Days on Market research

[Paul Vail]

Forgive a simple question -- what tools are available to a non-agent (no direct access to MLS) to determine days on market for recent sales in my area? I'm presently using zillow (E.g., https://www.zillow.com/raleigh...).  

(I've tried boolean search tools here at BiggerPockets, but a support person here said 'Unfortunately, we do not have that search feature or functionality for forums and the marketplace.')

[Joe Villeneuve]

This is the easiest thing you can do...and Zillow is fine for this.  Start by understanding what you are really looking for...the actual/correct value for that property that sold, and here it is...how long it took to sell that property at that correct price.

The number of days the property was on the market before being sold doesn't matter.  You're not looking for how long the property was on the market at the "wrong" price, because that has no value.  So, only count the number of days the property was listed at the price it sold for.  For this, you only need two dates:

1 - The date the property was removed from market.  This is the date of sale.  The date listed as "sold" isn't the date it sold (for our purposes).  That's the date it "closed"...big deal.  The date the property sold (removed from market) will be the date just before the date recorded as "sold", and labeled either "removed" or "pending".

2 - The date listed just before the date in #1 labeled "price change".

The difference between the two tells you how long that property took to sell when it was finally listed at the correct price...which is what matters.

There is an incredible amount of info that can be read from. and interpreted from, the price history of any and every property.  This is just one example.