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 five paths, in plain English
Open-market listing
Your shared home is entered in the MLS and shown on public search sites like any other listing, with photos, open houses and showings. Every buyer and buyer’s agent can see it from day one.
When owners often choose it: You both want the widest pool of buyers and a price the whole market has tested, and your timeline has room for prep, showings and escrow.
Tradeoffs: Plan on more showings, and anyone can pull up the home’s price history. Prep is paid for before the sale closes. After you both accept an offer, a typical escrow lasts 30 to 45 days, and once the buyer has inspected, a request for repairs or credits may follow.
Pre-market or Coming Soon
A narrower circle of buyers gets the first look, with a public launch coming afterward or skipped entirely. This can take three forms: an office-only setup that keeps the listing under one brokerage’s roof, delayed marketing, or Coming Soon.
When owners often choose it: The biggest audience matters less to you both than privacy while you may still share the house, control over when and how it’s shown, or terms that work for each of you, like a later move-out date.
Tradeoffs: With a smaller audience, you may get fewer offers and thinner evidence of value, which is important when two owners must both rely on the same figure. The Coming Soon limit is 30 days under SDMLS and 21 under CRMLS, and neither MLS lets buyers tour in person during that time. A signed form comes first. Zillow’s standards also apply: a publicly advertised home that goes more than one business day without an MLS entry won’t be carried by Zillow or Trulia while that agreement runs.
As-is or cash offer
A buyer paying cash takes the house in its present condition, frequently after walking through it once. You add a real offer here, and the column works from that buyer’s price.
When owners often choose it: Speed, fewer contingencies, or skipping repairs and a run of showings matter most to both of you.
Tradeoffs: Expect cash offers to land under open-market value fairly often, because what a cash buyer brings is speed and certainty, and terms differ from one buyer to the next. Sort out which costs that buyer takes on and which the two of you still pay. Many close in 1 to 3 weeks, though the timeline depends on the buyer.
Rent it out, sell later
You hold onto the home for now, move out, rent it to a tenant, and sell once the number of years you set has passed.
When owners often choose it: Rental income would pay a good share of the monthly bills, a later sale fits the plan you both agree on, or the move may not be permanent.
Tradeoffs: Someone pays a property manager or gives their own time, and repairs and empty months come with it. Rent and notice rules set locally also apply. Several years of renting may change your standing under the federal home-sale tax exclusion, whose test calls for a combined 2 years or longer as both owner and resident, all within the 5-year stretch that closes on the sale date. A CPA can tell each of you how it applies.
Keep the home
The home isn’t sold, and nobody pays selling costs today. One of you stays or you both keep owning it. This column shows the equity left in the home over time; it doesn’t work out a buyout between spouses. For that math, try the site’s divorce home buyout calculator.
When owners often choose it: The home still fits the plan, the current loan terms are worth keeping, or no one has a set date to move.
Tradeoffs: The equity stays locked in the house and doesn’t become cash. The loan, property tax, insurance and upkeep keep coming due. Future value rides on the market, so the yearly growth figure you enter is a guess and never a forecast.
Pre-market and coming-soon sales: the rules
Three layers decide how a home can be marketed quietly or early: national REALTOR® policy, the local MLS and the listing brokerage. Search websites like Zillow add standards of their own.
On the national side, NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy still applies. Public marketing includes things like a sign in the yard, flyers, email blasts, public-facing websites and listing networks that several brokerages share. As soon as any of that happens, the listing broker is allowed a single business day to add the home to the MLS. A newer NAR rule, in place since March 25, 2025, is called Multiple Listing Options for Sellers, and it gives sellers two choices that don’t require a full public listing. For a delayed-marketing listing, other agents can look it up in the MLS, while public search sites get it only after a span the MLS chooses. The office-only route puts the listing on file with the MLS, hides it from other brokerages’ agents and skips public promotion. Either way, a disclosure signed by the seller comes before it starts.
Two MLSs cover San Diego County, the California Regional MLS (CRMLS) and the San Diego MLS (SDMLS), and whichever one your home goes through sets its own rules.
