This is an estimate for planning. It is not a quote, an appraisal, an offer, a loan offer, or tax or legal advice, and Rudy is a real estate agent, not a lender or tax professional.
The four paths, in plain English
Open-market listing
The house is entered in the MLS and shared with public home-search websites. Expect photos, open houses and showings, with every buyer and agent able to see it from the first day.
When owners often choose it: Best if you’d like the largest possible pool of buyers weighing in on what your long-held home is worth, and your schedule can make room for prep, showings and escrow.
Tradeoffs: Showings are more frequent and the price history is public. Any prep work is paid for before the sale. Escrow commonly takes 30 to 45 days after accepting an offer, and buyers may ask for repairs or credits once they inspect.
Pre-market or Coming Soon
First, a limited group of buyers gets to see the home, either before a public launch or instead of it. That may be a delayed-marketing listing, a Coming Soon listing, or an office-only listing that stays with a single brokerage’s agents.
When owners often choose it: Privacy after years in the neighborhood, a say in timing and showings, or extra time before you move out matter more to you than the largest audience.
Tradeoffs: A smaller pool of buyers can bring fewer offers to compare and a softer test of price. With SDMLS, Coming Soon can run as long as 30 days; with CRMLS, 21 days is the limit, and neither permits in-person showings. You’ll sign a form before it begins. Zillow’s standards add that once public marketing starts, a home has one business day to reach the MLS; otherwise Zillow and Trulia won’t show it during that listing agreement.
Rent it out, sell later
Perhaps you move to a smaller place, lease this home to a tenant, and sell after the years you choose.
When owners often choose it: This may suit you if rent could handle a large share of the monthly costs, selling later lines up with your long-range plans, or you might return to the house one day.
Tradeoffs: Set money aside for a property manager, or plan to give your own time, and expect repairs and some months without a tenant. You’d also follow local rent and notice rules. Even after many years of living there, renting the home out for several more can change your federal home-sale exclusion, because you need to have owned the place and lived there as your main home for no less than 2 years during the 5-year stretch ending on the sale date. A CPA can look at your timeline.
Keep the home
You remain in the house you’ve made your own. Since nothing changes hands, you pay no selling costs today.
When owners often choose it: How you live still suits the house, the loan terms you have are worth keeping (or the loan is already paid off), or you have no set move date.
Tradeoffs: Money stays tied up in the house as equity rather than cash, and the tax, insurance and upkeep keep coming, along with any loan payment. The market will set the home’s later value, so the yearly growth you pick is your own estimate, not a forecast.
Pre-market and coming-soon sales: the rules
Three sets of rules apply to quiet or early marketing: national policy for REALTORS®, the MLS, and your brokerage. Websites like Zillow also set their own standards for listings.
The Clear Cooperation Policy set by NAR, the National Association of REALTORS®, continues to apply across the country. It requires the listing broker to add a home to the MLS within one business day after any public marketing begins. That covers yard signs, window flyers, email blasts, public websites and listing networks shared across brokerages. In addition, an NAR policy titled Multiple Listing Options for Sellers, effective since March 25, 2025, gives sellers two alternatives to a full public listing. With delayed marketing, MLS agents see the listing but public search sites are kept from showing it until the waiting period the MLS sets is over. In an office-only listing, the MLS keeps it on file without sharing it with agents at other brokerages, and there’s no public marketing. Either way, a signed seller disclosure comes first.
Two MLSs carry San Diego County homes, CRMLS (the California Regional MLS) and SDMLS (the San Diego MLS), and each one has different rules.
In SDMLS, Coming Soon may last a maximum of 30 days. Agents throughout the MLS can see the listing. You’re free to promote it and to accept an offer; what you can’t do is hold open houses or in-person showings. These listings stay off public portals in SDMLS, and they don’t go out on IDX feeds, the channel other brokers’ websites use to display listings. Once it turns Active, the listing can’t be returned to Coming Soon status. In SDMLS, NAR’s delayed-marketing option means the listing is Active but not published online, and it allows in-person showings with no time limit.
In CRMLS, Coming Soon lasts 21 days at most and then turns Active. Showings of every kind are prohibited, and ads have to state Coming Soon. As a rule, IDX feeds pass these listings along and Realtor.com, Homes.com and other portals show them, though a 2026 seller form gives the option of keeping them out of IDX. Coming Soon is a one-time stage: once a listing moves on, it can’t re-enter. CRMLS offers no delayed-marketing option, and its rules bar public marketing outside the brokerage for any listing that isn’t in the MLS.
