While Spokane County appears in this area's Multiple Listing Service to have a sizable number of newly constructed, single-family houses for sale, nearly half aren't built and fall into a category the real estate industry calls ghost listings.

As of late March, an MLS search showed 414 newly constructed homes for sale on less than 1 acre—enough of an inventory to have caused pause among some lenders considering new-construction loan applications, industry representatives say. However, 185 of those listed properties don't have a structure on site as "to-be-built" houses, typically within a 120-day construction schedule.

Although this grouping has worked well under better housing and lending conditions, the Spokane Association of Realtors says it's planning a change to MLS home searches as soon as this summer to make the system more user-friendly for banks, appraisers, and the general public that can get shared data on real estate websites. While those who are familiar with using the MLS can sift and separate out the newly built and to-be-built categories easily, the association plans to simplify that search.

Jack Kestell, a broker at Kestell Company Realtors and member of the association's MLS steering committee, says this issue was brought to the committee's attention within the last year.

"I think the real concern is the appraisers and lenders were having issue with the inventory of homes when builders were looking at building spec homes," says Kestell, who also serves as the association's board treasurer. "If you just search for new homes, you'll come up with in excess of 400 active new home listings, but if you exclude the to-be-built, you get about half that number."

Plus, he says sometimes potential homebuyers see a to-be-built listing through shared MLS system data that shows up on a public website such as realtor.com, and—mistakenly believing that the home has been constructed—they end up going to a site that's empty.

Rob Higgins, Spokane Association of Realtors executive vice president, concurs that the suggested change mainly came up as a concern because some banks weren't considering loans based on what seemed like a large inventory of new homes.

"How this became a concern earlier was builders wanted new construction loans, so banks would go in and look and say, 'Hey, there are 414 homes,' then you have to explain," Higgins says. "The system allows you to do this, but to make it easier for people who are looking, we are going to make a modification on our data sheet."

Higgins says any member of the association, in addition to real estate agents, can use the MLS. These include members who are in the appraisal industry, and banks that often have an in-house appraiser. Kestell adds that the MLS systems for most regions in the U.S. share data that shows up on various publicly viewed websites, such as trulia.com and realtor.com.

Kestell says the association's MLS committee has worked six to eight months on making a change to how new homes show up in searches, but the process is both expensive and time-consuming.

"We're going to make a change with our forms probably this summer that will make it a little easier or set that (to-be-built homes) as a category all by itself," he says. "I think having a little more clarification does make sense."

As of late March, the overall inventory of active listings of single-family homes in Spokane County totaled about 2,400, Higgins says. Roughly one-sixth of those were new-construction listings.

The planned adjustment to listing categories is good news to one developer, Steve Emtman, who builds homes on the West Plains and says he's guilty of placing what are called ghost listings, or homes he could build in 120 days that are within a certain dollar value range or in an area he thinks might be in demand. However, he says he's advocated for changes to the MLS to separate these home listing categories.

"I see it as a very positive thing," Emtman says. "For Cheney and the West Plains, there is no inventory (of new construction). When you look at the listing, it looks massive. I go through it myself and break it down by how many are actually built. It's kind of deceiving to the market."

He adds, "I think we're a lot closer to recovery, because people are basing it on numbers and they're seeing on the MLS that we still have a ton of inventory, when in reality we don't. It's about supply and demand."

A former NFL football player, Emtman develops subdivisions and builds houses through Cheney-based companies, including Takoda Park LLC, Cheney Properties LLC, and TVC 1 & 2 LLC. He also co-owns North Cheney Boys LLC, which constructs homes. As a recent example of the shrinking supply of newer homes, he says in the past month he's had a handful of houses under construction in Cheney sell quickly through direct contracts with buyers before they could be listed on the MLS.

He says that as of late March for the city of Cheney, the MLS showed about 31 homes for sale above the $150,000 range, but almost 40 percent of those were ghost listings, and for the rest, only about three were fairly new construction homes with the rest being older homes.

In addition to raising concerns and further inquiries from lenders, ghost listings could contribute to procrastination on a buyer's end.

"The false numbers also lead buyers to think they have no rush to buy because they have lots of options and may wait to get a better price," Emtman says.

He adds that clarifying categories of homes likely will boost buyers' confidence.

"It affects everything from the bank lending side to people looking to buy," Emtman says. "I think prices of homes are going to go up soon because there's really no inventory, and the cost of building is going up."