Home sellers attentively count ‘days on market’

Homeowners typically have two questions top of mind when they decide to sell their home. The first concerns how much their home is worth. The second involves how long it will take to find a buyer. It’s the answer to that second question that real estate brokers refer to as “days on the market,” or “DOM,” in broker shorthand.

While sellers generally experienced significantly longer DOM in 2008, there were some counties where homes were sold comparatively quite briskly in November.

Employment spurs home sales

Chittenden County, pop. 150,000, in northwestern Vermont took tops honors for the shortest DOM among 470 counties across the nation. Homes in Chittenden were snapped up after being on the market for just 36 days, or a little longer than one month, on average, according to Cyberhomes.

Annemarie Daniels, principal broker at Coldwell Banker Hickok & Boardman Realty in Burlington, attributes these speedy sales to local economic factors. The county hasn’t been insulated from foreclosures, she observes, but still has one of the country’s lowest rates of lost homes, in part because many homeowners obtained their mortgage from a local bank or lender that didn’t offer subprime products, which have experienced high levels of default in other areas.

“Vermonters have typically been fiscally conservative, and certainly this has worked to our benefit,” Daniels states.

Vermont also has relatively low unemployment. The state’s unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in October 2008 while the national unemployment rate was 6.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Moreover, Chittenden’s strict zoning laws helped to prevent speculative building, Daniels adds. More homes are on the market and sales have slumped, but prices haven’t moved much, which has been another boon for sellers.

Right price gets homes sold

Homes also appeared to have sold quite rapidly in a dozen counties in the Carolinas.

In North Carolina’s Lincoln County, pop. 73,000, for instance, homes sold at the relatively brisk pace of 47 DOM. This community outside Charlotte, the state capital, has its share of attractions, which include lower property taxes than have been assessed in neighboring counties, according to Mitzi Malcolm, office manager at Apple Realty in Lincolnton. The community is also a magnet for so-called “half-backs,” retirees who relocated from the northeast to Florida and then resettled in North Carolina, she adds.

More important, perhaps, has been local Realtors’ concerted efforts to convince sellers to price their home in line with market realities.

“We’ve really stressed the importance of pricing your home right, and I think that [message] is finally getting through. People who are in no hurry to sell their house don’t even put it on the market. The ones that are going on the market seem to be reasonably priced,” Malcolm says.

DOM may not be cumulative

In nearby Mecklenburg County, homes were on the market for 38 days on average. Mecklenburg may be a hot property because it encompasses Charlotte and the headquarters of eight behemoth corporations: Bank of America, Nucor, Duke Energy, Sonic Automotive, Family Dollar, Goodrich, SPX Electronics and Wachovia, which is being acquired by Wells Fargo.

Yet the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association reported that sold homes in the area were on the market 135 days on average. This inconsistency suggests a limitation of some DOM data: Homes may be taken off the market and then put back on, sometimes immediately. This “relisting” may or may not restart the DOM clock for that home.

A similar situation can be observed in Minnesota’s Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis. Homes were on the market just 52 days, on average, throughout the county. But in Minneapolis, the DOM figure was 128, according to the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors, which tracks “cumulative days on the market,” or “CDOM.”

The lesson for home sellers is while the average DOM may offer clues as to what sort of timeline can be expected, local DOM figures may or may not reflect the total number of days that relisted homes were on the market before they were sold.

Another lesson is that Chittenden, Lincoln and other counties of their ilk aren’t typical. The average DOM for all of the 470 counties on the list was 85 and the median DOM was 83, or approximately two and a half months. In New York’s Bronx and Kings counties, homes were on the market more than 170 days on average.