Energy Star tax credits
An interesting web site Denver Home Values made this 2007 commentary. Its a bit dated, but it discloses the lack of widespread standardization of the data.
“The difficulty of dealing with the many legal and technical issues has not prevented a few national real estate conglomerates from attempting to build a national database of listings for display on their national corporate web sites. However, they are still subject to the same rules and limitations as described above. This means they must have very deep pockets, because they must maintain a dedicated staff of programmers and legal counsel to deal with all of the different MLS rules and data formats that currently exist.”
The MLS here in Virginia has been consistently behind the curve since March. The data regarding status has been almost continuously out of date. Anytime we identify a property is a deal and send in an offer, we are told later that there is an accepted offer. It does not matter whether it has been on the MLS for 2 days or 150 days. Most of these are bank owned, by the way.
We are continuously frustrated. Suggestions about whether or how the MLS can be useful in this crazy environment are welcome.
See my post of May 26th above
That is a direct quote from my blog post on the subject, and is not from anyone at Real Estate Webmasters. Please attribute this appropriately, with a link to the full blog post on REW, or to the same post on my blog.
done
Thanks for the update on the source.
As to your question / issue:
It is generally not the MLS that is at fault, but the listing agent. Or, there may be other factors in play.
Bank owned properties generally do go under contract very quickly, especially in high demand markets. Savvy investors snap them up as soon as they hit the market, sometimes the same day if the investor has a sharp agent working for them and watching the new listings on a daily basis.
Also, even if there is an accepted offer on a lender owned property, it may be several days later before the special addenda that always accompany a lender’s acceptance are signed by the buyer and returned to the lender, and the MLS status is not changed until that happens.
Short sales, where the property is not yet be lender owned, but the lender must approve any short sale offers, are also notoriously difficult. There may be multiple offers accepted by the seller, but none of them is really a binding contract until the lender also approves it. That can take several weeks, during which time the MLS status will continue to be “Active”. During that time, the buyer also has the right to terminate the offer and move on to another property, and many buyers do just that. This is extremely frustrating for all involved.
Anecdotal evidence I have heard about from agents in some other markets is that some REO (lender owned) listing agents will tell buyer agents that there is an accepted offer when there really isn’t one, knowing that the chances are good that an unrepresented buyer may come directly to them, the listing agent, to make an offer, thereby doubling the listing agent’s commission on the deal. If that is happening in your area, it is not only unethical, but may also be illegal. But it is often difficult to prove, and more difficult to get anyone to go to the effort and expense to prosecute it.
You say that you are sending in offers. I never do that for a buyer client until I have called the listing agent to check on the status. If you are working with a buyer agent, that should be the first thing they do for you, before wasting anyone’s time on submitting an offer.
Well Ron,
We are taking your advice already. We will no longer sending an offer without first calling to see if its under contract. Its a learning experience for sure.