Editor’s note:Florida Realtors®’Industry Data and Analysis department has rolled out several changes to its housing market data reports, beginning with the February 2016 reports. These changes were implemented in response to suggestions from Florida Realtors members and the Industry Data and Analysis Advisory Board over the past several years along with research and analysis fromFlorida Realtors’ economists.
The calculation method for New Listingshas been revised to make it more representative of the actual new supply of existing homes for sale in a market. The new calculation method will only count new listings for properties that were not already on market at any time in the prior 60 days—unless the prior listing resulted in a closed sale.Properties that were immediately re-listed after the expiration of a previous listing agreement won’t be counted. For example, if a property’s listing expires, is withdrawn, or gets terminated/cancelled, and the property is then re-listed within a couple months, that won’t count it as a new listing. But if a property sells and is subsequently re-listed within a couple months, we willcount this as a new listing.
A new metric has been added to the reports: Dollar Volume of Sales.
The metric formerly known asAverage Percent of Original List Price Receivedhas been replaced with Median Percent of Original List Price Received – which will be more representative of the “typical” value among all home sales. Unlike averages, medians are not heavily influenced by outliers.
The data pointMedian Days on Markethas been replaced with two new metrics: Median Time to Contract and Median Time to Sale.Every Multiple Listing Service (MLS) calculates the days on market differently, making for inconsistent comparisons across different areas. And more importantly, when MLSs upgrade to new systems, analysts have found that the new systems often calculate days on market differently than the old systems, leading to inconsistent measurements over time in the sameareas.Therefore, the solution is two use these simple calculations that are consistent across all MLSs and MLS systems:
Median Time to Contract is the median number of days between the original listing date for a property and its pending date, calculated across all sales thatclosedduring the month (or quarter or year, depending on the report type).
Note that the new calculations consider two separate listings of the same property to be part of the same “sale attempt” if the listings are active at any time within 60 days of each other, unless the first listing resulted in a closed sale – this is related to the same concept nowuesed in the new calculation for New Listings. This new metricwill offer much more accurate sense of how long the typical successfully sold property is on the market before going under contract with its eventual buyers.
Median Time to Sale is the median number of days between the original listing date for a property and its closing date, calculated across all sales thatclosedduring the month (or quarter or year, depending on the report type). It yields a better sense of the typical length of the entire home sale process among successfully closed sales.