Understanding rental listing freshness and availability

Two different questions

Freshness asks: when did we last observe this listing on its source? Availability asks: can I rent it today? The first has a precise answer. The second often does not — and an honest product says so rather than guessing.

How RentScope handles freshness

• Daily snapshots. Listings are captured as daily snapshots, which is also how price history is being built over time.
• Recency rule for statistics. Only eligible listings observed within the last 7 days enter a statistic. Older observations are excluded rather than blended in.
• Last observed, stated plainly. Every listing shows when RentScope last saw it: 'Last observed by RentScope' is a successful check, not a landlord's promise.
• Source dates kept separate. 'Source published' and 'source expiry' are the listing's own dates from its portal, shown as what they are.

Why availability is never claimed

• Owners renew and re-post. A passed expiry does not mean a unit is gone; landlords refresh listings constantly.
• A missed check is not evidence. A request that fails, is rate-limited or is blocked tells you nothing about the property — so it is recorded as a failed check, never as 'unavailable'.
• Duplicates get merged. The same unit posted on several portals is one listing with several source links, so a price change on one of them is not mistaken for two different flats.
• Availability changes between checks. Someone else can take the unit the same day you confirm it. Always verify with the source before arranging anything.

Worked example: reading a listing's evidence

A listing shows last observed 2 days ago, one source link, and a source expiry that passed yesterday. Freshness: good — the observation is inside the 7-day window. Availability: unknown — a passed expiry is a source date, not a notice that the unit is gone. The honest next step is to check with the source, not to assume either way.

Illustrative example — not observed market data. RentScope publishes observed figures only inside the app, and only where its publication gates pass. See the methodology.

What happens when the data is too thin

If a listing has too little comparable data, the estimate shows an em dash rather than a fabricated number. If an area or building sample is below the minimum, its statistics are suppressed with an explicit notice. Suppression is a feature: you are told what is not known.