In the next few days we should be seeing the August edition of RMLS Market Action. The report is changing:

We’ve added a new column to the Residential Market Highlights and the Area Report in Market Action called Total Market Time. This new calculation will help our REALTOR® subscribers better manage the expectations of their clients regarding the amount of time properties take to sell in the current market.

Total Market Time is an average of the cumulative number of days that properties in an area are on the market. This statistic is calculated for listings that sell in the month and year-to-date time periods that apply to the current issue of Market Action only.

For an individual property, Total Market Time is the number of days from when it is originally listed to when an offer is accepted on that property. Therefore, it reports the cumulative number of days that a property is actively on the market.

Unlike the original Average Market Time calculation, the number of days does not reset if the property is re-listed, therefore there will be a significant difference between the two calculations. In fact, Total Market Time on a property only resets if it is re-listed after being off of the market for more than 30 consecutive days. If a property is re-listed within 31 days, Total Market Time continues to accrue; however, it does not include the time that it was off the market.

The change should give a better picture of the market really looks like. It would be great if Total Market Time appears on the individual property Agent Full copy the buyer’s agent has that information at the time of showing. It has always been difficult to tell from an RMLS printout whether the property is newly listed or newly relisted. It’s great to see RMLS moving forward, there have been a lot of updates on the agent side of the site in the last few months..