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
The listing is posted to the MLS and passed to public home-search sites. It gets photos, showings and open houses, and buyers and their agents all find it at once.
When owners often choose it: When reaching the most buyers and fully testing the price come first, and there’s time to prepare, show the home and close escrow.
Tradeoffs: Plan on more showings and a price history anyone can look up. Prep money is spent before you sell. After you accept an offer, escrow usually takes 30 to 45 days, and an inspection can lead a buyer to ask for repairs or credits.
Pre-market or Coming Soon
A select few buyers get the first look, either before the home goes public or in place of going public. It can take the form of Coming Soon, delayed marketing, or an office-only listing that one brokerage keeps in-house.
When owners often choose it: When privacy, a hand in timing and showings, or flexible terms (a later move-out date, say) outweigh reaching every possible buyer.
Tradeoffs: A smaller audience can mean fewer offers to weigh and a less complete test of price. Coming Soon is capped at 21 days in CRMLS and 30 in SDMLS, and in-person showings aren’t part of it. There’s a form to sign before you start. Zillow’s standard: market a home publicly without entering it in the MLS inside one business day, and it won’t be listed on Zillow or Trulia during that agreement.
As-is or cash offer
A cash buyer takes the home in its present condition, often after one walkthrough. The column uses a real offer you type in, so the math follows that buyer’s number.
When owners often choose it: When speed, fewer contingencies, or no repairs and no showings matter most.
Tradeoffs: A cash price is often under open-market value, since the sale trades some price for speed and certainty, and every buyer’s terms differ. Read the offer to see what the buyer will pay for and what stays on your side. Closings in 1 to 3 weeks are common, but the timing depends on the buyer.
Rent it out, sell later
You move out, lease the home to a tenant, then sell after the number of years you set.
When owners often choose it: When rent pays a good share of the monthly bills, selling down the road fits your plans, or you might not be leaving for good.
Tradeoffs: Expect a manager’s fee or your own hours, plus repairs and vacant months. Local rent and notice rules apply, and an association may have rules of its own. A rental period of several years can have an effect on the federal tax exclusion for a home sale, which depends on owning the home and living there for 2 or more of the 5 years leading up to the sale. Check with your CPA.
Keep the home
You stay where you are and keep the home. No sale happens, so there’s nothing to pay in selling costs today.
When owners often choose it: When the house still fits your life, keeping your existing loan makes sense, or there’s no moving date yet.
Tradeoffs: Equity stays tied up in the home instead of turning into cash. Loan payments, tax, insurance and upkeep continue. What the home is worth later is up to the market. The growth rate you pick is a guess, not a prediction.
Pre-market and coming-soon sales: the rules
Quiet or early marketing follows rules from three places: national REALTOR® policy, the MLS your home is listed in and your brokerage. Zillow and other home-search sites add standards of their own.
NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy remains in force nationwide. Once public marketing of a home begins, the listing broker must put it in the MLS within one business day. That kind of marketing can be yard signs, flyers, email blasts, public websites or listing networks shared by more than one brokerage. Alongside it, NAR’s Multiple Listing Options for Sellers policy took effect March 25, 2025, and gives sellers two options other than a full public listing. With a delayed-marketing listing, the home is in the MLS and other agents can see it, but it reaches public home-search sites only after a period the MLS sets. With an office-only listing, the home is filed with the MLS, but agents at other brokerages don’t receive it, and there’s no advertising to the public. Either way, the seller signs a disclosure before it begins.
As in the rest of San Diego County, Coronado listings go into one of two MLSs: SDMLS, short for San Diego MLS, or CRMLS, short for California Regional MLS. Their rules aren’t the same.
SDMLS sets a 30-day limit on Coming Soon. Every agent in the MLS can see the listing. Advertising it and accepting an offer are both allowed, but showing it in person or holding an open house is not. Coming Soon listings stay out of IDX feeds, the feeds that power listings on other brokers’ websites, and away from public portals. Once Active, a listing can’t be switched back to Coming Soon. SDMLS has a separate path for NAR’s delayed-marketing choice: an Active listing not published online, with no time limit and in-person showings permitted.
