For home buyers scouring a neighborhood for the perfect house, new listings are like a small box with a big, pretty bow. A new listing, that glimmer of hope that this is The House, is typically thought to be one that’s no more than a week old. However, if you spend much time shopping online, you’ll find some new listings aren’t new at all.

When the price on a listing is changed by 5 percent or more, for example, the home shows up as a “new listing,” regardless of how long it’s been on the market, said Dick Beeson, a Windermere broker and MLS director. An agent making such a price change can cancel the listing and relist the house, generating a new MLS number, he said.

Web sites for Windermere and John L. Scott, the region's two largest real estate companies, catalog all listings regardless of which company is selling the property. The Northwest Multiple Listing Service supplies the listings. (Executives at the MLS were not available yesterday afternoon or this morning. I’ll update this post if I hear back later today.)

“Unfortunately it’s not something that can be controlled on our end," said John L. Scott spokeswoman Shelley Rossi. "If it’s in the MLS as a new listing, our system has no way of knowing that it’s not.”

A listing’s days on market – information accessible only to MLS agents and brokers – will tell consumers how long a house has actually been listed, unless it’s been 90 days or more since a listing was last canceled, Beeson said.

Chris Nye, a member of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service's bylaws committee, said stopping agents from pushing new listings that aren't new is something the committee has been wrestling with for years.

Nye, president of MLS4owners.com in University Place, said agents, including himself, used to make a habit of canceling listings and relisting houses to get a new MLS number when the technology couldn't track a property's history. But with so much more information available so quickly, such changes are no longer effective.

Not to mention it can mislead consumers, he said. MLS rules, he said, say a listing can only be made new when a significant change is made to a home, such as a remodel.

But look out for homes for sale that change companies. Those, too, end up as new listings.