What does “under contract continue to show” mean?

Often today a buyer will notice the status of a property has changed to under contract continue to show.  It sounds fairly self explanitory. The seller wants other buyers to view the property and perhaps make an offer.  Just having that information is not enough for most buyers.  I’ll explain what I mean by that in a moment below.  Here are the majority of the reasons why a listing staus is “under contract continue to show”.

• The property Is a short sale: Once a buyer and seller agree on a price it could be six months before the seller’s lender makes a decision.  During this time period, other offers can also be submitted for the seller’s lender to review. This allows for a minimal loan deficiency.
• An abnormal condition of a contract: The contract may be contingent upon something that normally does not occur.  This could be just about anything but usually is something like the sale is contingent upon the buyer selling another piece of property or it could be as odd as contingent upon the buyer getting a job he was promised.
• Doubting sellers:  The buyer has done something that gives the sellers the right to void the contract.  For example, they did not close during the time period mentioned in the contract. It does not matter if the sellers’ concerns are ligitimate or not. A listing could go in an this status to incite other buyers to write a back up offer.

As long as the seller has the right to void the contract the Outer Banks MLS allows a listing agent to put the property in the “under contract continue to show” status.

The OBX MLS system has a field where the listing agent can list the reason why the property is in this status. If a property meets the buyers’ criteria and it is in this “under contract continue to show” status most buyers’ agents will call the listing agent to get a better feel for the chances of that transaction closing.  If the price is right and there’s a decent chance the first contract is going to fall through then it might be a good idea to show the property and write a back up offer. Who knows, you might end up getting the property regardless of this status!