What changed in Lima this month? My sample is at 41 days at PEN 1,031,000

rhea_dove

Market analyst
Established
Market Reporter
If I read the 41-day figure as selling time, I may misjudge how quickly Lima properties are moving. It comes from active listings between PEN 825,000 and PEN 1,238,000, with the sample centred near PEN 1,031,000; many of the slower properties mention maintenance costs or condition problems.

A withdrawn home that reappears under a fresh listing can look new even though it has been available for months. How are others matching those records and comparing them with completed sales when final prices are difficult to confirm? I would particularly like a method that separates genuine sales, withdrawals and relistings rather than treating every disappearance alike.
 
Active listings will naturally overrepresent properties that take longer to move, so I would not treat 41 days as time to buyer. It is closer to “age of what remains available.” Track each listing from first appearance, then separate confirmed sales, disappearances, withdrawals and obvious relistings. Even incomplete categories would be more informative than combining them.
 
One addition: record new-listing volume for each period. If many properties entered recently, the active sample gets younger without any improvement in sales. If few entered, its average age can rise even while older properties are selling. That may explain a monthly change before price or maintenance does.
 
How wide are your neighbourhood boundaries, and what do you mean by maintenance? A recurring building charge is a different buyer objection from a unit needing physical work. Combining districts or those two meanings could create apparent outliers that are not genuinely comparable.
 
I agree on separating condition from recurring charges, but I’d be cautious about assuming either caused the delay. An ambitious asking price can sit behind both. Sellers sometimes emphasise a property’s condition or building costs when the more basic issue is that buyers do not accept the price.
 
Buyer financing is another possible split. Time online, time until an offer and time until a completed transaction are not the same interval. A motivated seller accepting a financed buyer may disappear from active advertising quickly but still take longer to complete than a seller waiting for a different offer.
 
A workable spreadsheet would use listing ID or address, first-seen date, asking-price history, neighbourhood, condition, maintenance charge if stated, disappearance date and whether it later reappears. Build monthly cohorts from first-seen dates rather than taking one snapshot. You still won’t have reliable completed prices, but you’ll stop treating every vanished listing as a sale.
 
I disagree slightly with using disappearance as even a provisional sale indicator. Withdrawn stock may reflect a seller changing plans, switching agents or testing a new asking price. Unless a completed deal can be independently established, I’d label it “outcome unknown.” Otherwise the apparent sales group may inherit the same bias as the active group.
 
Price-cut timing may be the most observable clue available. Do the listings that leave the market tend to cut early, cut after roughly 41 days, or never cut? Comparing first asking price, last asking price and days until disappearance would at least show whether seller motivation is changing.
 
These comments expose two problems in my sample. I used broad Lima location labels, and I used “maintenance” loosely for both visible condition and recurring building costs. I’ll separate those before drawing conclusions.

Also, PEN 1,031,000 is a reference asking level within the PEN 825,000–PEN 1,238,000 band, not a completed-sale figure. I’m going to rebuild the sample by first-seen month, retain withdrawn and relisted properties as separate outcomes, and add each price-change date.
 
That revision should make the 41 days easier to interpret. I’d also assign confidence levels to outcomes: completed sale established, probably under offer, withdrawn, relisted and unknown. Keep the unknown group visible rather than forcing a result. Then compare neighbourhood and condition only where enough genuinely similar properties exist.
 
The revised method addresses most of my concern. I would still publish the active-listing age and the completed-sale timeline as separate measures if completed information becomes available. They answer different questions. The useful result may be that 41 days describes current advertising exposure around PEN 1,031,000, not how long a typical Lima property takes to find a buyer.
 
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