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 home is posted to the MLS and the public search sites, and buyers get photos, showings and open houses. All buyers, and the agents working with them, hear about it at the same moment.
When owners often choose it: When reach and a full read on price lead the list, and there’s time in your calendar for prep, showings and escrow, even from out of the area.
Tradeoffs: Expect more visits and a public price history. You pay prep costs before the sale, and after an accepted offer escrow generally takes 30 to 45 days. A buyer’s inspection can lead to requests for repairs or credits.
Pre-market or Coming Soon
A short list of buyers sees the home before it goes public, or in place of a public launch. Options include Coming Soon, delayed marketing, or a single-brokerage office-only listing.
When owners often choose it: When keeping things private, choosing your own timing and showing schedule, or a flexible term such as a later move-out date matters more than the biggest audience.
Tradeoffs: With fewer eyes on it, the home may pull in fewer offers to weigh and give a less complete price test. The Coming Soon limit is 30 days in SDMLS and 21 days in CRMLS, and no in-person showings take place. You sign a form before it begins. Per Zillow’s standards, if the MLS entry comes more than one business day after public marketing starts, Zillow and Trulia keep the home off until that listing agreement is over.
As-is or cash offer
A cash buyer takes on the home as it is today, often after a single walkthrough. The math runs on a real offer that you type in.
When owners often choose it: Owners now living elsewhere, plus anyone who prizes speed, fewer contingencies and skipping repairs and repeat showings.
Tradeoffs: To get speed and certainty, sellers often accept less than open-market value, and offers differ by buyer. See which costs the buyer covers and which remain yours. Cash sales commonly wrap up in 1 to 3 weeks; the exact timing depends on the buyer.
Rent it out, sell later
You live elsewhere, a tenant rents the home, and you sell once the number of years you chose has passed.
When owners often choose it: When rent covers much of what the home costs each month, selling later fits your plans, or you may move back.
Tradeoffs: A paid manager or your own time is part of the deal, along with repairs and vacant stretches. Rent and notice rules apply locally, and many associations here write rental rules into their CC&Rs. Renting it out for years may affect whether, or how much of, the federal home-sale tax exclusion applies. That rule counts on you having owned the home and made it your home for at least 2 years out of the 5 before the sale. Your CPA can check the dates.
Keep the home
You hold on to the home and stay its owner. No sale takes place, so there are no selling costs right now.
When owners often choose it: It suits you if the home still works, the loan’s terms are worth keeping, or no move date is set.
Tradeoffs: Equity stays in the property instead of becoming cash. The loan, tax, insurance and upkeep remain your costs. The home’s value later depends on the market, which makes your growth rate a guess, not a forecast.
Pre-market and coming-soon sales: the rules
No single rulebook covers selling before a public launch. Rules come from national REALTOR® policy, from your MLS and from your brokerage, and search sites like Zillow have standards of their own.
Start with national policy. The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) keeps its Clear Cooperation Policy in effect: once a home is marketed publicly, with a sign in the yard, a public site, flyers, mass emails or a network shared among brokerages, the listing broker must get it into the MLS within one business day. Then there’s Multiple Listing Options for Sellers, an NAR policy in force since March 25, 2025, which adds two choices beyond a full public listing. Delayed marketing lets other agents see the home in the MLS, and the MLS picks how long public home-search sites must wait. Office-only means the home is filed with the MLS yet kept away from other brokerages’ agents and from the public. Before using either, the seller has to sign a disclosure.
Ocean View Hills is inside the City of San Diego, and homes across San Diego County are listed through SDMLS (San Diego MLS) or CRMLS (California Regional MLS). The two have different rules.
SDMLS gives Coming Soon a 30-day maximum. Agents in that MLS can see the listing, and the seller may advertise it and take an offer. In-person showings and open houses don’t take place. SDMLS doesn’t share Coming Soon listings with public portals or with IDX feeds, which show listings on other brokers’ websites. Once a listing goes Active, it can’t revert to Coming Soon. SDMLS meets NAR’s delayed-marketing option with an Active listing hidden from the internet, which has no time limit and permits in-person showings.
CRMLS limits Coming Soon to 21 days, then the listing turns Active. Showings of every kind are prohibited, and any ad must call the home Coming Soon. These listings typically reach IDX feeds and portals including Realtor.com and Homes.com, though since 2026 a seller can sign a form that keeps them off IDX. After a listing leaves Coming Soon, it can’t come back to it. No delayed-marketing option exists in CRMLS, and under its guidance a home that isn’t in the MLS can’t be advertised to the public outside the brokerage.
California uses C.A.R.’s Multiple Listing Service Addendum, or MLSA, updated in September 2025, to record a seller’s MLS choices, and an individual MLS may want its own form as well. By signing the NAR disclosure, the seller shows they understand the trade, such as giving up the broad, instant exposure to buyers that the MLS brings.
Last comes Zillow. Under its Listing Access Standards, market a home publicly without getting it into the MLS inside one business day, and Zillow and Trulia won’t display it at any point in that listing agreement. For homes kept off public marketing, Zillow wants a seller-signed waiver spelling out the downsides.
All of this has changed more than once since 2025, and brokerages can have their own policies too. Whether you’re down the street or out of state, Rudy will check which MLS your home would use and which rules match 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
- Treat these as rough planning numbers drawn from your entries. None of them is an appraisal, a forecast or an offer.
- Commission is up for negotiation, and your listing agreement records the rate. The selling-cost figures follow whatever rates you put in.
- Holding costs are counted month by month up to closing. They include loan interest, property tax, insurance and HOA dues.
- A payout at closing and one years from now don’t have the same value. Income tax, depreciation and the return your cash might earn meanwhile are left out of the rent and keep columns.
- The math leaves out any tax on your gain. A CPA can walk you through the home-sale exclusion, particularly if the home will be a rental before you sell.
Questions owners ask
I’ve already moved away. Should I rent my Ocean View Hills home or sell it?
The rent and sale columns put both on one page. If you’re far away, include a manager’s fee, or enter 0 if you’ll handle it yourself. Vacancy, repairs and your monthly costs come out of the rent, and many associations here have rental rules worth reading in the CC&Rs. For the federal home-sale exclusion, you need at least 2 years as owner and resident inside the 5-year window before the sale, so your move-out date matters. A CPA can check your dates.
Would a cash or as-is sale be simpler from out of the area?
It can mean fewer moving parts. A cash buyer often needs just one walkthrough, takes the home as it is and typically has no financing or appraisal contingency, and closings within 1 to 3 weeks are common, though it varies by buyer. The price often sits under open-market value, which is what speed and certainty cost, so type a real offer into the cash column and set its net beside the other paths. Check which costs the buyer covers.
Can I keep my home off public websites at first?
In some cases. In SDMLS, Coming Soon listings aren’t sent to public portals or IDX feeds; you can take an offer, there are no in-person showings, and the status can run as long as 30 days. Over in CRMLS, Coming Soon listings normally appear on portals like Realtor.com and Homes.com (a seller form from 2026 can block IDX), no showings are allowed, and the limit is 21 days. An office-only listing stays out of public marketing altogether. Either way, you sign a form first.
What counts as holding costs while I live somewhere else?
Until a sale closes, every month counts: what you pay in loan interest, and your property tax, insurance and HOA dues. A shorter path to closing means fewer of those months, and the months field in each sale column lets you test that.
Is the commission rate set in stone?
Not at all. Commission is negotiable, and you agree on it in the listing agreement. The rate you type applies to the open-market and pre-market columns and to the later sale in the rent column, so test a few rates to see the net shift.
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