The real estate stats lie. If you have spent any time on my site, you know I LOVE real estate stats. I am stats junkie as a matter of fact. They provide a ton of valuable information. Unfortunately, what you can’t see from the currents stats are real listing inventory numbers.
In Marin County, a HUGE number of home are for sale, but are not on the MLS. Tons of homes are coming on the market or are staying on the market, but you won’t find a good chunk of them on whatever search engine you might be using.
Home sellers and agents are afraid of the all important DOM- Days on market. Fearing a high number, they are withholding the listing from the MLS. This skews the stats for both real, accurate days on market numbers and also for market absorption rates.
I believe keeping listings off the MLS is a bad for everyone, even sellers fearful of too many days on the market.
Marin home sellers- listen to me now, most buyers are smart enough to know that the days on market stats aren’t accurate. The tradeoff of being off MLS is that you miss a huge portion of buyers. Suddenly, you rely on agents, many of whom may not know that your home is for sale. What if the home buyer happens to have an agent who isn’t connected? This also assumes active buyers are working with an agent. There are tons, and tons of home buyers doing their initial research on their own. Those buyers are very real, and they aren’t being exposed to your property. As much as high days on market may be undesirable, it is even more undesirable for you to limit your access to home buyers. Staying “off the MLS” is really like being off the market. It just doesn’t make sense if you want to sell your home.
Unfortunately, do-it-yourself home buyers are really only seeing a small portion of true home inventory. If you are a buyer not working with agent, there are a lot more homes available for sale in Marin than show up on the MLS. Contact a qualified (and connected) agent to give you the inside scoop. As much as I dislike off the market listings, the reality is that there are a ton of them out there, and unless you are working with agent “in the know”, you may never see them.