The Southern California Multiple Listing Service just announced a decision to no longer provide consumers with the "Days on Market" information. The days on market indicator tells you how long a home has been for sale.

The rationale given by the SoCAL MLS is that this number needs interpretation and that the public can't understand this without the use of a real estate professional.

I don't know about you, but I'm deeply offended by that. No organization has ever prospered by telling their clients they just aren't smart enough to understand. While I value the input of professionals to interpret data, I don't believe they should hide the data under the premise that I can't understand or properly interpret what I'm seeing.

If we as real estate professionals won't provide that information, other organizations and/or web sites will. We're deluding ourselves to think that we can be the gatekeepers for this info. And to the extent that someone else is the source of that data, we lose!

 OK, that's my two cent rant! How do you feel? As a consumer, is it important to you to be able to see that number? Are you OK with only being able to get that from a real estate agent? If there is another source of that data online are you more likely to look at listings there?