New York’s Lingering Home Listings Will No Longer Show Their Age
New York’s Lingering Home Listings Will No Longer Show Their Age
(Bloomberg) -- StreetEasy, the real estate website that’s an essential data source for home-shopping New Yorkers, will stop counting how long properties are lingering on the market while the city is shut down.
The site, under pressure from brokers, said Sunday that it would cease reporting the metric for both sales and rental listings, effective immediately. Instead of “Days on Market,” visitors will see “Counting Suspended” -- a policy that will continue until “this situation normalizes,” StreetEasy said.
“With gatherings of any size in New York state prohibited as of this weekend and virtually everyone required to work from home, it’s no longer an environment where people can safely conduct normal, face-to-face real estate activities,” StreetEasy spokeswoman Lauren Riefflin said in an email. As such, days-on-market counts “are no longer accurate tools or representations of a listing during this pandemic.”
Brokers had argued that properties appearing to sit on the market would lose value in an eventual sale. On Friday, the industry group Real Estate Board of New York said that it would stop the clock for the properties on its own listing service.
Numbers ‘Cherry-Picked’
While the move might satisfy brokers and sellers, buyers won’t have much confidence in the market if they know the the numbers are being manipulated, said Jonathan Miller, president of appraiser Miller Samuel Inc.
“Market stats can never be cherry-picked for any reason,” Miller, who’s been tracking New York City sales data for more than 30 years, said in an email. “All parties are aware that current conditions are not typical. Actions like this will further breed distrust between brokers and buyers.”
Shoppers can still see the initial listing date and do the math themselves, so there’s still transparency, said Heather McDonough Domi, a broker with Compass and founding chair of the group that made the request of StreetEasy last week. Suspending the count lifts some of the emotional burden for sellers at a tough time for the market, she said.
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