The real estate industry is quietly debating whether to remove days on market (DOM) from public listing data. Some brokerages argue that displaying DOM puts sellers at a disadvantage, giving buyers a negotiation lever without requiring equivalent disclosure. However, a growing number of practitioners say this approach is misguided and could harm the transparent marketplace that makes real estate transactions work for everyone.
Mark Gordon, co-owner of Christiania Realty in Vail, Colorado (vailcoluxuryhomes.com), has spent nearly two decades in a market where inventory is scarce and price points are high. He sees the push to hide DOM as part of a broader and more concerning trend: the erosion of transparency. “Knowledge, data, is the lubricant that creates transactions,” Gordon says. “Every time we remove that lubricant, what we’re doing is creating metal-on-metal friction and creating roadblocks that keep a transaction from occurring.”
The argument for removing DOM from public view sounds reasonable: a seller’s listing accumulates days, and each day signals weakness. Buyers see 90 days on market and assume there is a problem, leading to lower offers. Meanwhile, the buyer discloses almost nothing. The information gap seems unfair. This debate connects to wider issues about private listings, pocket listings, and the role of the MLS, intersecting with brokerage consolidation and data ownership.
Gordon counters that in a world of AI-powered data tools, DOM is easy to calculate. Even if the MLS stopped displaying it, any competent search algorithm would reconstruct it from listing dates. The metric is not going away. The only question is whether it sits inside the official system, where it is standardized and accurate, or gets reassembled outside, where it may not be.
More importantly, Gordon reframes what a high DOM actually signals. He has worked with buyers who specifically search by days on market, looking for listings that others have passed over. Those buyers may start with a low offer, but a low offer is not the same as a final offer—it opens a conversation. “A lowball offer is a million times better than no offer,” he says. “At least now we have a starting point. We have the ability to create something.”
Rather than viewing accumulated DOM as damage, Gordon treats it as a filter that attracts a specific kind of buyer—one looking for perceived value and willing to engage. If the seller counters well, the high DOM becomes an advantage because it brought the buyer to the table. Being offended by a low offer is a strategic mistake. “Instead of being insulted and upset by a so-called lowball offer, we should be thanking them because they took the time to offer to buy your home,” he says.
The seller’s real enemy is not data—it is silence. A seller whose listing has been on the market for three months does not benefit from hiding that fact. They benefit from a skilled agent who can use the situation to generate conversations. Engagement is the resource, and data is what creates it. In a market where only 127 listings serve an entire mountain resort community, every data point that brings a buyer to the table has value.
For the industry, the DOM debate is a proxy fight about something larger: whether the future of real estate is built on more transparency or less. The answer will shape how MLS systems operate, how brokerages compete for listings, and how consumers trust the process. For buyers, a high DOM does not mean a bad property—it may mean an opportunity that other buyers overlooked. For sellers, transparency is not the enemy; silence is.
