It’s really not that hard to update the MLS on the status of your listings. It takes about five seconds to tell them to switch your property from “active” (in other words, available for someone to buy) to “pending” (in other words, under contract to be sold). And yet a small but non-zero number of brokers fail to do this promptly.
Why do I care? Because when I’m helping buyers, it’s incredibly irritating to psyche them up about a property that’s “active”, only to find that it’s actually under contract.
Of course, most listing agents do the right thing. But enough don’t that I’m forced to call the listing agent before showing my buyers a property. And that wastes my time and the listing agent’s time.
Just imagine that same waste multiplied across the entire market, and you have a breath-taking amount of inefficiency. All because a small number of jerks can’t get their acts together to update the MLS. And people wonder why I still support the death penalty…