Buying & Selling: Regulating the Realtors

A source tipped me off to an article in the next Business Week regarding the latest realtor dirty tricks to boost sales in a dead market. This time it involves canceling old listing and immediately resoliciting them as new:

With open houses as quiet as death lately in many parts of the country, sellers' agents are trying everything they can to make a sale, including sometimes tweaking the computerized data that potential buyers depend on. Fresh listings attract attention and can fetch higher prices because buyers are less likely to make lowball offers....When many homes in an area are re-listed as new, it skews the "average days on market" statistic, making the market look healthier than it really is. For sellers, refreshing a listing can also disguise the fact that the previous listing was at a higher price. Buyers often regard a price cut as a sign of weakness.

The article also notes that the MLS, like so much of the real estate industry, is "self-regulating" and therefore lacking anything in the way of oversight to prevent deceptive buyer tactics like these. However, in the case of Simone, oversight presented itself in the form of an intrepid blogger who caught Simone's shenanigans and reported them.

If the industry refuses to regulate itself, we'll do it ourselves and make sure these guys stay on notice. It's a new day now, and a level playing field--FSBOs, Web brokers, discount services, bloggers, you name it--and we're all out to ensure honest competition and real disclosure from this most traditional of "brick and mortar" businesses.

Posted at January 13, 2007 07:49 PM

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A source tipped me off to an article in the next Business Week regarding the latest realtor dirty tricks to boost sales in a dead market. This time it involves canceling old listing and immediately resoliciting them as new: With open houses as quiet as death lately in many parts of the country, sellers' agents are trying everything they can to make a sale, including sometimes tweaking the computerized data that potential buyers depend on. Fresh listings attract attention and can fetch higher prices because buyers are less likely to make lowball offers....When many homes in an area are re-listed as new, it skews the "average days on market" statistic, making the market look healthier than it really is. For sellers, refreshing a listing can also disguise the fact that the previous listing was at a higher price. Buyers often regard a price cut as a sign of weakness. The article also notes that the MLS, like so much of the real estate industry, is "self-regulating" and therefore lacking anything in the way of oversight to prevent deceptive buyer tactics like these. However, in the case of Simone, oversight presented itself in the form of an intrepid blogger who caught Simone's shenanigans and reported them. If the industry refuses to regulate itself, we'll do it ourselves and make sure these guys stay on notice. It's a new day now, and a level playing field--FSBOs, Web brokers, discount services, bloggers, you name it--and we're all out to ensure honest competition and real disclosure from this most traditional of "brick and mortar" businesses.