I have gone back and done some exploring. Sadly, not the kind where you find a secluded beach or a great hidden away restraunt. This has been real estate records research.

I started to notice a while back that I kept seeing the same properties getting listed for sale in Holiday Lake Estates. I don't mean that a home is being listed, sold then listed again. I mean what is called re-listing. It is when you take a currently active listing and simply list it again with a new MLS number. It is a practice that is about to come to an end since those that control the MLS system have noted its abuse and decided to stop it.

The practice basically lets you take a home that has been on the market for a long time and act like it has just been listed. It goes to the top of "Just Listed" hotsheets and improves the visability of the home for a period of time. Frankly, it is often a tool used when a home is reduced in price. By doing it this way, agents that don't do their research are likely to miss the fact that the propery has been on the market forever and has regularly had its price dropped.

So, with that knowledge, what can we learn from the current listings in Holiday Lake Estates? Read on to find out. 

There are currently 12 properties listed for sale in Holiday Lake Estates. Of those, half have been re-listed. So what this means is that a home that shows as having just been listed a few days ago, might actually have been on the market for many months. In most cases, the property was listed as long ago as February and has simply been re-listed every month or two. So that "new" listing may actually be a 6 month old listing, wearing a new MLS number.

Frankly, this practice is a crutch for agents who knowingly take listings that are overpriced or just don't know the market well enough to know better. Surprisingly, many agents out there are still acting as if the market is as robust as ever. The good news is that these agents are not likely to last too long. Till those folks wise up or leave the business, they will leave in their wake disappointed clients whose expectations of what their home could sell for have been raised to an unrealistic level.

More good news is that this practice of re-listing is about the change. REInfolink, the body that maintains and governs the MLS system for the area from San Francisco down to Monterey is changing the re-list rule. There has never really been a good reason for allowing re-listing in the first place, so seeing this practice go away is a move in the right direction. It also means that successful agents are going to have to be just a little bit better at what they do. 

However, as with so many things, there is a downside. The timing of this move could not be worse. We are already in a place where the market has cooled significantly. The average person, including the average real estate journalist, is not going to know anything about the change in the re-list policy. So, suddenly the statistics for how long it takes to sell a home is going to go through the roof in our area. Every pundit and doom sayer is going to point to this "new" data as a startling new drop in the bay area real estate market. Don't let yourself be fooled by that hype - it will simply be the reporting of data that was previously left hidden by the old re-list policy. 

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