Range Pricing Policy on the Tucson MLS

March 28, 2008

Just found a document released by the Tucson MLS regarding range pricing.

Range pricing is saying that a seller will accept or counter offers between $X and $Y. It’s basically a marketing technique, trying to get more eyes on the house because it will appear in a wider set of search results, especially with online home shoppers.

The problem is that most of the Tucson home search sites only list one price, so you think a home is priced really well, and then you read the description and realize it is range priced. So what number do you put into the one big price that most people look at? The top of the range? The bottom? Something else entirely?

Turns out, the Tucson MLS says that the seller can decide whether the listing price is set at the low end, the high end, or somewhere inbetween. For example, if a home is range priced between $474,000 and $515,000, then the most visible price listed in the MLS system can be either of those numbers or some other value within the range.

The Tucson Association of Realtors MLS says they won’t interfere in how agents and their clients determine listing price, as such interference arguably invites allegations of fair trade and anti-trust violations. By dictating how agents market their listings, TARMLS would be limiting or controlling the business decisions of agents and their clients, which they believe would invite litigation. Furthermore, they say, compelling the seller to set a list price at the low or high end of the variable range would "place the MLS in close proximity to price-fixing."

Agents are required, however, to disclose range price listings in the first line of the description.

We talked about range pricing last year. I think I’ll re-run those numbers and see if anything has changed. Stay tuned…

tags: range price, real estate, tucson

Other Information That Might Be Helpful

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