Lots and lots of people search for on a variety of internet websites. Obviously everyone will find one they like and use it again and again…..I know, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. I had a call this morning from a potential buyer who was interested in one of my listings, and it is an interesting story of HOW you should be looking for homes that are truly for sale.
Please, Sell It to Me
It was a bit funny – the call went like this:
“Hi, I’m interested in your home for sale on Royce Lane.”
Me: “Great, thanks for calling. Do you mean the one at
3016 Royce Lane?”
Caller: “Yes! I want to put in an offer right away.”
Me: “Oh, that one has an offer on it already, but I can take a backup offer in case the first one drops out.”
Caller: “No, it says on Realtor.com this house is for sale.”
Me: “That might be true, but it has been in either back-up offer status or pending status since just about 7 days after it went on the market. We had an offer that came in the first week and we should be closing our escrow with them shortly.”
Caller: “oh.”
Me: “Do you understand the different statuses that listings have?”
Caller: “No.”
Don’t worry, I am getting to What Does The Status Mean in Real Estate –
The home at 3016 Royce Lane – Pending Sale
Bummer!
Needless to say, I felt so bad to burst this guy’s bubble! It’s hard to understand through a sea of Costa Mesa real estate sites what is and is not currently in escrow out there. Many sites don’t include status, which it sounds like Realtor.com has done. I will have to check that out for myself – but I did give this guy the quick run down on what the status differences are, which I want to share here with you too.
Active – Means that a home is for sale, and there is not an accepted offer (Keep reading for my Costa Mesa real estate pet peeves)
Backup Offers – Means that a home has an accepted offer (buyer and seller agreed on all terms), and the Buyer(s) are going through the process of qualifying for a loan and doing their inspections and due diligence on the home.
Pending – Means that a Buyer has gone through the inspections and accepted the home in it’s condition, and has qualified for financing on the home.
Hold Do Not Show – This one has become popular and unfortunately abused lately. It is supposed to mean that a home is active (for sale), but something has come up where it can not be shown. Usually it is something simple like the owners have guests in town and don’t want showings that weekend.
There are some other technical statuses, but know that when you are looking for a home in Costa Mesa it is important to pay attention to the status offered in the listing.
Oh Behave!
Of course, my pet peeve in this whole thing is that we have some agents who aren’t good about updating the status on listings. We are supposed to change a listing status with 48 hours of a status/contract change. Does everyone do that? No. As an agent, I actually have to call those agents to be sure that the listing isn’t already under contract. Some of them will let a listing go for WEEKS without changing a status, even though it went under contract 2 weeks ago. It’s deceptive, and gives us good Realtors a bad name. Can you imagine going to see a house with your Realtor, getting excited about it, writing an offer, only to find out that an offer was accepted weeks ago? Not days ago, weeks ago! It happens very, very often, trust me.
So, the lesson is, find a good site (shameless plug coming for
CostaMesaRealEstate.com) that updates it’s status in
real time so you know what you are looking at!
Has this ever happened to you? Curious to know what you think!
