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Location: Sarasota/ Bradenton - University Pkwy area
4,621 posts, read 7,545,116 times
Reputation: 6046
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If you had asked me yesterday how confident I felt about the sales data provided by my MLS service, I would have said very confident.
Tonight I don't know that I could answer the same way.
I just watched a video that discusses manipulation of the MLS data by a pair of well known luxury real estate agents in the Miami area.
The video claims the agents in question manipulated days on market, sold prices to list prices, listings about to expire, etc in order to gain an advantage for themselves over other area agents.
There was a story in the Miami papers back in November:
Long article in which the agents in question do admit to "data jiggering."
So has anyone else watched the video or read the Miami Herald story? If this actually went on for more than 4 years as claimed, why didn't the Miami area MLS service not notice the pattern of unusual MLS activity and flag it for review? Am I missing something here?
Can you post a link to the video? I had seen this brought up in one of the Facebook groups that I'm on. Personally, I'm surprised they were able to get away with it for so long.
My father in law lives on Fisher Island in Miami and one of these agents known as the Jills is his neighbor. I forwarded him the article that you linked to and he didn't seem to think much of the whole situation. So, it didn't seem to bother at least one consumer. As an industry professional though it really bothered me.
Location: Sarasota/ Bradenton - University Pkwy area
4,621 posts, read 7,545,116 times
Reputation: 6046
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikePRU
Can you post a link to the video? I had seen this brought up in one of the Facebook groups that I'm on. Personally, I'm surprised they were able to get away with it for so long.
My father in law lives on Fisher Island in Miami and one of these agents known as the Jills is his neighbor. I forwarded him the article that you linked to and he didn't seem to think much of the whole situation. So, it didn't seem to bother at least one consumer. As an industry professional though it really bothered me.
There are several videos out there about the topic, the one that goes into detail about how the manipulations were made is at this link, see the video "Haute MLS Betrayal."
It is claimed they managed to erase over 27,000 days on market on their listings thru manipulation. Plus, when a listing was about to expire, they manipulated the tax ID and address so it would not show as an expired on the Miami MLS hot sheet, making it difficult for other agents to pursue the newly expired listings.
There are several videos out there about the topic, the one that goes into detail about how the manipulations were made is at this link, see the video "Haute MLS Betrayal."
It is claimed they managed to erase over 27,000 days on market on their listings thru manipulation. Plus, when a listing was about to expire, they manipulated the tax ID and address so it would not show as an expired on the Miami MLS hot sheet, making it difficult for other agents to pursue the newly expired listings.
Thanks for sharing the link. The article was pretty clear about the DOM and manipulating the address but the video you shared introduced the concept of manipulating the price as well.
While it's clear that the Jills manipulated the data, I'm not sure how they actually hurt anyone. DOM is not exactly the most important piece of information on a listing. It certainly skews their stats and makes them look a lot better though but most of the concerns about data manipulation brought about a "who cares??" in my mind as I heard them in the video.
Personally, I'm aghast that there was no action taken against them for this either by your MLS or your local Realtor board. Whether they caused great harm or not, what they did was clearly wrong and it was clearly intentional. You don't just "accidentally" manipulate that many listings over that long of a period of time.
MLS date is probably manipulated to some extent in every market. In my market, I see everything from bogus tax account numbers to outright mis-statement of selling price. Developers are fond of giving buyers "decorating credits" or other such rebates so recorded prices are artificially high. Listing agents routinely fail to note concessions and often resort to trickery to reset days on market. Anyone looking at MLS data needs to be aware that the data presented may not be full or correct.
Think your house is worth $X because your neighbor got $X? The MLS may not be telling you the whole story.
I have seen an increase in our area of agents "cancelling" a listing just prior to it "expiring" so that it doesn't show up as expired. When I go on a listing presentation, I ask the potential sellers who else they are considering and I run the reports showing how few of my listings expire or are cancelled compared to the others and I usually win. If they want to play with fire, I provide the gasoline!
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