Starting the Clock Again

But the way it will change the appraisal side of her business underlines what potentially is the bigger impact -- blunting the bad news of declining prices and sales by presenting a lender with a rosier picture of a neighborhood because houses could show as being sold after fewer days on the market.

That's because an appraiser's report shows a year's worth of all comparable sales, or "comps," and three years of history for the property where a sale is progressing.

"As an appraiser, I like it," Bradley said of the change. She said she has seen 10 sales fall through in the past six months because lenders would not offer loans at the terms the buyers needed when they saw the patterns of slow sales and dropping prices.

"So many lenders are requiring [reporting of] days on market. When they see 233 days, they kind of freak out," she said.

If the lenders don't see those long times before a sale, they won't call her for clarification about those properties, which she said is "more work on our part."

"It's a game we play with underwriters, too," she said. "We all have to do our jobs and make things go through."

Ilissa Flamm, an agent with W.C. & A.N. Miller Realtors in Bethesda, supports the change. She said the MRIS argument that 90 days is a full market cycle makes sense because most buyers have found the house they want in that time.

She initially agreed with Bradley's position on leaving out information about previous attempts to sell when listing comparable sales. She said fresher sales statistics are a more accurate reflection of the market than those nine months ago, although she added: "I hate that the word 'game' was used."

But when pressed, she said the lender has the right to decide whether it needs to know a year's history for comps to decide if a neighborhood's prices are declining. That evaluation, she said, has an impact on how large a down payment would be needed to make it less likely that a buyer could owe more on the house than it is worth two years down the road.

"The lender having an interest in this property, the buyer having an interest in this property: Everyone wants [the selling history] accurately reflected," she said.

Nonetheless, she backed the rule change, which was supported by a majority of the 4,169 agents who responded to an MRIS survey.

"I don't think this change would be made if they thought games would be played," Flamm said.

Debra Leafty, owner of Leafty Appraisals in Gaithersburg, said the change makes hiring a buyer's agent more important; the agent can find the full history of listings.

Because the history is not erased, Leafty said, she doesn't think the new rule will change bidding patterns much. "People are going to still look that up and see you're desperate," she said.

And she wonders how many people will take their houses off the market anyway. "If it's vacant, you really can't afford to take it off for three months. You're still making payments."