I don’t blame brokers and agents for not listing a property as “pending” until all contingencies are removed in an escrow with an accepted offer. In fact, they should continue to accept backup offers (and tell these offerors it will be such). Anything could happen in escrow and a CA buyer in escrow can now apparently back out of a transaction for any reason and get their earnest money back as long as their contingency-approval date(s) have not elapsed.
The best thing for a buyer’s agent to do before writing up an offer is to find out from the listing agent if the seller has accepted an offer and also if they are accepting backup offers (if their clients are very interested in the property). A property should not be listed as “pending” on the MLS until all contingencies have been removed and the sellers agent has examined the buyer’s original pre-approval letter from their lender signed by an underwriter and even possibly spoke on the phone with the buyers’ loan officer re: their mortgage qualifications OR verified proof of buyers’ funds in a cash sale.
Anything less is not representing sellers properly. Whatever is out there on MLS aggregators (especially in a fast-moving market with little inventory) shouldn’t be counted on as actually being available at any given time. The same listings on the actual MLS for a particular region may have more notes which would assist a buyer’s agent but those notes are not carried over to public MLS aggregators. It’s as it should be.
