San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

In my neck of the woods, that will be more like a 2/3 reduction in active inventory.

This is long overdue and I am stoked about it.

maybe then banks will see very low inventory numbers and start releasing houses?

However, this may help drive demand for a more universal and less provincial mls system. Let's hope.

Google should create their own MLS and make it free like all their other products :-).

Great! It should be ready by winter, when the smart buyers will look.

It will be interesting to see what inventory really looks like. I beleive this change is actually rather bullish for the market and not something that bears should be excited about. If inventory dropped from 13K to 7K like I think it will we will be at levels not unlike those we saw at the peak demand time. Media spin will go in high gear.

The real benefit is that when you look for homes, you will actually be able to see what is really available. It will make for a less frustrating but more difficult buying process as demand will get focussed on what is truly available rather than having me receiving 5 to 10 calls a day on properties that I already have a couple dozen offers on. I wonder how these contingent homes will be treated by all the Internet sites. Will the homes with offers submitted but not yet approved be on Realtor.com? It will be interesting to see how it is handled.

I just thought of another impact this will have which will likely be positive for listing agents. The new system will discourage multiple back up offers on short sales that already have offers on them. However, listing agents will still get sign calls from people driving by properties. When the 1st buyer does not perform it will be more likely that the back up offer would come through the listing agent now.

Yeah that will be weird.

Will the bank consider the double-end offers acceptable or only pay one side?

Thanks David. When I had you remove the PENDINGs from my Sandicor feed, the listings were reduced by about 2/3rds. (guessing).

Now it seems like new listings are just dribbling in along with some price reductions on homes with obvious issues.

It will be good to know what the status is of properties so I don't have to bug ya with those heavily-bidded, short-sale inquiries.

Yer right. The media will spin this like a top.

OX
...data junkie

I like the changes.

The corollary to the reduced back up offers is that while many agents will avoid properties in contingent status the smarter ones will flock to them as it will be easier to suceed in back up positions now.

Some banks will only pay one side and some wont. Its easy enough to get around. Personally I dont like dual agency. I think buyers and sellers should always have separate counsel to some degree in case conflicts arise. I just put my broker on the other side. Its better for all parties.

What will be MORE interesting is the third party providers. In all honesty this should throw a total wrench in the user interfaces they provide however I bet none of them change a thing. They will more then likely keep the IDX feeds as they are so that the contingent category simply feeds into Active status. However you never know!

I was pretty surprised when I read my email as well. I needed to read it several times before I believed it.

If anything I think this will help buyers realize how challenging things are and how it may be better to pass on things for now.

In my professional experience, you'll quickly see who hired the really smart (and lucky) database architect in the first place and who didn't. The ones who did will have a dozen lines of mostly database code to write for the core application and then will go mess around with their reports for a little while; the ones who didn't are screwed because they thought the world would never change and hard coded stuff everywhere.

I will say that both camps are probably somewhat screwed by the very nature of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) driven projects: they're at the mercy of some other bozo's random notions about data structures and transports (this means you, Electricity Reliability Council Of Texas!) and are doing well if they can spackle over the gaps.

Never thought I'd see EDI smak on Piggington....

In my current state of mind (frustrated apartment renter with two small children and an "accepted"--no, wait, "Contingent"--offer on a slice of short sale heaven) I'm likely to lash out at almost anyone. :-)

EDI in all its putrid forms is almost guaranteed to get a rise out of me even when I'm in a good mood.

I hear ya Dr Boom. However I think that the 3rd party sites WILL NOT want to display the true nature of the market. Some of us have been posting for the past several months that a large percentage of the Active inventory was not active, only to be ridiculed and accused of trying to create an illusory market.

The bottom line is that if Joe Consumer gets on line to shop on Redfin or Zillow for a home and sees his effective inventory reduced by 50 or 60% from the already ridiculously low volume it is currently at, then he will turn off the computer and go to the beach instead.

So maybe it is my pessimistic self talking here but I bet the third party subscribers will be somewhat... methodical in the approach of how to present the updated MLS... if they do anything at all.

SD R
You missed the bigger reason the 3rd party sites will want to inlcude as many lisitngs as possible and will most likely include contingent properties. At the core, each and every 3rd party site is a lead generation tool. More listings = More leads = More Revenue...simple as that.

FWIW, I heard 2nd hand through a Sandicor Board Memeber that Realtor.com will still have them.

No ridicule from me: I'm with you.

Anyone who makes a few calls on supposedly "active" listings soon finds out what the score really is, so I don't think it's much of a surprise to the clueful.

You may be right. It wouldn't deter me or my wife, on the other hand, and I don't think we're unique. If anything, showing the true state of things might create more bidding wars due to a higher perception of scarcity.

If one of them does it, I think the rest will have to follow.