinct fields indicate the number of days a listing has been on the market.
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Listing Market Time (LT) – The number of days the current listing has been active.
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Market Time (MT) – The cumulative number of days across listings that the listing has been active.
So if a property has been on the market 30 days, cancelled, re-listed, and on the market another 30 days, then Listing Market Time is 30 days while Market Time is 60 days. You can see that Market Time is a much better indicator of the age of the listing.Â
Easy to see why re-lists increased after Market Time was removed as agents cancelled their listings and re-listed threby reseting Listing Market Time to 0 days. Interesting to note however, that you could always find out Market Time through Listing History, but just not so obvious, and took a couple more mouse clicks.