SDMLS allows a Coming Soon listing to run for up to 30 days. MLS agents can view it. The seller can advertise it and even agree to an offer, but in-person visits and open houses aren’t permitted. SDMLS keeps its Coming Soon listings away from public portals and out of IDX feeds, the channel that sends listings to other brokers’ sites. A listing that has gone Active can’t return to Coming Soon. To cover NAR’s delayed-marketing option, SDMLS lets a listing be Active without being posted online, and that version runs without a time limit, with in-person tours allowed.
CRMLS gives Coming Soon 21 days at the most before the listing switches to Active. Showings of any kind are off limits, and ads have to say Coming Soon. As a rule, these listings go out to IDX feeds and on to portals, Homes.com and Realtor.com included, although a seller form that came in 2026 can keep them off IDX. A listing can’t return to Coming Soon once it leaves that status. CRMLS has no delayed-marketing option. As CRMLS sees it, a home must be entered in the MLS before anyone markets it publicly outside the brokerage.
Here in California, a C.A.R. form records the seller’s MLS choices. Its name is the Multiple Listing Service Addendum (MLSA); it was revised in September 2025, and SDMLS or CRMLS may also want a separate form. The NAR disclosure, once signed, confirms the seller knows what’s given up, for instance the broad, immediate reach to buyers that the MLS offers.
Portals have their own say: Zillow’s Listing Access Standards mean that if a publicly advertised home still has no MLS entry once one business day has passed, Zillow and Trulia skip it while that listing agreement is in place. When a home isn’t publicly marketed, Zillow also asks for a waiver, signed by the seller, that spells out the drawbacks.
Since 2025 these rules have been rewritten more than once, and any brokerage can stack its own policy on top. Rudy will check which MLS your shared home falls under and which rules line up with the timing you’re both planning.
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
- These figures are planning estimates that come from your own entries. Treat them as a guide only, never as an appraisal, offer or forecast.
- The commission you enter is negotiable and is settled in your listing agreement. Selling costs here are based on the rates you typed.
- Each month until closing, holding costs add your loan interest to the property tax, insurance and HOA dues.
- Money paid out at closing and money paid out years down the road don’t have equal value. Income tax, depreciation and what that cash might earn while you wait don’t show up in the rent or keep columns.
- Tax on any gain isn’t shown. Each of you can ask a CPA what the home-sale exclusion means for you, above all if the house is rented out before it sells.
Questions owners ask
Can we sell without a lot of public attention while we both still live there?
It may be possible, within MLS rules. In SDMLS, Coming Soon listings stay off public search sites. You can still accept an offer during its 30 days at most, though no one tours the home in person. CRMLS sets a 21-day limit on Coming Soon, bans showings of every kind, and usually sends these listings out to Homes.com, Realtor.com and similar portals. An office-only listing isn’t advertised to the public. Fewer buyers can mean fewer offers and less proof of price, so it helps to weigh that together. A form is signed first, and Rudy confirms what applies to your home.
How is the commission decided when two owners sell?
Through negotiation. The rate is agreed in your listing agreement, so enter the one you expect. The page uses it for the listing column, the pre-market column and the later sale in the rent column. Plug in two or three rates and you’ll see how the sum left to divide shifts.
What if we hold the home for a while and rent it out?
A tenant’s rent helps, but the home also brings costs: property management or your own time, repairs, and gaps between renters. Landlord rules apply, and the tax picture can shift. Up to $250,000 of gain on a home sale, or $500,000 with a joint return, can be excluded under federal rules, as long as the home was owned and lived in for no less than 2 years out of the 5 that came before the sale. How that works for each of you is a question for a CPA.
How quickly can an as-is cash sale close?
A cash sale commonly closes in 1 to 3 weeks; the pace is up to each buyer, so ask the one you’re dealing with for their timeline. Buyers paying cash often offer less than open-market value; what you get in return is speed and certainty. This page doesn’t assume a discount: type a real offer and see it next to the other columns. Rudy can set an offer beside a listing estimate so both of you see the same comparison.
Does the keep column work out a buyout if one of us stays?
No. It shows the equity that stays in the home if nothing is sold, using the growth rate you guess. For buyout math, try the site’s divorce home buyout calculator. Rudy can prepare a free value estimate you can both take to your attorneys and a lender, and the lender answers the loan questions.
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