The week the listing goes live

The Margins

The day the listing goes live looks like any other day in the house. The counters are clear and the bins are out of sight, and from this morning on, somebody you have never met can ask to see the place.

The board's clock starts with the first public mention

Under the board's rules a listing goes onto the MLS® System within three days of any public marketing, and public marketing is defined widely. A flyer, a yard sign, a social media post and a page on a website all count. So nothing about the house appears in public until the listing is ready to follow it inside three days, and once the listing starts, it has to be loaded within three calendar days of its start date.

Every field is read before it publishes

A listing is a set of fields and a paragraph. Every field is read against the walk-through notes before anything publishes, because the brokerage that publishes a listing answers for its accuracy. The paragraph follows the board's rule that the public remarks stay specific to the property, which how your listing gets written takes further.

The photographs that go onto the listing are digital and sharp, made to show the house plainly. The board requires at least one of the outside of the house, and no image on the listing may carry a person, a logo, an advertisement or a line of contact information. An image altered in a way that could misrepresent the house is not allowed, and a virtually staged image has to be disclosed in the remarks. Once uploaded, the photographs belong to the board, and no brokerage may reuse the photographs from another listing without the written consent of the brokerage that listed it.

You agree to how the listing travels

The board may advertise a listing in any medium, the internet included, and it keeps the listing information after the sale. We ask for your consent to both when you list, and that consent is how one listing ends up on many websites at once. The listing carries your full legal name unless you tell us in writing to leave it off, and that instruction stays on file with the brokerage.

A buyer who has saved a search on this site gets an email from the search when a new listing matches it, so the people already waiting for a house like yours hear about it from their own search. Days on market start counting from the listing date.

Showings run through us, on your instructions

Every request to see the house comes through our side, and the board's rules have an active listing available to show within a day of a request, with exceptions for a house with a tenant in it and a sale a court has ordered. Unless you instruct otherwise, every buyer is accompanied at every showing, and the licensee who opens the door is responsible for securing the house during the showing and after it.

The listing agreement also asks you to acknowledge that recording the conversations of people touring your home, without their written consent, is against the law. So is a camera left running anywhere a visitor would reasonably expect privacy.

Anything with a date goes where it can expire

An open house time lives in a field of the listing that updates on its own, and on a story on social media, which disappears within a day. Permanent pages carry only what stays true. A sign that announces a listing as new has that line taken down within ten business days of the listing date, under the board's rules.

What the week asks of you

Mostly, a house that can be shown on short notice for as long as it is for sale. The rest of the week runs on the rules above, and each of them applies to every listing on the board, yours included. When something about the listing changes, the board hears about it within two business days, and once an offer with conditions is accepted, the listing shows as pending. Any sign on the lawn is in the brokerage's name unless you instruct otherwise.

Everything this week depends on was gathered on the walk-through. When the first offer comes in, the evening an offer arrives picks up the story.