DOM & CDOM Real Estate

When you are searching for properties online on MLS platforms, you might come across the abbreviations DOM and CDOM. These acronyms are useful measures that tell you for how long a property listing has been active or the time that a house has been for sale overall. Buyers can make use of this information since the period of time a home has not sold for can have certain implications.

What is DOM?

DOM stands for ‘Days on Market’. It shows the number of days that a home listing has been active. Therefore, on the first day that a property is listed as ‘Active’ on an MLS platform, DOM starts counting from 0. Even if the home status changes to ‘Contingent’ or ‘Back-up”, DOM may continue accumulating until the status switches to ‘Pending’.

Buyers draw their own conclusions when looking at the DOM of a property. If a property listing has a low DOM, then it typically means that the property is newly listed. Since it hasn’t been long since the property got introduced to the market, then there may be a lot of other potential interested buyers on it, meaning that you will have to act fast. If there are many interested buyers, then the seller of the home may not be willing to negotiate on an offer, since they have the upper hand.

A high DOM can be detrimental to a seller. When a property listing has been active for a long time, then buyers start to get suspicious. Why has the home not been sold yet? Is there something wrong with it? Buyers are cautious when looking at properties with a high DOM since they believe that there must be a reason why others have chosen not to purchase them until now.

One of the reasons that a property listing may have a high DOM can be because the seller overpriced the property initially and is now reducing the price since there are fewer interested buyers.

The DOM of a property can typically be reset immediately back to 0 if the property listing is canceled or expired. Some MLS platforms require you to wait for a certain period of time before relisting if you want your DOM to be reset. This will also provide you with the benefit of your listing having a higher rank on the MLS since it is “newer”, but the catch is that you would have to pay the listing fee again.

In order to avoid a high DOM on your property, you will need to know what can cause your home to stay on the market for a long period of time and how you can fix these problems. To reduce the days your property has been on the market, consider the following:

If a home is overpriced, it will drive potential buyers away, especially the ones that have been shopping for a long time and now have a good idea of what similar homes in the area are selling for. These buyers may even refuse to look at the property altogether since it is not in their budget range. Some sellers believe that by listing the property at a high price initially, they will be able to get a higher price than they would be by putting a fair price. However, typically, the opposite happens. When a property is priced fairly, it attracts a lot of potential buyers. The competition drives those most interested in the property to make offers with a higher price than the house was listed for.

Moreover, by overpricing your property and pushing buyers away, your DOM will continue accruing in the meantime. And when you finally decide to make price reductions and charge a fair amount, buyers will already be suspicious of the high DOM the property has. This may lead to you having to make further price reductions to attract buyers.

When you are frequently unavailable to show the house to potential buyers, the DOM on the property will accumulate quickly. Some buyers may even lose interest completely if you keep pushing off your appointments with them. While it is understandable that with other commitments, you may not be able to expect people in your house 24/7, you need to keep in mind that the more days that pass that your home is listed, the more probable it is for its value to decrease in the eyes of the buyers. A solution to this could be hosting more open houses. This way you can allocate time for potential buyers to visit under your schedule and commitments.

Maybe the pictures of the house that are up on your property listing are not doing justice to the house. Consider hiring a home stager to make your home ready to be seen by potential buyers. Sometimes the way a home is decorated or set up can have a major effect on the buyer’s vision and whether they can see themselves living in that house.

Moreover, having professional photography taken can also help in marketing your home. You want to leave a good first impression on buyers who are looking at the property on the MLS listing. As far as appearance goes, those pictures will be the deciding factor of whether the buyer chooses to view the home in person or not.

An experienced real estate agent can handle most of the tasks listed above. First, they can help you with deciding on a price for the house by having knowledge of the real estate market and what similar homes are selling for. Secondly, some listing agents host the open houses themselves. While you would still need to be available when a new prospective buyer wants to look at the house, having someone who can handle the relationships with buyers can take a lot of weight off your shoulders. Moreover, your real estate can negotiate on your behalf with interested buyers.

What is CDOM?

CDOM stands for ‘Cumulative Days on the Market’. CDOM represents the total number of days a property has been on the market. The main difference between DOM and CDOM is that a property’s CDOM will continue to accumulate even if you re-list on the MLS platform. To completely reset CDOM you would need to take the property completely off the market, typically for at least one year.

For example, imagine that 45 days have passed since you put up your listing on an MLS platform. At this point, you decide to cancel the listing and re-list your property under a new MLS listing number. While your DOM may reset immediately, your CDOM will continue where it left off, thus at 45 days. Therefore, the count will start from 45 on the new listing and not from 0.

In order to reset your CDOM, you typically will have to wait for a period of time before re-listing your property after the previous one is canceled or expired. Different MLS platforms have different requirements. Typically the number of days required varies from 31 days to one year. If you do not wait and re-list the property before the required period has passed, then the CDOM will continue accruing and will include the number of days that you actually waited.

DOM can be used to draw predictions about the future prices of properties in an area. For example, if the average DOM of properties in a certain area is increasing over time, this means that we can expect prices of properties of that area to drop. Since it is taking the sellers a longer time to sell their homes, they may resort to reducing the price in order to attract buyers to their properties. In this scenario, we can say that there is a buyers’ market.

However, the price of real estate properties typically increases over time. The DOM effect is not large enough to offset this increase in the overall real estate market. It can only slow down the rise in prices.

The opposite is true when there is a decreasing trend in DOM in an area. Lower DOM means that it takes little time for a property to be sold compared to other areas or neighborhoods. In this case, sellers have the upper hand and we can expect an increase in the price of homes in this area.

How to Calculate DOM and CDOM on a property listing?

In the case that DOM and CDOM are not given on the property listing on MLS, you can calculate these numbers on your own by following these steps:

To go through this example, we will use the platform of Zillow. The first thing you will need to do is to click on the property listing that you are interested in on the MLS database. Here you will find most of the information you need on the property listing, such as the home’s features, the price and tax history, the estimated monthly cost, down payment assistance and more.

In the property listing, search for the section ‘Price and Tax history’ of the property. Here, you will see information regarding the statuses the house has gone through since it was first listed. For example, if at any point the property listing was removed or cancelled, you will be able to see this in this section.

In order to calculate DOM, you will need to check the last date when the property was listed for sale without being removed and without having the status ‘Pending’ after. For example, if the last day a property was listed for sale was September 5 and a potential buyer looks at the property on October 18, the same year, then, the DOM of the property would be 43 days.

To find CDOM, you will need to look through the whole history of the property listing. CDOM represents the number of days throughout which the property has been on the market. Therefore, to calculate this number you will need to add up the previous listings of the property. For example, imagine that the property listing followed this timeline of events:

Assuming that a buyer looks at the property listing on October 18th, 2021, then the property’s CDOM on that date is:

• 6/10/2021 to 6/22/2021 → 12 Days
• 7/29/2021 to 7/30/2021 → 1 Day
• 9/5/2021 to 10/18/2021 → 43 Days

• CDOM = 12 Days + 1 Day + 43 Days = 56 Days