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By Elizabeth Weintraub, About.com Guide to Home Buying / Selling

Why Days on Market Matter to Home Buyers

Monday March 10, 2008
One of the first questions buyers ask me when I hold open a home is its days on market.

Buyers figure the longer a home has been on the market, the more eager a seller is to sell. If the seller is eager to sell, the seller might be willing to negotiate a much lower price. So, you can see how this piece of knowledge is useful to buyers.

However, the common practice among real estate agents is to remove those homes from the market that show 45 to 90 days on market and relist these homes as brand new listings. Because when a home is a new listing, it draws more interest from buyers. Lots of homes that have been on the market for 90 days and then withdrawn sell within days of coming back on with zero days on market.

Tell me, wouldn't you want to know if a listing had been on the market for months without selling and then relisted as a new listing? There are ways you can find out how many days on market a home has been for sale . . . read more about Days on Market.

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Comments

March 10, 2008 at 5:27 am
(1) Josie says:

If a property has a webpage to itself, i.e. a unique URL, then you can use the Way Back Machine (internet archive) to see when the page was first put up, and if there have been any price changes through the time it’s been up.

March 10, 2008 at 9:03 am
(2) homebuying says:

Excellent idea, Josie. I hadn’t thought of that, but you are absolutely correct.

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