I hope I have this in the right forum, as I couldn't find a land or real estate forum. Does anyone know how to figure out how long a piece of real estate has been on the market or how old an MLS listing is? My wife and I are casually looking for some rural land for our forever homestead and I believe I could have leverage in making a low-ball offer on some land and really beat down the price if I knew it had been on the market for years versus having just come on the market a month ago. Any ideas?

I know you are probably looking for publicly available information. I don't have any answer along those lines.

I know that real estate agents have access to that information.They can see is if the property has been relisted. The current listing might only be 45 days old while the property may have been listed before and expired. The real estate agent can also see when and at what price the property last sold at as long as it was sold through MLS.

Have you tried looking on Zillow or googling the address / MLS number? I've had luck with that in the past, but it's definitely far from a complete record. The best option would be to make friends with a real estate agent and ask a favor. As Matthew said, they can get information on that real easy.

Yeah I've been googling addresses and tried zillow, and sometimes I do get an active posting date, but I'm not sure if that's the date it went on whatever respective real estate website or when an MLS number originated. One site stated a property was listed in July of 2016 but has been actively on the market for 53 days. I'm finding things don't always add up. I have been wondering if what Matthew mentioned if listings expire and they get re-listed and there seems to be no record expired listings, at least that I have been able to find.

I've had good luck with Realtor.com.  Find the listing and then scroll down to the Property History section.  It usually says when it was listed, when it was taken off the market, when it was relisted, when they raised or lowered the price and the last few years taxes.  I'm not sure if that info is always in there but it often is in my area.  Good luck!