I want to introduce you to a measure that we use to see how the market is doing in terms of sales.

“Listing success rate” is the percent of homes that, once listed, sell. Specifically, they do not expire or the sellers do not cancel the listings. This is a great way to see whether the market is stronger or weaker for sellers. When we see a big shift either way, we may be able to see where the trend is going.

Here’s the listing success rate this month.

Pretty dramatic decline, huh? So, does this mean that you should not list your home?

You know I’m going to say “no”, right?

There are two factors to consider here.

First, in the words of The Cromford Report’s market guru, Mike Orr, “Overall the listing success rate is down to 60.5%, which happens to be very close to the 14 year long term average of 60.7%. It is slightly improved from January 26, 2014 when we saw 60.0%, but not by enough to be able to claim any significance.

In other words, it is a matter of perspective. If you first started thinking about listings in most of 2013 or June of 2014, this rate does not look too good to you. But, we are right on the long-term averages for this market.

Second, this is a city-wide rate. If we could break this down to zip code (which is tough because the data sets become very small at that point), you would probably see that listing success rates vary in different areas. The historic neighborhoods and CenPho tend to do better, if you are priced right.

That brings us back to the quality of the work that your realtor does. Yep. You guessed it. This is the part where I say that you should call me if you are thinking of listing your home. We can dig deeper in to these numbers and create a strategy for you to succeed. Call me at 602-456-9388!