No one in the Greater Toronto Area knows how long it takes to sell the average home and, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board, they aren’t trying to figure it out.

Every month, TREB issues market updates that track statistics like average selling price, number of new listings, transaction volumes and so on. Featured on the first page and every subsequent page is a figure described as average days on market, or “DOM.” For October, 2018, for all home types across TREB, that average is 24, up from 23 in 2017.

But DOM can’t tell you how long it takes to sell a house in the GTA, in part because there is a widespread practice of terminating and relisting homes for sale – for many reasons – that has the effect of rendering that number virtually meaningless.