So Few Really New Listings

Buyers are often surprised at how few new listings come to market. After I've spent a day with buyers looking at houses in a certain category, they'll often say, "That was great. We'd like to come back in a couple of weeks and see anything new that's come on the market like the houses you showed us today." In most cases, there won't be really much new to show them in two weeks or even a month. They often have the impression that there's a steady flow of new houses for sale, like baggage tumbling onto a baggage carousel. But that isn't the case.

Buyers do see new listings come to market all the time on the web. Look at the "Sullivan County Real Estate New Listings in the Past 7 Days" page on my site, and this time of year you'll likely find about 50 "new listings". But only about a quarter of them are truly new. Most in that group have been on the market, some for quite a while. They can show up as "new listings" for a number of reasons. Most commonly, a listing expires before the listing extension from the seller is received by their agent. When a listing expires, the status is automatically changed to "expired" in the MLS. When the listing extension is received, the status is returned to "Active". Whenever a listing status changes to "active", for whatever reason, it get flagged as "new". Another example would be when a deal in contract falls apart, and the status is changed from "Contract Signed" back to "Active."

Houses can also be re-listed. Most commonly, the seller has allowed the listing to expire for more than 30 days. This is a frequent occurrence here, when sellers take their properties off the market for the winter and put it back on in the spring. If a listing has lapsed for more than 30 days, even if it's being reinstated by the same broker, it has to be entered as a new listing. If a seller changes brokers, it will be a new listing. And some agents do suggest to sellers that they allow 'stale' listings expire and then relist to start with a fresh listing date and lower "days on market" count. This practice, however, is less common than many buyers think.

I know that raising the relisting issue, and the lack of a transparent listing history on consumer websites, will draw the ire of some readers of this blog. It's a hot issue, but one that I have absolutely no control over. Suffice it to say that when I work with a buyer and they're interested in a property, I pull a detailed listing history for them.

The point of this post isn't relisting or property history, but rather how few new houses for sale flow to market. I was talking with a colleague last week who also does a lot of work in the lakefront sector, and we were both commenting at how almost no new lakefront houses have some to market in months and months. We find ourselves showing the same houses over and over. We ticked off a long list of lakes where there hasn't been a truly new lakefront home listing in a year — Swinging Bridge, Timber, York, Wolf, Devenoge, Yankee, Masten and Elko. On some other lakes — Black, Wanaksink, Tennanah and Highland — there have only been one or two each. So we end up showing the same houses over and over.

The situation is similar in a number of other popular second home categories. There's very little new in modestly priced farmhouses, vacation chalet style homes, houses with views  and little "cabins in the woods". For a modest farmhouse buyer, it can be a month or two before a good new one comes on the market. This isn't across the board. There are some categories where there has been some nice new inventory. Smallwood, Emerald Green and the village of Jeffersonville come to mind.

The lack of new inventory does have a dampening effect on buyer interest. A number of folks check in with me regularly to ask if there's anything new that would interest them. In a lot of cases I have to answer, "No, not really." Some will broaden their criteria to open up new options. Others drift away.

We need new fresh inventory. But I'm not confident we'll see a lot of it this year. Another colleague and I were chatting recently about the limited selection of houses in certain categories. He commented that this isn't a market to sell into unless you have to. More discretionary sellers just aren't putting their houses on the market.

It's a conundrum. We have buyers that want to go shopping. But not much new on the shelves for them to buy.

Comments

[Aspen Guy]

I couldn't disagree more with you Dave.

There is a tremendous amount of listings currently available on the Sullivan MLS database whether they are truly new, relisted ot otherwise.

What you need is the seller's to adjust their prices downward and then you'll be able to get offers, excite your buyer/clients and hopefully close transactions.

What makes you think that by having more "new" listings coming on to the market will translate into more closings.

Until prices are valued for the 2010 market - and not the 2007 narket - you will see your inventory swell and closing sales drop.

Aspen Guy

[David Knudsen]

Price is certainly an issue, and one that I've railed about quite a bit on here. But it is not the only issue. If a buyer is looking for a nice contemporary with a view, for example, there's almost nothing on the market. Once I've shown the couple of houses in that category, there's nothing else to show. It just isn't a matter of those two houses dropping in price by $100,000, if a buyer doesn't like those couple of houses. It's a similar situation in a number of different categories. There isn't much selection and not much on the horizon.
On the other hand, there are some categories where I think the whole kit and caboodle of houses on the market need to come down by a huge amount before they'll entice buyers, like some lake houses currently in the $800's and some farmhouses in the $400K range.

[Meryl Julia]

MLS listings never sell. It's the garbage no-one wants. Buyers need to look at individual listings by realtors.
Inventory is on a steady rise with non-mls.
Almost all offices listings are accumulating on websites at very good rates for buyers.

[David Knudsen]

MJ, I don't think that's really true, although that could be a perception. There's always a portion of available property that isn't MLs-listed, what in the biz are known as "open" or "office" listings. I keep track of them, because I do show and sell them to my clients — most agents with 'opens' are more than happy to co-broke on them. I visit 7 or 8 broker websites about once a week to see what might be new that isn't in the MLS, and keep a spreadsheet of properties that might be of interest to the clientele I work with.

The list of non-MLS properties have hovered right around 40 to 50. In the past month, I've only added 4 that caught my eye. The perception that there are a lot more could be fostered by the nature of open listings. A seller may initially sign an "open" with two of the closest agencies. If the property doesn't sell, they may expand and sign with a few more, and on those broker websites the same property that's been on the market with other brokers will now seem "new" on those websites. Sometimes it's difficult to know it's the same property, because of different photos and even different prices.

When I started in this business 9 years ago, open listings were far more common that they are today. Think back 7 or 8 years. Remember how you'd drive around the county and see 4, 5 or even 6 real estate agency "for sale" signs on a single piece of property. Those were open listings. You hardly see multi-signed properties today.

[yousef grigory]

MJ doesn't know what she's talking about.

Dave, what is the percentage of MLS (either Exclusive Right OR Exclusive Agency) listings that DO sell each year vs. OPEN listings or FSBO's?

My guess is that over 80 to 85% of the annual sales in Sullivan are through the MLS.

4 out of 5 homes.

On another note, you have seen the last of the easy credit and low mortgage rates. That will throw another obstacle into the second home market besides gas drilling and bad compariables unless sellers cut their prices in 2010.

Take a look from the New York Times today:

http://nyti.ms/cABD1g

Yousef Grigory

[Jeffrey Morgan]

We see a scary steady incline in inventory here on Long Island but most of it is non-mls as well. Forget Manhattan... empty condos everywhere and funny how our media is instructed not to make news of it. I know a few well known reale-state gurus who have been trained by news producers on what to say and how to say it when they are guests of national news business shows. And if the lower nyc metro is sneezing, count on ulster, sullivan and the rest to catch a flu.

[Brad]

'City expectation houses' might not be up in inventory, but overall, crap inventory is up and land listings are way up. Larger land parcels are sitting ducks exposed to no buyers and most 'local homes' are up in inventory as well.

[Bix]

Have there ever been a lot of new listings? My only experience was in the spring of '08, and the pickings were slim, with the good ones going fast.

I always wonder what happened to that house in Livingston Manor near the sewage treatment plant, the one where the realtor never bothered to show up to give access.

Or the other no-access place on the main road outside LM with the barn outside needing demolition. etc.

[James]

SELL NOW OF FOREVER HOLD YOUR PROPERTY!!