Starting in July, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service will let members publish information about how long homes have been on the market and their previous listing prices.
The association said the move follows a recommendation from a task force and months of discussion and testing.
Tom Hurdelbrink, the listing service president and CEO, said the broker members will get two new fields in their reports, days on market and cumulative days on market. The information will be updated daily, he said.
Cumulative time on the market will show whether the home had been for sale earlier and was then pulled from the market for less than 90 days. A home taken off the market just temporarily won’t be included either.
“Allowing brokers to publish (time on the market) and listing price history is a natural step toward providing more thorough information to consumers,” Hurdelbrink said.
He noted other recent improvements for home information included highlighting information on energy efficiency and displaying sold information.
The new information should be helpful for brokers’ Internet sites and will help them meet consumer demand, Hurdelbrink said.
“This evolution includes provisions for more information from a variety of sources and offering real estate brokerage services to clients on the Internet,” he said. “Research confirms consumers rely heavily on the Internet for information about the home-buying process, including information about specific properties.”
The National Association of Realtors indicated 84 percent of home buyers use the Internet at some point in their home search, according to Hurdelbrink.
The new information will be available July 3, but will likely take until mid-July before it is incorporated in brokers’ Web sites.
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