When a listing disappears from Realtor.ca, it is hard to know if it will be "asta la vista, baby," or "I'll be back."
In real estate there are a number of different categories when a listing comes off the market - what happens when listings on MLS aren’t Active or Sold?
Pending – This means the seller has accepted an offer, but there are still conditions in place (such as financing or inspection). While the property is pending the seller may want the home to be marketed, shown and available to receive offers. The seller may want the property reported pending to the MLS database and have a break from showings, in which case Realtors can see the property is pending but it still appears on the Realtor.ca web site.
Expired – Every MLS listing has a negotiated expiry date. The brokerage has the authority to market the property until this date, once that date is up the jig is up so to speak. There are many reasons that properties don't sell such as: price, marketing, services, or poor negotiating decisions just to name a few.
Terminated – There are a variety of reasons that a listing may be terminated. Terminating the listing basically alters the expiry date of the listing and ends the relationship between the seller and the brokerage. Some reasons a listing may be terminated:
- Strategy – Some agents choose to terminate and re-list a property, instead of doing a price reduction because this will reset the "days on market clock" so it doesn't look like the property has been on the market for a long time. This is basically why the Days on Market stat on MLS is less than reliable. The Realtors association of Edmonton has put some barriers in place and this pratice is less common now.
- Breach of Contract or irreconcilable diffirences. This area gets complicated but sometimes circumstances change for the seller, or the brokerages clearly didn’t live up to its responsibilities. Some brokerages charge cancellation or termination fees and this should be discussed up front at the time of listing the property.
Conditional termination - (aka cancelled) means there are some conditions attached to the termination. A common condition is that and if the owner sells the property within a certain length of time the listing contract still stands and the negotiated commissions are still due (whether the brokerage was involved in that specific sale or not). The conditional termination may protect the brokerage for a period of time after the termination since the brokerage spends time, effort and money marketing the property during the listing. If the seller decides to rent the property or has no intention of selling for other reasons then they should have no issue signing a conditional termination.
There are other categories such as withdrawn and off market but we've covered the most common categories.
Just curious about pending status: if a house was shown 2 or 3 or even more times as pending, but non-pending between, what does it mean? Sales did not go through or an owner plays strange game? Does it have any sense to look at a house after it was pending 2 or more times?
For those that have been worried about picking the bottom of the market consider the share market over the last month. While everyone keeps spinning the same old duldrum stories the share market has risen approx 15% of its bottom point. Some markets are actually up 29%. My point is that the constant talk of will prices drop or not detracts from the real point – prices are historically low now. If you sit on your hands reading the duldrums you will miss the recovery because guess what – no one will tap you on the shoulder and tell you the market is about to recover. The first you will know about it is when you read it in the paper and by then you have missed the up rise.
Conditional termination is a joke. Really what it should be called is – “we didn’t do our job but still think we’re entitled to our money”. That’s really what it is.
That may be your opinion. In a number of cases. I’ve done what the sellers have asked. Their circumstances changed and they said they didn’t want to sell anymore.
It has happened where buyers go directly to the seller and the seller wants to terminate the listing. The condional termination allows the seller to remove their property from the market but protects the agent from a “back door” deal
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That would depend on why the deals fell apart.
Was it because of legitimate inspection issues or did the buyer fail to get their financing a couple of times.
What’s most important is too find out why the pending deals collapsed. Then you’ll be able to determine whether the problem is the property or not.