Each California seller’s MLS choices go on paper in C.A.R.’s MLSA, which stands for Multiple Listing Service Addendum. C.A.R. revised it in September 2025, and each MLS may also want its own form. The NAR disclosure is the seller’s acknowledgment of what’s being given up, for example the wide and instant exposure that comes with being in the MLS.
Zillow brings its own one-business-day rule through its Listing Access Standards: a home marketed publicly has to be in the MLS within that time, or Zillow and Trulia won’t display it while that listing agreement is in force. If a home will skip public marketing entirely, Zillow asks for a seller-signed waiver that lists the downsides.
The rules have been updated more than once since 2025, and your brokerage may have extra policies of its own. Rudy will check which MLS your home is in and what applies to the dates you have in mind.
Rules as of 2026-10-30. Sources: NAR: Multiple Listing Options for Sellers; NAR: MLS Clear Cooperation Policy (Policy Statement 8.0); NAR: Multiple Listing Options for Sellers FAQ (May 27, 2025); NAR: Office Exclusive Listings, Pre-Marketing Guidance; SDMLS: DMEL & DMLE: What’s the Difference? (Coming Soon Status, revised July 2026); SDMLS: The SELM Is a Discontinued Form (use the C.A.R. MLSA); CRMLS: Coming Soon Status; CRMLS: Limited Exposure for Coming Soon FAQs; CRMLS: C.A.R. Form MLSA (Multiple Listing Service Addendum) FAQs; Zillow: Listing Access Standards (PDF). Your agent will confirm what applies to your home.
About these numbers
- No appraisal, offer or forecast here: these are estimates built from the numbers you entered.
- Commission is something you and your agent work out together, and the listing agreement records it. Selling costs here follow the rates you put in.
- Holding costs, month by month until closing, are loan interest (zero if the home is paid off) plus property tax, insurance and HOA dues.
- Money in hand at closing and money years away aren’t the same. Income tax and depreciation aren’t counted in the rent or keep column, and neither is what the cash might earn elsewhere.
- Tax on the gain from a sale isn’t included. A CPA can tell you how the federal home-sale exclusion fits your situation, particularly if renting comes before selling.
Questions owners ask
Can I test the market quietly before a public listing?
There are a few quiet routes, each with its own MLS rules. In SDMLS, the delayed-marketing route is an Active listing kept off the internet that allows in-person showings and has no end date. Coming Soon in SDMLS can last as long as 30 days, isn’t sent to public portals, and doesn’t allow in-person showings. In CRMLS, Coming Soon can’t go past 21 days and allows no showings at all; the listing typically reaches Realtor.com and portals like it, and there’s no delayed-marketing route. Keeping things quiet may bring in fewer offers and a less certain sense of price, a trade-off Rudy can help you think through.
My mortgage is paid off. How do I fill this in?
Enter 0 for the loan balance. Holding costs then come down to the tax, insurance and HOA dues you pay each month, and the rent column has no loan payment to cover. The keep column shows the home’s estimated future value, based on the growth rate you guess, as your equity.
What if I rent the house out instead of selling?
The rent column shows it. Rent arrives, and so do the costs of being a landlord: a manager or your own hours, repairs, empty stretches between tenants and local landlord rules. Tax can change too. Federally, a gain of up to $250,000 can be excluded, or up to $500,000 when you and a spouse file jointly, provided the home belonged to you and served as your main residence for 2 or more years in the 5-year period before selling. So a long rental stretch can matter even after decades of living there. A CPA can tell you how your own dates line up with it.
Is the commission rate set in stone?
Not at all. It’s open to negotiation, and whatever rate you and your agent settle on is written into the listing agreement. Enter the number you expect; the listing, the pre-market sale and the later rent-then-sell sale all use it. Testing two or three rates shows how much the net moves.
Is there paperwork if I’d rather not market the home publicly right away?
Yes. A disclosure signed by the seller is required under NAR’s 2025 policy. By signing, you confirm you know which MLS benefits you’re giving up or putting off, such as being seen by a big pool of buyers from day one. In California, the MLS choice is also noted on the C.A.R. addendum (MLSA), and each MLS has its own Coming Soon form. Rudy goes over every form with you before any quiet marketing starts.
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