Active, Contingent, Under Agreement: Reading a Listing's Status

Buyers scroll past it. The status field on a listing is a compressed account of what has happened to that property, and read properly it answers three questions worth real money: is this still available, how far along is the deal, and has this house already failed somebody else's inspection.

Status names and their exact meanings are set by the MLS — here, MLS PIN — and they change from time to time, so treat the descriptions below as the shape of the system and ask your agent what the current field says. What does not change is what the underlying stages mean.

The stages, and what each one signals

Active. On the market, no accepted offer. Write.
Active with a contingency — the status many markets call contingent. An offer has been accepted but something significant is outstanding, and the seller is still permitting showings. In Massachusetts this most often covers the window between accepted offer and signed purchase and sale, when the inspection is happening. This is the status buyers give up on too early. More deals die here than anywhere else in the process.
Under agreement. The purchase and sale agreement is signed. The deal is considerably firmer, contingencies are narrowing to financing, and showings usually stop. A back-up offer is still possible and is occasionally worth writing.
Sold. Recorded and closed. This is the only status that is evidence of value — see how to read a comp.
Withdrawn or temporarily off market. Taken off deliberately, contract usually still in force. Something is going on: a repair, a family situation, a seller regrouping.
Expired. The listing agreement's term ran out with no sale. The most honest data in the system.
Cancelled. The listing agreement ended early.

Why the Massachusetts two-contract structure matters here

In most states an accepted offer produces one contract. Here there are effectively two stages — the offer, then the purchase and sale agreement — and the gap between them is where the inspection sits. The Massachusetts closing process sets out the sequence.

That structure is exactly why the contingent period is more meaningful here than elsewhere. A property that is contingent has an accepted offer and has not yet reached a signed P&S, which means the buyer is still inside the period in which they most commonly walk. The seller keeping it visible to the market during that window is not an accident — it is a hedge, and it is an invitation to be the one waiting.

Back on market is the most informative status of all

When a property returns to active after being contingent or under agreement, something happened. The possible reasons divide cleanly into two groups and it is worth working out which:

About the buyer — financing fell through, they lost their own sale, an employer moved them, they simply changed their mind. None of this is about the house, and a property coming back for one of these reasons is often an excellent opportunity: the seller is deflated, the market has moved on, and you are negotiating against disappointment.

About the house — the inspection found something, the appraisal came in low, a title defect surfaced, a Title 5 septic inspection failed. Each of these is a fact about the property that a previous buyer paid to discover and you can now learn cheaply.

So the single question to have your agent ask the listing agent is: why did it come back? They are frequently willing to say, because a reason that is about the buyer is good news the seller wants known. An evasive answer is itself information.

Then ask the follow-up that most buyers do not: may we see the previous inspection report? Often the answer is no, but the question sometimes produces a summary, and a seller who has already fixed what was found usually wants you to know.

What days on market actually counts

The field is defined by the MLS's own rules, and two things about it matter.

First, time spent contingent or under agreement may or may not accumulate depending on the status used, so a number can understate how long a house has really been trying to sell.

Second, withdrawing and relisting can restart the counter — but it does not erase the property's history, which remains visible to any agent who looks at the record. A buyer's agent doing their job will look. When to reduce the price covers why the reset is usually a worse idea than the reduction it is avoiding.

What this means for a buyer: ask for the full listing history of a property, not the days-on-market number on the portal. Previous listings, previous prices, previous expirations. It takes your agent one query and it is frequently the most useful page of information in the transaction.

The portals are not the MLS

Aggregator sites take feeds and refresh on their own schedule, and they sometimes keep showing a property as available after it has gone contingent — occasionally for days. A house you are excited about may already be spoken for, and a house the portal shows as sold may be back on.

When it matters, have your agent check the actual status. It costs nothing and it prevents both the wasted afternoon and the missed opportunity.

What to do with contingent listings

Do not write them off, and do not chase them all. The middle course:

1.Ask what the contingency is. Inspection-stage is genuinely live; awaiting a signed P&S with everything agreed is less so.
2.Ask whether the seller wants back-up offers. Some do, and a back-up in writing means you are first in line rather than starting from scratch.
3.Keep looking meanwhile. A back-up offer is a lottery ticket, not a plan.
4.Write a clean back-up if you do. Its whole value is being simple to accept on the day the first deal collapses.

For sellers

Two decisions follow from all of this.

Whether to allow showings during the contingent period: it preserves momentum and produces back-up offers, and it costs you the appearance of certainty. In a segment where inspection-stage failures are common it is usually worth doing.

And how you handle coming back on the market. A property returning with no explanation invites buyers to assume the worst, which is the expensive assumption. If the previous buyer's financing failed, say so through your agent. If something was found and you have fixed it, have the invoice ready — a documented repair is a solved problem, and an undocumented one is a discount. Preparing a home for sale covers getting ahead of that before the first listing.