{"id":2696,"date":"2017-07-19T16:14:46","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T23:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/?p=2696"},"modified":"2025-09-17T08:52:50","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T15:52:50","slug":"what-to-expect-after-listing-your-house-for-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/what-to-expect-after-listing-your-house-for-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"After You Sign the Contract: Here’s What to Expect After Listing Your Home for Sale"},"content":{"rendered":"

After listing your home for sale, things move fast \u2014 faster than many of us think. The average listing period lasts anywhere from 3-6 months, and a lot can happen in that time. You could get stuck with a house listed on the market for years<\/a>, take on a few thousand dollars in repairs<\/a>, or get tangled in closing contract negotiations that could actually prevent you from completing the sale.<\/p>\n

So how do you prepare yourself for what happens after you put your home up for sale so that your own home sale is a successful one?<\/p>\n

Well, we did the work for you to find out.<\/p>\n

After extensively researching market data and speaking to some of the best real estate agents in the game, we\u2019ve put together a guide that details what it means \u2014 what actually happens \u2014 when you list your house for sale, what takes place after your agent hits the \u201cSubmit\u201d button on the MLS, and which steps you need to be prepared to take once your home is officially on the market.<\/p>\n

What Does \u201cListing Your Home\u201d Mean?<\/h2>\n

First things first, we need to define what the MLS is \u2014 a nearly ubiquitous term when discussing real estate. The MLS, which stands for Market Listing Service, is a service used by real estate brokers in order to browse listings of properties listed as for sale. It allows sellers\u2019 agents to widely distribute information about the property with buyers or their respective brokers.<\/p>\n

For homeowners, the MLS is the core of the listing process. Listing your house in the MLS is often a seller\u2019s most anticipated step, one that marks the beginning of the journey to sell his or her house. Yet contrary to popular belief, many homes don\u2019t start out in the MLS immediately after signing with a real estate agent. Regardless of how ready the owner might perceive the property to be, a number of pre-listing tasks must be completed in order to adequately prepare the home before listing.<\/p>\n

According to Jody Parrish<\/a>, a St. Louis<\/a>-based agent who has sold 201 more single-family homes than the average agent in her region, 85-90% of her homes actually begin as MLS-exempt \u2014 which means that the home is listed, but held off the market for a period of time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s listed property; we don\u2019t just put it in the MLS,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt gives us the time to get our photographs, get the staging, get the virtual tours<\/a> done…It may only be 3-4 days, but if they\u2019re not ready, we\u2019ve done MLS-exempt for up to three or four months.\u201d<\/p>\n

In preparing the house to be listed, Parrish described all the careful steps she and her team take to show off the space as best as possible. They:<\/p>\n