Intel’s research suggests that a small number of sellers can take the real estate market to a place most consumers don’t want it to be.
With a flurry of new partnerships announced by brokerage firms in recent days, days on the market may have begun.
As Compass CEO Robert Reffkin argued when announcing the partnership with Rocket and Redfin in February, “sellers should have the freedom to list their home in the way and manner they choose without fear of damaging and misleading insights.” [their home’s] value. ”
However, these potentially harmful insights, which often include records of price reductions or the length of time a home sat on the open market without being sold, are still valued by a wide range of consumers (including the most active home sellers who responded to the January Inman-Dig Insights consumer survey).
But that’s not all.
A similar poll of 3,000 working adults in the United States suggests that despite widespread public support for the signature “days on market” metric, the upcoming new platform may still find favor with a significant number of homeowner customers.
Read more in the full report.
popularity indicators
For months, Intel has been directly asking working adults in the U.S. whether they think agents should be required to list all their homes on the MLS.
Their responses in January were broadly consistent with previous surveys.
Question: When selling a home, would you like to have the option of not listing the property on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), or do you think agents should be required to list the property on the MLS?
37% — I prefer having the option to withhold my property from the MLS. 35 percent — I think my agent should be required to list my property on the MLS. 29 percent — I don’t know/I need more information.
Although there was no consensus on this particular question, it is notable that many respondents did not feel they had enough information to answer.
Renters and other non-owners who had no plans to enter the market were not particularly interested in this question and seemed to form their opinions only after they began seriously considering the home-buying process.
Nearly half of renters with no immediate plans to buy said they were “unsure” if their agent believed they needed to list their home on the MLS. Among renters who are actively buying a home, that share fell by half to 24%.
When forced to choose between seller privacy and listing transparency, consumers sided with buyers’ interests.
Question: Which of the following statements do you agree more with?
46% — Home sellers don’t have enough options to protect privacy from buyers when putting their home on the market. 54% — Home buyers don’t have access to enough information from home sellers about the properties they’re selling.
Most home sellers are also buyers, and not all buyers are homeowners, so it’s no wonder the results lean in that direction.
However, one area of this discussion has surprisingly strong consensus among consumers, relating to recently announced and soon-to-be-launched partnerships.
Question: Which of the following statements do you agree more with?
38% — Home sellers should have the option to hide how long their home has been on the market. 62% — Home buyers should be able to find out how long a home for sale has been on the market.
This principle that underpins real estate’s “days on market” is at risk of being seriously undermined by new initiatives from brokerage portals.
With the exception of the Compass-Rocket deal, most new partnerships advertise compliance with MLS rules, and in some cases require simultaneous filing with the partner platform and local MLS.
However, the MLS is still considering what this means for how it will report its soon-to-be-listed post-listing days. In some cases, the buyer-visible “clock” doesn’t start ticking until the listing finishes the Coming Soon phase of marketing.
In particular, homeowners increasingly say they prefer not to list their property on the MLS or hide the date their home went on the market as the time approaches to put their property on the market.
69% of homeowners who said they were unlikely to move within the next year said they thought the date their home went on the market should be made public. For those with homes actively on the market in January (a smaller survey group of 103 respondents), that percentage drops to 55%.
This represents one of the areas where there is the most overall consensus among consumers. Even among groups such as home sellers who have a partial stake in keeping days on market private, most potential customers support calls for “days on market” transparency.
Non-owners were even more likely to prefer published days-on-market metrics.
65% of renters who said they had no intention of buying right away said they wanted the property’s market release date disclosed. By comparison, in January, the percentage of active home buyers who had not listed their home and preferred open market dates was a solid 62%.
These findings suggest that transparency in key metrics is moving away from what most consumers desire, as more brokerages introduce pre-MLS periods that delay or avoid the start of a property’s market date.
Still, the results suggest that a significant minority of sellers may be attracted to the concept and give their products a try.
In the coming weeks, Intel will be surveying real estate professionals and their plans to use these upcoming new platforms to get the full picture.
About Inman-Dig Insights Consumer Research
The Inman-Dig Insights consumer survey was conducted January 7-8 to assess Americans’ opinions and behaviors regarding homebuying.
The study sampled a diverse group of 3,000 full-time or part-time employed American adults between the ages of 24 and 65. Participants were selected to create a broadly representative breakdown by gender and region.
Statistical rigor was maintained throughout the study, and the results should be largely representative of attitudes held by U.S. adults with full-time or part-time jobs. Both Inman and Dig Insights are majority-owned by Toronto-based Bellinger Capital.
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