While suffering during the 165-minute fiasco that is Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End (which frighteningly enough had an ending that could indicate yet another chapter in a dying franchise), I received a most interesting e-mail.

The President of the Arizona Regional MLS, Abe Schwarz, has requested that I send a blast email to Phoenix Association members to survey each of you on your feelings about the Days on Market information in the MLS.

One of the ideas floated in the e-mail was removing days on market from the Ageny Property Report, instead having the information readily available on an Archive or other some such report. Not a bad idea, to my mind - not as good as eliminating days on market altogether, but not bad.

There was a free-form section at the bottom and I kept my remarks purposefully brief. But the gist of my complaint with days on market boil down to two basic points:

1) The days on market do not constitute a material fact about the house. Aside from any issues about the home, they also could be indicative of the marketing, the agent’s effort to sell, pricing and/or the sellers’ willingness to negotiate. None deal with the house itself.

2) Days on market is an arbitrary figure that carries no requirement of disclosure. If a home is being sold by an unrepresented seller, the seller isn’t required to discuss how long they have had the home on the market. If that same home is eventually listed with a real estate agent, days on market will reflect only Days on the MLS - not the time frame in which the seller tried to sell the home on their own.

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT DALTON'S PHOENIX ARIZONA HOMES BLOG