CRMLS limits Coming Soon to 21 days before the listing switches to Active. Showings aren’t permitted in any form, and advertising has to say Coming Soon. These listings normally appear in IDX feeds and on Realtor.com, Homes.com and similar portals, although sellers can now sign a form, added in 2026, that holds them back from IDX. Coming Soon is a one-way door: once a listing exits, it can’t go back. There is no CRMLS version of delayed marketing, and CRMLS’s stance is that a home kept off the MLS can’t be publicized beyond its brokerage.
Statewide, the seller’s MLS choices are written into the C.A.R. MLS addendum, known as the MLSA and revised in September 2025, and an MLS may also want its own form. Signing the NAR disclosure shows the seller knows what they’re giving up, for example the chance to reach many buyers right away through the MLS.
Zillow’s Listing Access Standards keep a home off Zillow and Trulia for the whole listing agreement if it’s marketed to the public but hasn’t reached the MLS within one business day. If you choose not to market the home publicly, Zillow asks for a signed seller waiver that lays out the drawbacks.
The rules have been revised several times since 2025, and your brokerage might also have a policy. Rudy will confirm the MLS and rules that apply to your home, your area and your dates.
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
- Everything here is a planning estimate from your numbers, and none of it is an appraisal, an offer or a forecast.
- Commission is open to negotiation and written into your listing agreement. The selling costs come from the rates you typed in.
- Each month until closing, holding costs include loan interest plus your tax, insurance and HOA dues.
- Closing-day money and money that comes in later years aren’t equal. The rent and keep columns leave out income tax, depreciation and anything the cash could earn along the way.
- This page doesn’t estimate tax on your gain. The home-sale exclusion is a CPA question, and an important one if the home will be leased out before you sell it.
Questions owners ask
I own a Shores condo. Where do my HOA dues go?
Add them to the property tax, insurance and HOA field as one monthly total. Every month you hold the condo before closing, the tool adds loan interest on top of that total. The rent column subtracts those costs too.
Could I rent out my Shores condo or Cays home instead of selling?
If your home is in an association, such as a Shores tower, read its rules on renting first. Then try the rent column. From the rent it takes out empty months, a manager’s fee, upkeep, your tax, insurance and HOA dues, and the loan payment. Local rent and notice rules apply as well. Years of renting can affect the federal home-sale exclusion, worth up to $250,000, or $500,000 when a married couple files jointly, which depends on owning the home and living there for 2 or more of the 5 years before a sale. Your CPA can say how that fits your dates.
If I put a sign in my Village yard, does that count as public marketing?
Yes. Under NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy, a yard sign counts, and so do flyers, email blasts, public websites and networks shared by several brokerages. Once a home is marketed that way, it has to be in the MLS within one business day. Separately, Zillow has a standard of its own: if a publicly marketed home misses that deadline, neither Zillow nor Trulia will show it during that listing agreement.
How does the tool treat a cash offer on my Country Club Estates home?
It waits for a real number. Enter a cash or as-is offer, whether it’s one in hand or one you’d like to try, and the column uses it; no discount is assumed. Many cash buyers pay under open-market value, swapping price for a quick, certain sale, and their terms aren’t all alike, so confirm which costs the buyer will cover. Cash sales often wrap up within 1 to 3 weeks, though timing depends on the buyer.
Can I keep the sale of my bayfront home inside one brokerage?
That’s called an office-only listing. Under NAR policy it’s filed with the MLS, but it isn’t shared with other brokerages or advertised to the public, and you sign a disclosure before it starts. If it’s ever marketed publicly, the MLS entry has to follow within one business day. With fewer buyers seeing it, there may be fewer offers on the table. Rudy will confirm how your MLS handles it.
More from Rudy
