Seattle Bubble Forum Archive

I have been keeping my eye on a certain segment of the market in Redmond, and today I see some new listings pop up on redfin.

One of them seems really like what I am looking for (at double the price that I want to pay, of course, but time is on my side here I think). As I look through the photos, though, something looks familiar - it is a relisting!

I think that this is unethical. I asked Redfin about this once and they claim that it is within the rules to delist something and relist with a new price. I don't care what the rules say - it is dishonest.

Anybody out there (Ira) willing to comment on what the MLS rules are? It seems like the days on market field is useless right now.

Here is a thread in which we touched on re-listings: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1080

Tim wrote a post about re-listings on the blog, too, but I can't find it now.

I think there's nothing unethical about relisting. I see it mostly as a search-engine-created problem, in that search engines tend to have no feature to show buyers newly-reduced-price listings, so that even if a seller cuts a price by 10%, it won't show up on the lists of buyers who have their "new in the last 7 days" or whatever check box checked.

Even if the seller relists at the same price as last time, so what? I don't have a problem with that. It's just marketing. I'd call illegal the $1.50/mo bogus "gov't regulatory fee" tacked onto most cell phone bills long before I would treat as criminals people relisting as new after a few days off the market. It wastes a few seconds of buyers' time while they peruse listings. Big deal. If thinking a house is new on the market sways you toward buying it, that's your problem, not the selller's.

I'd agree with the contention that it is unethical...just a little bit at least. It's better than lying about the condition of the house. It's better than tricking people into signing paperwork which is different than they think. It's better than trumped up appraisals. Really, it's about the most ethical unethical part of the whole mess.

Sorry Markor - when you try to say that your home is new on the market, and it has been on the market for months, you are lying.

It would be trivial for the NWMLS to change their rules to prevent this unethical behavior. Let them add a new field that shows days at that particular price.

I use Redfin to keep track of listings, and it shows me whenever something new pops up in a query, or when an existing thing in the query changes price. People trying to cheat the system just add noise to this method.

I would believe that half of the occurences of this are due to incompetence rather than malice though. A lot of people seem to just do whatever is the fastest thing that gives them the desired side effect. So they say "I want people to know that this price is lower" and they make a new listing for that.

The whole industry is doomed to incompetence. Now I know why the Redfin folks got into it - most people in this profession are clueless how to leverage technology.

I'll look up the NWMLS rules tomorrow when I'm a bit more coherent, but I'd lean more in the malice camp than the incompetence camp. When a buyer sees a listing that's been on the market for a long time, he/she assumes there is something wrong with the property or that they've seen the listing already, that if it was a great property or a great listing agent it would have been gone already, so they delist it, change the price, have new pictures, and relist it...But it's like putting lipstick on a pig.
OTOH, I've seen some properties that have stayed on the market for long periods that were well priced, in good shape, and charming. But not in Wallingford.

Thanks Ira - I would be very interested in what you find out.

This particular listing did not even change the pictures, which made it easy to tell that it was a relist.

When a home is listed, an agreement is made between the seller and the listing agent stating how long the listing will last. When that listing expires, a new listing agreement can be signed and it becomes a new listing, and if there is a gap in days, then the cumulative days on market figure gets set back to zero.
What is clearly not allowed is canceling a listing and then relisting it, unless there is a substantial change in quality, condition, or price (plus or minus 5% or more).

Oh, and Ben, if you can: post the MLS number..Even if it is a "new" listing, I'll have access to the property history, a never ending source of amusement.

Please keep in mind that many of the listing contracts had expiration dates around the end of the 2007 year and fell into the expired catagory.

They wait a few weeks into the new year and sign a new listing contract with the same agent or new agent and it shows up as a new listing.

Maybe you are unsatisfied with the way the MLS tracks listings, but it certainly isn't intentional misrepresentation by agents. MLS Rules: New contract = new listing.

When you saw listing numbers drop off in Nov & Dec it was because they were expiring. Now when you see the listing inventory rising it's many of those homes coming back on the market with new listing contracts.

That's just the way the system works.