If you don’t know the multitude of today’s listing statuses, you are at a disadvantage in the marketplace and may be wasting your time. In the old days, the old days being only five years ago, we only had 3 listing statuses and one had two sub-statuses. We now have all four of those statuses and three more new statuses and 4 non-listing statuses. To make things more interesting the terminology that our MLS software provider uses is not what the other MLS software provider uses in the rest of Connecticut.
The Original Listing Contract Phases
Right now, we are using the FlexMLS system which was founded in Fargo, North Dakota. With the Flex system you had and have four options; Active, Under Contract (Contingent or Pending) and Closed. When you list your house, it is mostly likely in Active status, but there are now three other options.
Private Withheld Listings
Realtors used to be able to sign a listing agreement and market it or not, without it being “Active” on the MLS. It was simply an off-market listing. Now, it’s either in Delayed Activation or Withhold status. Withhold status is the new name for an off-market listing. If the homeowner doesn’t want their house and all its contents plastered all over the internet, they can go for a Withhold status. Since it’s a private listing, their agent can’t publicly market the listing. It’s phone calls, a limited number of emails and word of mouth. If this market with low supply and active buyers, it’s surprising how often withheld listings get sold.
What do you do if the withheld listing isn’t selling and you want to put it active. If the listing is has been withheld for more than 120 days, you pay the $70 listing fee and your house goes Active and live on the internet and newspaper ads, and postcards and open houses. If the house has been withheld for less than 4 months, then you need to pay a $1,000 listing fee to list it before the four months are up.
Delayed Activation Listings
If you don’t want to try to sell it privately, you just want time to get it ready, then the listing is in Delayed Activation status. This means that that it will go active in the future at some certain time, but until then the house can’t be shown, it can’t be advertised and if a buyer were to make an offer for the house, the listing agent can’t tell the owner about the offer and the owner can’t accept an offer until the listing is active.
Delayed activation is mostly used while the house is being fixed up, decluttered and staged for listing. You have to pick an activation date, at which time the listing will automatically go active. The good thing is that you can put the activation date months in the future and then when it is ready to show, the listing agent can submit a request from the seller to go Active immediately, rather than wait the additional months. You can also extend the original delay period, if you need more time to get the listing ready.
Coming Soon Listings
Let’s suppose the house is in show ready status, the first time you meet your listing agent, but you have to get professional pictures done, drone photography, brochures, postcards, a cop to direct traffic at the open house and you want to build some excitement in the meantime, that’s what Coming Soon is for. Coming Soon listings can be marketed immediately with the listing on the internet, ads in the Sentinel and email blasts. What you can’t do it is show it, have an open house or receive offers until after the listing goes active. Listings can only be in Coming Soon status for 7 days or less.
When this status was originally proposed, I was on the MLS committee and I thought it wasn’t going to be very useful, but it turns out to be very useful in creating demand for the house. My brother, Russ, put 27 Stoney Ridge on in Coming Soon status on Monday with a Thursday start showing date. He scheduled 17 showings in the next two days. (If you want to see it, I’d call your agent now or come to open house on Sunday. The Coming Soon activity shows it to be a hot house.) Our Coming Soon status at 15 Clover Place shows similar activity.
Active status (IDX feed)
When your house is active, everyone, agents and buyers can see it on the Greenwich MLS/portal. It’s fed to all the real estate sites like Zillow, and ads are put in the Sentinel.
Sellers do have the option of turning off the IDX feed (Internet Data Exchange). If the listing agent turns this off, then the listing won’t feed to the internet and will not appear on Zillow and Realtor.com, nor will it appear on other brokers public websites. The listing agent can still advertise it however she or he wants. Turning off the IDX feed can be useful when the seller doesn’t want everyone seeing the listing and interiors.
Under Contract: Contingent Contracts
Once there is a signed contract of sale it’s either in contingent or pending status. Contingent means that the buyer can call the deal off. “Contingent” means that the buyer can get out of the sales agreement and get their 10% deposit back. As a result, the buyer has the power as to whether the contract will go forward.
