Santiago listings: what is really behind 98 days on market?

plantsAndMap

Seller
Established
I’m sense-checking notes on Santiago property listed between CLP 981,400,000 and CLP 1,472,000,000, mostly detached homes. The typical listing in my sample has been visible for 98 days, but there is a sharp split between apparently quick sales and stale stock. My working theory was that insurability might explain some of it. Before I lean on that, what are people seeing in completed sales, withdrawals and price cuts? I’m also wondering whether broad neighbourhood labels are hiding very different street-level markets.
 
I would not put insurance first without more evidence. At that price level, financing, condition and seller expectations could each create the same pattern. Also, a listing disappearing is not necessarily a completed sale; it may have been withdrawn, relisted or moved between agents. Separate confirmed completions from vanished advertisements before comparing the quick and stale groups.
 
How are you measuring the 98 days? Is it continuous time under one listing, or have you matched the same home across relistings? A reset listing can make old stock look new. It would also help to split the sample by neighbourhood and condition rather than treating all detached homes in Santiago as comparable.
 
Good points. The 98 days is visibility in my sample, not verified total marketing time, and I cannot currently distinguish every sale from a withdrawal. The neighbourhood descriptions also come from the listings, so boundary creep is possible. I’ll recode the sample into continuous listings, probable relistings and unexplained disappearances, then compare condition and price changes. That should test whether my insurance idea is doing too much work.
 
I’d add new-listing volume to that table. If many similar homes arrived during those 98 days, older sellers may have lost attention without anything being fundamentally wrong with the properties. Price-cut timing matters too: one reduction after a long quiet period tells a different story from several small changes made early.
 
There is another caveat: advertised condition can be misleading even when the photographs are accurate. Two detached homes in the same broad area and price bracket may imply very different renovation commitments. Instead of a simple good/poor condition label, note visible updating, unfinished work and whether the description signals repairs. Keep unknowns as unknowns rather than guessing.
 
I partly disagree with dismissing the insurance hypothesis this early. It is reasonable to retain it as one possible filter, particularly if the quick and stale listings differ physically. But the current data cannot isolate it. A useful next step would be to compare otherwise similar homes and ask agents the same neutral question about why a property remains available, without suggesting insurance as the expected answer.
 
Seller motivation may be the missing piece. A seller testing the market can sit at an ambitious price for months, while another accepts quickly for reasons invisible in the listing. I’d track the first asking price, every cut, relisting language and final status. For completed sales, compare the last asking price with whatever completion information you can verify; otherwise label the outcome uncertain.
 
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