A reader asks:
“We are moving to The Villages as soon as we sell our house. I have been tracking a few homes we would be interested in and they have not sold in the two months I have been tracking them. The MLS listed homes for sale show a stat for “days on the market”.
Is there something similar for homes listed with Properties of The Villages?”
This is a great question.
One way that you can tell a home listed on the MLS is priced too high is by looking at how many days it has been on the market.
Generally, if its been on the market for more than a few months, conventional wisdom is that it's probably priced too high.
As a savvy homebuyer going in to make an offer on a house, if you know that it's been on the market for a long time, you can usually expect the homeowner to be more willing to negotiate on price.
Not always of course, but usually.
Unfortunately, since Properties of The Villages® (PoTV) … essentially the developer's resale arm… is not part of the MLS, there is no easy way that a buyer can find how long a home listed with PoTV has been on the market.
This is good for them…PoTV that is…in the sense that, no one really knows without doing a ton of research how long it takes them to sell the houses listed with them.
This makes it harder for a seller considering listing with them to figure out whether they are doing a great job marketing and selling the homes they have listed, or if they've just got a corner on the market because of their relation to the new home sales side of the business.
And, it makes it tougher for buyer's considering purchasing one of their listings to know how much wiggle room they've got to negotiate on price.
It's a very smart tactic and choice not to share that data on their part.
One Possible Solution…
But if you are so inclined (and have the time on your hands), one way to track how long homes are on the market with PoTV is to… beginning today… write down the new VLS listings that come on the market – by number – and keep them on a calendar.
They assign them sequentially in ascending order.
This tactic comes from the agent I send all my readers to.
If you're actively in the market, and you keep looking at the new resales listed each day, it might be smart to begin keeping track of the ones you might have an interest in.
A little work now could give you the upper hand in a negotiation down the road.
