Pending vs Under Contract: What Each Listing Status Means, and What You Can Still Do

The labels below are typical, not universal. Your agent can tell you the exact definitions in your MLS.

Under contract vs pending, then, is mostly a question of how far along the deal is and how willing the seller is to entertain other buyers. In any pending vs under contract comparison, neither label tells you whether the sale will close.

Two published rulebooks show how far apart the definitions can be.

Stellar MLS: pending means a binding contract

Stellar MLS, a large Florida MLS, defines its statuses in Article 05.12 of its rules. "Pending," for a sale, is a status where the buyer and owner have entered into a legally binding contract with an effective date but ownership has not yet transferred. "Active" means a listing contract exists and the owner has not entered into a binding contract. Under those definitions, a home with a signed contract no longer qualifies as active, and the article defines no separate contingent status for it, so a contract still in its inspection period reads as pending.

The same article requires the listing agent's firm to change the status to pending within two days, excluding weekends and federal holidays, of the contract's effective date. If the deal collapses, Article 06.09 requires the firm to report the cancellation and reinstate the listing to active within two days. If you are shopping in Winter Park or elsewhere in Central Florida, ask your agent which MLS the listing sits in and how it labels a contract still in its inspection period.

MLS PIN: "under agreement" means off the market

The MLS Property Information Network, which serves New England, takes the opposite approach in Section 2.6 of its Rules and Regulations, as amended through January 15, 2025. Once the seller and buyer have signed a binding agreement, the listing is "Under Agreement" and treated as off the market for all purposes. Two exceptions require the seller's signature:

• Contingent status. If the seller signs a Contingent Status Request Form, the listing shows as "Contingent," stays available for backup offers and must continue to be shown, but only in 14-day periods that the listing broker has to renew.
• Active status with a kick-out clause. If a kick-out clause is the only contingency and the seller signs an Active Status Request Form, the home can stay "Active" and the broker must keep seeking additional offers. A kick-out clause in real estate typically lets the seller accept another offer if the first buyer cannot remove a condition, such as selling their current home, within a set time.

So a buyer in Back Bay who sees "Under Agreement" should read it the way a Florida buyer reads "Pending": the seller has a deal and is not marketing the home.

The contingent vs pending distinction is about which conditions remain. A contingency is a clause that lets the buyer, or sometimes the seller, cancel without penalty if something specific does not happen by a deadline. The common ones:

• Inspection. The buyer can renegotiate or walk if the inspection turns up problems. Skipping it is a choice with real costs, as our article on the property inspection waiver explains.
• Appraisal. If the appraisal comes in below the price, the buyer can renegotiate or cancel. Some loans are approved without one; our guide to the appraisal waiver covers who qualifies.
• Financing. The buyer can exit if the loan is not approved. Condos add a building-level risk: the project itself may not qualify, as our guides to FHA qualified condos and the non-warrantable condo explain.
• HOA document review. For condos and planned communities, the buyer may get a period to read the HOA governing documents, budget and rules, and an estoppel certificate confirms what the seller owes the association.
• Sale of the buyer's home. The weakest offer for a seller, which is why it often comes with a kick-out clause.
• Title. A title search can turn up a lien that has to be paid or released before closing; our guide to what a lien is covers how that works.

Each contingency has its own deadline in the contract. As each one is removed, the deal moves from contingent toward pending, and the buyer's earnest money usually becomes harder to recover if the buyer backs out. The steps after the appraisal, from underwriting to clear to close, are covered in how long after the appraisal it takes to close.

So can you make an offer on pending listings? Yes. Nothing stops you from making an offer on a home that is pending or under contract. The seller cannot accept it as a primary contract while bound to the first buyer, but the seller can accept it as a backup offer, which moves up only if the first contract ends.

Texas shows how a backup offer pending a first contract is put in writing. The Texas Real Estate Commission's Addendum for "Back-Up" Contract (TREC No. 11-9, dated May 4, 2026) makes the backup contract binding when signed but contingent on the first contract ending. Apart from the earnest money and any option fee the form calls for, neither side has to perform while that contingency is open. If the first contract has not terminated by a date the parties fill in, the backup contract ends and the earnest money is refunded to the backup buyer. When the first contract does end, the seller must notify the backup buyer immediately, and for performance purposes the backup contract's effective date moves to the date of that notice, although any option period keeps running from the original effective date. One detail trips people up: an amendment to the first contract, such as a price cut after the inspection, does not terminate it.

If you are bidding in Houston or anywhere else in Texas, that form is what your agent will likely use. Other states rely on their own forms or a clause your agent drafts, so ask how your earnest money is handled while you wait. A backup position costs little, but it ties up your attention; set your own deadline and keep touring. Our guide to working with a real estate agent when buying a house covers how to brief your agent, and the agent's supervising firm is explained in what a real estate broker is.

It can, and a minority do. The National Association of REALTORS asks its members about recent contracts each month in its REALTORS Confidence Index. In the September 2026 survey, which ran October 1 to 9, 2026, 7 percent of contracts were terminated in the prior three months, the same as the month before and up from 6 percent a year earlier. Another 16 percent had a delayed settlement, and contracts typically closed in 30 days.

Read those numbers as a national snapshot from agents, not a rule for your deal. NAR reported a maximum margin of error of 3 percent for the survey's estimates. A condo in a building that fails lender review, or a buyer whose loan depends on selling another home, carries far more risk than the average.

The usual reasons a sale falls apart line up with the contingencies: financing denied, an appraisal gap the buyer cannot cover, inspection findings the parties cannot agree on, a title problem, or HOA documents that reveal a special assessment or litigation. If the deal ends, Stellar's rules give the listing firm two days to reinstate the listing, which is why watching a pending listing can pay off.

Most buyers first see a status change on a listing app, not in the MLS itself. Those sites pull from MLS feeds and sometimes translate local statuses into their own wording, so the pending vs under contract label you see may not match the term the listing broker selected. Timing matters too: under Stellar's rules, the listing firm has two business days to record a new contract, and a portal can take longer to refresh.

Before you write off a house, have your agent ask the listing agent four questions:

1. Which contingencies are still open, and when does each one expire?
2. Is the seller accepting backup offers, and is the home still being shown?
3. Is the buyer's loan approved, or still in underwriting?
4. What is the scheduled closing date?

Then look at the listing history. A home that has gone pending and returned to active more than once deserves a direct question about why. The answer might be a buyer who lost a job, or an inspection finding that every buyer so far has balked at.

"Pending" also shows up in housing headlines. NAR's Pending Home Sales Index is based on signed real estate contracts for existing single-family homes, condos and co-ops, and NAR says it generally leads existing-home sales by a month or two because a home goes under contract a month or two before it is sold. Its September 17, 2026 release reported that pending home sales rose 0.3 percent from July to August. For a buyer, the index measures contract activity across the country; it says nothing about the house you want.

For that, the better source is the people nearby. Neighbors often know whether a buyer walked after the inspection or a condo deal died in the building's lender review, and you can ask them on Ask a Resident.

When a home goes pending, residents often know more about why deals in the building succeed or fail than the listing shows.

• Have other sales in this building or on this street gone pending and then come back on the market?
• Did any buyer here have a loan denied because the building failed lender or FHA review?
• How long did the HOA take to deliver the resale documents and the estoppel when you bought?
• Did your inspection turn up anything the seller refused to fix, and how was it settled?
• Did your appraisal come in at the contract price, and how long did it take to schedule here?
• Is there a special assessment or lawsuit that buyers usually learn about during the document review?
• Do sellers here tend to accept backup offers, or do they wait for the first deal to close?