Here are the pros and cons of listing a home as ‘coming soon.’
If you’ve been checking out real estate in the past few months, you’ve likely seen a yard sign or online listing that says Coming Soon. Today I’m discussing coming soon listings and the pros and cons of them for sellers.
A listing is generally labeled as coming soon when it’s not quite ready to be fully active on the MLS and begin showings. The sellers are preparing the property for sale, but the marketing is active. The home cannot be shown to anyone while it’s considered a coming soon listing; showings can only begin when the house changes to active status. Our local Triangle MLS will only allow ‘coming soon’ marketing for 30 days.
The benefit of labeling your property as coming soon is that it can receive exposure through signs and some real estate sites before it goes active. That can create hype for the property ahead of time and lead to more buyers wanting to view the home once showings begin, increasing the chance of better offers and possibly multiple offers.
“The home cannot be shown to anyone while it’s considered a ‘coming soon’ listing”
One downfall of a coming soon listing is that you’re only getting limited exposure; the listing won’t appear on all websites like it will when it’s active. Also, if your property is listed as coming soon for more than a week or two, the hype will quickly die out, and it’ll start to look like the seller can’t get their act together and present the home properly. Buyers may also think more repairs were needed than anticipated. Neither are good impressions to make.
Even though the home can’t be shown during this time, the seller can still receive a sight-unseen offer. If you decide to accept that offer, you may be losing tens of thousands of dollars compared to if you’d activated the listing and allowed showings. Multiple offers and a bidding war could have started for your home, which might have led to an extremely high offer. With ‘coming soon’ listings, there is also a greater chance of a dual-agency scenario, where the listing agent also becomes the buyer’s agent, which is rarely good for the buyer or seller. No one is being well-represented in that situation.
If you have any questions or want to know whether a coming soon listing would work for you, call or send me an email, and I’d be glad to discuss it with you. I’d love to be your real estate resource.
