Tuesday, January 16, 2007

New Listing! (Sort Of)

Fromt this week's Business Week Magazine the relisting game. What a scam! What kind of profession promotes this kind of trickery? -


Agents are pulling houses off the market and then presenting them as new offerings

Real estate agent Ross Simone wasn't attracting any potential buyers for a house in Mechanicsville, Md., that had sat on the market for months, so last November he took action. He pulled the house out of the regional database of active listings and then immediately reinserted it, changing the property ID number used to track properties over time. The result: The house appeared to be hitting the market for the first time. "It's in the best interests of my client [the seller]," Simone said in a November interview. "I started doing it consistently this year. I do it as much as I can."

What's perhaps more surprising is that in some regions, the local MLS does nothing to prohibit relisting a house in a way that makes it appear new on the market. In Atlanta, for example, First Multiple Listing Service Inc. charges sellers' agents just $25 to withdraw a listing. When they then relist the home, it shows up on "hot sheets" of homes that are fresh on the market. A buyer's agent who investigates can see that the house was for sale before, but not for how long. First MLS President Cantey Davis acknowledges that the system could give buyers a wrong impression of how long a home has been for sale but says he has received a "minuscule" number of complaints about it.

6 comments:

Perfect Storm said...

“It’s deception,” said Michael Lyon, president of Sacramento, Calif.-based Lyon Real Estate and a board member at MetroList Services, one of the largest MLS databases on the West Coast. “Anytime you reset something to make it look newer, better, you’re trying to deceive someone.”

Now here is a realtor telling other realtors that they are deceptive. Lets look up the word deceptive "Tending to deceive; having power to mislead, or impress with false opinions; as, a deceptive countenance or appearance".

So this is what deceptive means and if realtors relist then they are deceptive. Well that is just another reason to call realtors dirty little lying rats, who will say and do anything for a commission. Little rats, nothing more than a rat.

Perfect Storm said...

Let look up the word rat by its slang definition.

Slang

A despicable person

Yep that sounds about right.

Anonymous said...

yea yea..
big deal...
realtors have been doing this for years...
if your contracted realtor cannot manipulate the mls database to see previous listings for the same address, (s)he should be fired...
c'mon it takes a minute for me to look this up...

Bakersfield Bubble said...

Last anon-

We all know this has been going on for some many many years.

However, why the deception? Why does it continue? Is their no honor among thieves?

Also, why do the local and national MLS's sales numbers include a monthly "DOM" (days on market) calculation when they know it is total BS?

Any industry that regulates itself should have some level of ethical standards; and not deceiving clients or potential clients should be at the top of that list.

Rob Dawg said...

"Fresh Fish ay $3.98/lb" when it is a week old gets you fines and worse

"Fresh Listing at $398/sf" gets you special attention.

And people wonder why the REIC enjoys the reputation it has.

CPAone said...

Here is another subprime for you Crispy...

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