Whether you are looking at listings for a potential property purchase or you are working with an agent to determine a home valuation, you will want to know these basics of the terminology in the listing detail or the Comparable Market Analysis (CMA).
Active: The property is actively for sale and there is not an accepted purchase contract. There may be an offer or negotiations in the works, but an agreement is not finalized.
DOM: The number of days the property has been on the market.
Active Contingent: A purchase offer has been made, the seller has accepted the offer, but there are buyer contingencies that may prevent the sale going through. The most typical contingency is financing—the buyer has yet to secure loan commitment. Other contingencies might be: the inspection period, either personal inspection, professional inspection or both; examination of financial records for income-producing properties; and/or the buyer’s sale or closing of another property (the latter being less common). There might be one or more contingencies.
In some cases, Active Contingent status means that the seller is willing to take backup offers, should the current offer not go through or if there is a “kick-out” clause in the agreement (a kick-out clause is an agreement between the buyer and seller giving the seller the right to demand contingency removal within a certain number of days; if the buyer cannot perform within that time period, the contract may be terminated).
Active Contingent Short Sale: The property is listed as a short sale and a purchase contract has been accepted by the seller and submitted to the lender(s). (In a short sale, the seller owes more on his/her mortgage that the current market value.) The seller is waiting for written authorization from the lender(s) to proceed with a short sale (lender is agreeing to a loss). Often, the lender agrees to a short sale but not necessarily the listed price; the lender approves the sale terms but at a price other than the currently-in-place contract and negotiations then ensue. In some cases, a seller will accept backup offers, but often they do not submit backup offers to the lender as doing so complicates the process for the lender and delays any forward movement that may have occurred on the file.
Pending: Terms of the purchase contract have been fulfilled and the closing of the transaction is near or nearly assured. Often a listing will move from Active, to Active Contingent, to Pending, and finally to Sold. If an accepted purchase contract is a cash purchase with no or minor contingencies, the status moves from Active directly to Pending.
Original List Price: The initial asking price of the property on the listing’s start date.
List Price: The current asking price, either the same as the original list, or after price reductions or price increases from the original list amount.
Sold Price: The final amount paid by the buyer to the seller.
Back on Market: The property was temporarily off the market, usually because a purchase offer was accepted, but the deal fell through (e.g., the buyer could not obtain financing).
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