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 four paths, in plain English
Open-market listing
Your current home is listed in the MLS and sent out to the big public search websites. Photos, showings and open houses are part of it, and every buyer shopping the area, along with their agents, can see it at the same time.
When owners often choose it: Wide buyer reach and a true test of price matter most to you, and the builder’s schedule leaves time to prep, show the home and get through escrow.
Tradeoffs: Plan on more showings, and your price history will be public. You pay for prep up front. From the offer you accept, escrow usually takes 30 to 45 days. The buyer’s inspection could bring a repair or credit request, so give your move dates some cushion.
Pre-market or Coming Soon
You offer the home to a limited group of buyers first, as a lead-in to going public or in place of it. The usual versions are Coming Soon, delayed marketing, and office-only, where the listing stays inside one brokerage.
When owners often choose it: Calling the shots on timing and showings, keeping things private, or getting flexible terms counts for more than reaching every buyer. A later move-out date, for one, helps while the new home is still being built.
Tradeoffs: Fewer people see the home, so you may get fewer offers and a lighter check on price. CRMLS lets Coming Soon run for up to 21 days and SDMLS for up to 30, and in-person showings aren’t allowed under either. You sign a form before it starts. Zillow has a rule here too. Publicly marketed homes have one business day to reach the MLS, or Zillow and Trulia won’t show them during any part of the listing agreement.
Rent it out, sell later
You move into the new home and lease the old one to a tenant, then sell it once the years you picked have passed.
When owners often choose it: Rent from a tenant would handle much of the monthly cost, you’re happy to sell later, or you aren’t sure the move is for good.
Tradeoffs: You’ll pay a manager or put in your own time, and there are repairs and empty months to plan for. Landlord rules on rent and notice, set locally, apply too. Keeping the equity in the old home also means it isn’t cash for the new one. A long rental period can affect the federal home-sale exclusion. It asks that you owned the place and lived there for a minimum of 2 of the 5 years before selling, and your CPA can check your dates.
Keep the home
You stay where you are and keep owning the home, perhaps while you wait for the right new community. With no sale, you skip selling costs for now.
When owners often choose it: Your current home still works, your loan terms are worth holding, or the new home you want has no firm date yet.
Tradeoffs: The equity stays in this house instead of becoming cash for a down payment. Loan, tax, insurance and upkeep bills continue. What the home is worth later is the market’s call, which makes the growth rate you pick a guess and not a forecast.
Pre-market and coming-soon sales: the rules
Early or private marketing answers to three sets of rules: national REALTOR® policy, the MLS your home goes into, and your brokerage. Home-search websites like Zillow layer their own standards over those.
Nationally, the Clear Cooperation Policy still stands. It comes from NAR, the National Association of REALTORS®. Under it, any public marketing, whether a yard sign, a flyer, a mass email, a website open to everyone or a network shared across several brokerages, starts a one-business-day clock for the listing broker to enter the home in the MLS. NAR then added Multiple Listing Options for Sellers, in force from March 25, 2025, which puts two alternatives to a full public listing on the table. The first, delayed marketing, lets other agents find the home in the MLS while public search sites hold off for a time the MLS chooses. Then there’s office-only: the MLS records it, but outside brokerages’ agents can’t see it and nothing goes out to the public. Each one requires a signed seller disclosure first.
Two MLSs serve San Diego County: SDMLS, short for San Diego MLS, and CRMLS, short for California Regional MLS. A home is listed through one of them, and their rules aren’t the same.
With SDMLS, a Coming Soon listing may stay up for as long as 30 days. It’s visible to MLS agents, it can be advertised, and an offer can be accepted, but there are no open houses or in-person showings. SDMLS doesn’t release Coming Soon listings to public portals, and IDX (the feed that carries listings onto other brokers’ websites) doesn’t get them either. Coming Soon can’t be restored once a listing is Active. SDMLS handles NAR’s delayed-marketing option as an Active listing that’s not published to the internet, with in-person showings allowed and no time limit.
With CRMLS, Coming Soon runs no longer than 21 days before the listing turns Active. No one may show the home in any way, and advertising must use the words Coming Soon. Realtor.com, Homes.com and other portals normally pick up these listings, as do IDX feeds, but a 2026 seller form lets a listing opt out of IDX. After a listing exits Coming Soon, it can’t go back in. CRMLS skips delayed marketing entirely, and it allows public advertising outside the brokerage only for listings that are in the MLS.
For California homes, a seller’s MLS choices go on the C.A.R. Multiple Listing Service Addendum (MLSA), a form C.A.R. updated in September 2025. Each MLS can also ask for a separate form. The NAR disclosure has the seller acknowledge the trade-off, such as giving up the wide, immediate reach the MLS provides.
One more rule comes from Zillow’s Listing Access Standards. Zillow and Trulia skip a home for its entire listing agreement if it’s promoted to the public and hasn’t gone into the MLS within a business day. If the home isn’t publicly marketed, Zillow wants a seller-signed waiver that lays out the drawbacks.
The rules have been updated a few times since 2025, and your brokerage may also have its own policy. Rudy will confirm the MLS and the rules that fit your home and the dates you’re planning around.
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 from your inputs, not as an appraisal, a purchase offer or a forecast.
- Commission can always be negotiated and is set in your listing agreement; the selling costs shown use your rates.
- Holding costs add up for every month until closing: loan interest, insurance, property tax and HOA dues.
- A payout at closing and a payout years away are different kinds of money. For the rent and keep columns, income tax, depreciation and possible earnings on the cash aren’t counted.
- Any tax owed on your gain is left out. Run the home-sale exclusion by a CPA, most of all if the home will have tenants before it sells.
Questions owners ask
While my new home is being built, can I line up a buyer quietly?
Possibly, within MLS rules. SDMLS allows a Coming Soon listing up to 30 days and keeps it off public search sites. An offer can be accepted in that time, though in-person tours aren’t permitted. CRMLS caps Coming Soon at 21 days without showings, and Realtor.com, Homes.com and similar portals usually carry the listing. A pre-market deal can also build in flexible terms, for example a later move-out date. You sign a form first, and Rudy confirms what applies.
How do I match my sale to the builder’s timeline?
Set the months-to-close fields to the dates you’re working with, and update them as the builder’s estimate changes; every column recalculates. Every added month raises your holding costs, which cover loan interest, tax, insurance and HOA dues. An open-market sale usually spends 30 to 45 days in escrow after you say yes to an offer, so leave room for that when you set a listing date. Rudy can help you map your sale against the builder’s schedule.
Could I keep my current home as a rental instead?
You can test it in the rent column. Rent comes in, and so does the work: management or your own time, repairs and months without a tenant, plus landlord rules. The column keeps your equity in the home until the later sale, and your lender can tell you how keeping the old loan affects the new one. The federal exclusion can protect as much as $250,000 in gains, or $500,000 if you and your spouse file jointly. To qualify, both your ownership and your time living there need to reach 2 years or more during the 5 years leading up to your sale, and a CPA can say how a rental period fits.
Can I negotiate the commission on my current home?
Yes. Commission is open to negotiation every time, and whatever rate you settle on goes into your listing agreement. Enter that rate here. It applies to the full listing, the pre-market sale and the eventual sale of a rental. Run two or three rates and watch how your net changes, since that’s the cash a sale puts in hand for the new home.
How does an office-only listing work?
It stays in-house at one brokerage. Under NAR policy it’s still filed with the MLS, yet agents elsewhere can’t view it and there’s no public advertising. If it’s promoted publicly, though, the broker has one business day to get it entered in the MLS. A signed seller disclosure comes first.
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