For most buyers, the length of time a house has been on the market (“Days on Market” or “DOM”) provides a lot of insight into the pricing of a piece of property. If a house has been on the market for a long time, there must be something about the house that is turning potential buyers off; whatever that something is, the net result is that the house must be incorrectly priced. As a general rule of thumb, a house is considered “stale” if it has been on the market for 30, or more, days. Of course, COVID-19 has changed the arithmetic.
To be clear, DOM refers to the numbers of days a piece of property has been placed on the Multiple Listing Service (“MLS”) until the date that property is sold. DOM can vary wildly depending on how the housing market is performing and how accurately priced the property is. When looking at the DOM, it’s prudent to look at the DOM of homes in the surrounding area; if the DOMs are comparable, that indicates it is the result of a market condition rather than something inherently bad about the house (though it’s possible it’s just a bad neighborhood).
As noted above, DOM usually tells a buyer if the home is reasonably priced, but COVID-19 has caused many buyers and sellers to pause, and DOM is slightly less accurate than previously; it necessarily represents a market condition, but doesn’t foreclose the possibility that the house is overpriced as well. Thus, DOM is not the end-all-be-all metric. As such, it is more important than ever to rely on the expertise of a skilled agent who can act as your stand-in during these times; an experienced agent knows what to look for when determining whether the house is overpriced (and will advise you to wait until the price goes down, or advise you to submit a lower offer) or whether the house is a steal. At the Chernov Team our agents are, in fact, experts on homes in the Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino and Tarzana areas; they have the technical knowledge to guide potential buyers in these trying times.
At the Chernov Team we understand that knowledge is power, and knowledge of whether a property is properly priced is powerful knowledge indeed. At the Chernov Team we know that whoever comes to the table most prepared leaves with the most, and the Chernov Team always leaves the table with the most.
