What Does "Coming Soon" Actually Mean? A Look at the Rules As Bright MLS Rolls Out Changes

• July 15th

by UrbanTurf Staff

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If you have been browsing home listings in the DC area lately, you have likely come across properties marked "Coming Soon" — homes that appear on the market but cannot yet be toured. With Bright MLS, the region's multiple listing service, announcing a significant overhaul of its listing rules last week, UrbanTurf thought it was a good time to take a look at what the status means and how the rules are about to change.

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The Basics

A Coming Soon listing is a home with a signed listing agreement that has been entered into the MLS but is not yet available for showings. The status gives listing agents a window to build interest in a property while final preparations — painting, staging, repairs — are underway.

The defining rule of the status is straightforward: no showings. A home in Coming Soon status cannot be toured by prospective buyers, and if a seller decides to open the doors early, the listing must first be switched to Active. The prohibition applies to listing agents and buyer agents alike, and Bright has historically enforced it with fines. Buyers can still submit offers sight-unseen, however, and listing agents are required to present those offers to sellers.

There is one important distinction: the showing ban applies only to listings entered into the MLS. Non-MLS coming soon listings — homes that are not yet ready to go into the MLS in a public-facing way — can still be shown.

Coming Soon listings were once time-limited as well. For years, Bright's rules required agents to specify an expected on-market date no more than 21 days out, with listings automatically converting to Active after that window. That cap was eliminated in August 2024 as part of the rule changes that followed the NAR settlement — an expected on-market date is still required, but a listing can now remain in Coming Soon status indefinitely.

Despite occasional confusion, Coming Soon listings are not pocket listings. They are visible to all Bright MLS subscribers, and the MLS permits them to appear on consumer-facing sites like Zillow and Redfin.

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What Is Changing

On July 9th, Bright announced a new framework that will organize listings into four statuses — Registered, Office Exclusive, Coming Soon, and Active — rolling out later this summer. Under the new rules, agents will have more flexibility in how Coming Soon listings are marketed, including the choice of whether to share them for cooperation within the MLS and whether to distribute them to consumer websites. Notably, a Coming Soon listing initially withheld from the internet cannot later be excluded from portals based on how it was previously marketed — a provision with implications for the ongoing industry dispute over private listing networks and portal access standards.

The showing prohibition remains in place, and all listings must still be submitted to the MLS within two days of a signed listing agreement.

The broader rule package also includes new seller privacy tools, allowing sellers to suppress data points like price history, days on market, address, and photos from public-facing websites — changes that arrive two months after Bright's listing data partnership with Compass and amid the brokerage's well-publicized battle with Zillow over listing distribution.

Thumbnail photo is of a Coming Soon listing in DC. 

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/what_does_coming_soon_actually_mean_a_look_at_the_rules_as_bright_mls_rolls/24816.