Most times the contingency is a mortgage contingency. The buyer is trying to get a mortgage and is waiting for the bank, it’s appraiser and the bank’s underwriting department to approve the mortgage application. Contingencies, however, are only limited by the parties imagination. Contingency clauses can be about title issues or what kind of pets are allowed under the homeowners association rules. (I one time had a llama contingency. It was backcountry and the neighbors were never going to see the llama, so the deal closed and the buyer and his llama moved in.)
Contingency provisions usually have an expiration date. If the buyer does not exercise the contingency before that date, then contract goes binding or Pending. Buyers can also waive the contingency earlier, if say the bank approves the mortgage quickly. If the buyer exercises the contingency, e.g., they can’t get a mortgage, then the buyer gets their 10% downpayment back. The sales agreement provides that the seller is entitled to keep $450 dollars of the deposit for the cost of preparing the contract.
Non-Contingent Contract: Pending Contract
If the buyer and seller sign a contract without a contingency, then it is pending. Contingent contracts have their contingencies waived or they expire become pending contracts. Now “pending” is a term that I have always thought lacked precision. All contracts are “pending”, its just that some are contingent, and some are non-contingent. Personally, I like “non-contingent” as a status, but much of the rest of the country including North Dakota uses “pending” so Greenwich does too. Pending means that all contingencies have been satisfied and the contract power is back in the seller’s hand. If a buyer doesn’t close when the contract is pending/non-contingent, the buyer loses their 10% deposit. In 29 years as a real estate attorney and a real estate agent, I’ve only had 3 buyers walk away from their downpayment. In each case, I represented the seller and the seller got another deal and made more money. In each case the seller ended up with more money than the amount of the original contract. Your mileage may vary.
Withdrawn & Cancelled & Expired
Sellers can ask their agent to withdraw their listing. This is a temporary pause in the listing. Sellers often do this during the holidays or for other major family events. Sellers can withdraw the listing at anytime for any reason.
Sellers also have the right to cancel a listing. This means that the contract has been terminated before the end of the full term of the listing agreement. The standard GMLS listing agreement provides that if the seller wants to cancel the listing agreement early, then the seller will provide a “service fee” to cancel the contract early. This amount is negotiable and some agencies agreement have much tougher terms for early cancellation.
Expiration
If the house doesn’t sell after the full term of the listing agreement, then it becomes an Expired listing. Listing agreements are automatically extended if the house is under contact at what would otherwise have been the end of the listing.
In Greenwich, if the same agent signs a new listing after the their expired listing, the GMLS days on market is not reset, unless more than 90 days have passed since the last listing expired or was cancelled. This use to be good way to bring a “new” listing on the market with zero days on market. Today, most of the major website use days on website to calculate days on market.
Closed
The final status is “Closed”, which just means title has transferred. A few years ago, busy agents might not file the Change form for days or even weeks for one OG agent. Now, the MLS fines you if you don’t file change forms promptly, so we rarely see sold properties where the listing is not in Closed status.
A HUMOROUS GUIDE TO REAL ESTATE LISTING DESCRIPTIONS
Now these are the listing statuses, but there phrases that agents use in listing descriptions whose meanings may not be immediately obvious to the layperson. Here is a guide to some of those listing descriptions
| Real Estate Term | What It Really Means |
| Cozy | Small |
| Quaint | Small and musty |
| Intimate | Tiny |
| Character | Needs work |
| Exceptional | Weird |
| One of a kind | Weirder |
| Only one owner | It’s old and no recent renovations |
| Private | Isolated |
| Charming | Old |
| Classic Elegance | Older |
| Luxurious | Formerly elegant |
| In town | Noisy |
| Turn-key | Only needs a little work |
| Recently renovated | Needs more work |
| Fixer upper | Needs a lot more work |
| Handyman special | You will need a lot more than one handyman |
| Tree lined street | Lots of raking and power outages |
| Sold “as is” | Get a really good inspector |
| Location, location, location | Good location, the house not so much |
| Conveniently located | On a busy intersection |
| Easy highway access | You can tell the highway volume without getting out of bed |
| Walking Distance | Maybe, but you will want to take a car |
| Lots of storage space | Unfinished basement |
| Pet friendly neighborhood | Wear shoes in the front yard |
| Friendly neighborhood | Snoopy neighbors |
| Need to see in person | Wish I’d had a better photographer |
