New MLS - what does it mean to buyers and sellers?
November 10, 2018
We have a new MLS - Multiple Listing Service - in the Maryland-DC-Virginia area. Actually, it is a huge database, covering Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, D.C, and West Virginia. Most agents aren't licensed to sell real estate in all those areas, so this doesn't mean we can automatically practice our business everywhere.
However, there are some excellent new features that should make buyers and sellers happy, not to mention their agents! First benefit for me is that we can add more than 30 photos - that was our old limit. Another excellent feature is the ability to write descriptions in plain English - before we had a 400 character limit, which included punctuation and spaces, to describe a property. That lead to horrible descriptions like "3br 2ba, sgd 2 deck frm dr." Now we are free to write "3 bedrooms and 2 full baths, plus sliding glass doors to the deck from the dining room." We have 4,000 characters available to us! I'm in sheer heaven!
There are still some glitches, as they try to combine all these different MLS's. I can't search - yet - for all the homes in a specific municipality, like Cheverly. I've already requested the field be added, since it is available to us in the tax records. Should be an easy fix.
The biggest change - and it will affect everyone - is how we define the number of days a home is on the market. In the past, as soon as a contract was accepted, the MLS stopped counting the number of days the property was available, even when there were contingencies to be met. It wasn't unusual to see a house that was only on the market for 2 or 3 days. Now we have a new category - ACTIVE UNDER CONTRACT - and the count doesn't stop. This means that buyers can still make appointments to see a house that is in this status, and on all those ancillary sites like Zillow and Realtor.com, they will still show as Active.
As a result, it will look like it is taking houses longer to sell. That's not necessarily the case, but after a while, we won't notice the change.
A lifetime Maryland resident, Susan Pruden has the ideal foundation for selling and buying homes. After 8 years working in just about every facet of the mortgage industry, and several years with her own company specializing in marketing for real estate agents, Susan got her real estate license in 1994. Susan has earned several industry awards. The CENTURY 21 Quality Service Pinnacle Award is based on reviews from Susan's clients and is earned by a very small percentage of agents. She has earned that coveted recognition since 2012
Two others were awarded by the Prince George's Association of REALTORS®. The Distinguished Sales Associate of the Year Award is based on a mixture of community involvement, association involvement and real estate education and designations. The other, the Distinguished Service Award, is for "exceptional meritorious service."
Susan is involved in her local community. She was named Cheverly Volunteer of the Year in 2018, even having June 25th designated "Susan Pruden Day" in the Town of Cheverly. She is also a Commissioner on the Prince George's County Historic Preservation Commission and President of the Cheverly American Legion Auxiliary.
Susan Pruden has lived in Cheverly lived with her husband, Joseph, for almost 30 years.
