Using MLS status to streamline your home search.

Santa Clarita home buyers often find it hard to determine which homes are available for sale and which are already ‘taken’ when searching online, which can add a lot of confusion to their home searches and a lot of wasted effort researching homes that are no longer available.

According to the MLS rules, Santa Clarita Realtors are supposed to change a property’s status to ‘backup’ or ‘pending’ when an offer has been accepted by the seller, even for short sales where the offer also needs to be accepted by the seller’s bank. While both of these indicate that buyer’s offers have been accepted, there are subtle differences that are important to understand.

Backup Status

• Continues to be shown with active listings on most home searches, unless the search has been restricted to homes with ‘active’ status only.
• Seller has already accepted an offer from a buyer, but may not be sure as to the final acceptance of the offer by the bank for a short sale, or is waiting for final loan approval for the buyer.  In multiple offer situations, the seller may use backup status to halt or slow down additional showings when several offers have been received but none have been accepted yet.
• Seller should still allow showings to interested (and qualified) buyers.
• Buyers who elect to submit offers on homes in ‘backup’ status will not be able to push out the current buyer with a better offer unless the original buyer elects to back out of the transaction or fails to perform according to the contract terms.
• In the case of a short sale, the bank approval process may be lengthy, and not all buyers will wait this out. Therefore, in some cases it may be worth submitting a backup offer in case the original buyers back out for any reason.

Pending Status

• Ceases to be shown with active listings on searches, unless there has been manual input to a 3rd party site (such as Zillow or Trulia) that doesn’t automatically update as the MLS status changes.
• Seller has accepted an offer from a buyer, and is confident that the current buyer will be able to finalize the purchase.
• Showings to new buyers are generally not allowed.

Hold Status

• Ceases to be shown with active listings on searches, but may be available for showing at a later date.
• Property is only available for drive-by viewing only, with no access to the interior or back yard.
• Typically used when sellers have special circumstances and don’t want to have potential buyers accessing their homes on a temporary basis. Examples could be visiting relatives, holiday activities or an illness in the household.
• Sometimes used when sellers want to cancel the listing and their Realtor has not processed a full cancellation for some reason. Cancellation of a listing requires signatures from the sellers and from the listing broker (not just the agent), and hold status may be used in the interim period.

Home searches that update automatically from MLS data will show the new status as it is updated on the MLS, although some systems have delays to these status updates depending on how often these sites synch up with the actual MLS database. Typically the MLS-driven search sites update no less than every 24 hours, and some will update several times a day. Exceptions to this are sites that allow manual entry of homes for sale, which may include Realtor’s personal websites, Trulia, Zillow, Homes.com, Craig’s List, Postlets, Facebook and more. When in doubt, search on an MLS-driven search site so you don’t end up chasing down properties that are no longer available for sale.

Santa Clarita Realtor Linda Slocum is a Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) and Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) specializing in Santa Clarita residential real estate and short sales. You can reach her at 661.670.0349 or at Linda@SantaClaritaRealEstateBlog.com. To search for Santa Clarita homes, use our neighborhood search tools or visit HoneyStartPacking.com.

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