Real Estate Supergirl

Active, Pending, Sold… Should the listing be changed to “Pending” as soon as your offer is accepted?

Hi,

So I recently was representing a buyer on a transaction on the detached house in Point Loma. We were a back up bidder on the property where the seller has already accepted another offer. The reason we even went to see the house, is because it was listed as “active” listing on MLS. Obviously I called in the listing agent and found out that there was already an offer that was accepted, but the seller is still accepting back up offers. I usually wouldn’t even waste mine or my clients time showing them a property that is not on the market anymore, but since there was scarcity of inventory on this particular street ( only 1 other house was available, and my clients REALLY, REALLY, wanted to own there ), we decided to go a head and take a look at it, and perhaps submit a back up offer, in case the primary buyer falls out of escrow.

So that is precisely what we did. We submitted a very good, strong and clean offer to the sellers. To my disbelief they actually countered us “subject to cancellation of previous escrow”, which gave both me and my buyers hope. As I would obviously expect the status should have been changed on MLS at this point to pending.

What does Pending status mean exactly? Now with all the different wording  plus new ones introduced like CONTINGENT, consumers really do get confused about the definitions of the statuses on MLS, and other websites, like Trulia, Zillos, etc.. I often get my clients sending me properties that are pending or contingent ans asking me to see them, not understanding that these properties are basically sold and not currently available anymore.

Ok so per definition of Sandicor Rules and Regulation ( 10.7 statuses) :

ACTIVE: A valid listing contract exists and no offer has been accepted.
CONTINGENT: Offer has been accepted contingent on the sale of buyer’s property OR submitted to the bank for short sale or REO approval.
PENDING: The seller has accepted the offer. This is an off-market status.
SOLD: The property has closed escrow. This is an off-market status.

Does this kind of makes sense? Which status do you think the house should have been when we saw it?

By the way, not only this was the first day, but also, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and almost for 2 weeks while the other buyers were in contract. One thing, I don’t understand, why and how the other agent representing the first buyers, didn’t do anything about this?..

If I ever would get into a situation and have an accepted offer, and open escrow representing the buyers, first thing I do the next day is making sure that the status is Pending on MLS. Why?.. Because the property is OFF market and I do not want other offers to keep coming in, possibly creating a disadvantage for my clients.

My whole point, is listing agents, please do us all a favor and change statuses as appropriate and REQUIRED per Sandicor, as well as spare buyer’s agents and our clients our time.

The end of the story was this. We have found another house that came back on the market, on that same street, which we jumped on and were the first to submit an offer on, negotiate and get it accepted. Same day status changed from Active to Pending. Thank you.

Khrystyna Chorna
Allison James Estates and Homes
619.808.7064

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2012 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Real Estate Supergirl Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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