How to read an MLS listing: what it tells you and what it leaves out

An MLS listing is a data sheet a real estate agent enters into the local multiple listing service, not an ad the seller wrote. It carries fields checked against public and professional standards: price, address, the legal description, square footage, lot size, year built, taxes and the school assigned by district boundary, which shifts and is worth confirming directly with the district. It also carries fields nobody checks against anything but the agent's own judgment: the marketing remarks, the room descriptions and the photo captions. Reading a listing well means telling those two kinds of field apart, and knowing which ones the sheet leaves out entirely.

The National Association of REALTORS® says access to information from MLS listings is provided to the public free of charge by participating brokers, though not everything the agent sees. Certain fields stay private: information that would endanger a seller's privacy or safety, such as contact information and the times the home sits vacant, is kept off the public side of the listing.

What is the MLS, and who enters the data on a listing?

A Multiple Listing Service is not a government database. The National Association of REALTORS® describes an MLS as an online platform that compiles home listings from brokerages in a given market, one of roughly 500 such services across the country, each setting its own rules for its own members. In Greenville, that service is run by the Greater Greenville Association of REALTORS®, and only a member agent or broker can create or edit a listing inside it. NAR calls MLS data the most trusted source for real estate information because it is curated and verified by real estate professionals, not typed in by a homeowner or copied from another site. That is also the limit worth remembering: the professional filling in the fields represents the seller, and every word in the remarks is written with that job in mind.

What do "active," "contingent" and "pending" mean on a listing?

Active means the seller has not accepted a contract, even when offers are already coming in behind the scenes. Contingent means an offer was accepted, but the sale still depends on something clearing first, almost always financing, appraisal or inspection. Opendoor's breakdown of the two statuses says a sub-status called active with contingency signals the seller is still showing the home and may accept backup offers, while a "no show" contingent listing means the seller has stopped showing the property and is not taking new offers. Pending means every contingency has cleared except closing itself, and Opendoor describes pending homes as very close to being sold, with sellers rarely giving a new offer serious consideration. Any of the three can still fall through and bounce back to active, so a status is a snapshot, not a promise.

What does the square footage on a listing actually measure?

Usually the finished, heated space above ground, but the exact number can come from the county tax record, an old appraisal, or the listing agent's own tape measure, and those three rarely agree. The Appraisal Institute reports that Fannie Mae has required its appraisers to measure a property's gross living area against the ANSI Z765-2021 standard since April 2022, a method that excludes garages, unfinished attics and any room with a ceiling under seven feet, and counts a sloped room only where at least half its finished space clears seven feet. A listing's own square footage field is not held to that standard, and the same source notes that comparable sales data sitting in MLS systems and tax records may not yet match it. That is the gap a buyer should expect between a listing sheet and a full appraisal, and it is worth confirming before a number this size sets a budget.

What does "days on market" tell you about a listing?

How long the listing has been active, but not always how it sounds. Metro MLS, one of the larger listing services in the country, defines Days on Market as the total number of days a listing is active, a count that stops the moment it moves to pending or sold. Its Cumulative Days on Market adds the earlier market time back in if the same address is withdrawn and relisted within a set window, specifically so a seller cannot make a stale listing look fresh by pulling it and putting it right back up. Every MLS sets its own version of that reset window, which is the kind of local rule the National Association of REALTORS® has in mind when it says each of the roughly 500 MLSs nationwide makes its own governance rules. A high days-on-market number is not proof something is wrong with the house. It can just as easily mean the price started too high and was corrected once, with the count never resetting.

Does an MLS listing include the seller's property disclosure?

No, and that is one of the bigger gaps between the sheet and the house. South Carolina REALTORS® describes the state's disclosure law as requiring a seller to give a purchaser a written statement covering the water supply and sewage system, the roof, foundation and other structural components, the plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling systems, past pest damage, and known hazards such as lead paint, asbestos or radon. That statement has to reach the buyer before a contract is signed, or as otherwise agreed in the contract, and it is its own document, not a field inside the MLS sheet. A listing with no defects mentioned in the remarks has not been cleared of anything. The disclosure is what a buyer has to ask for, or get through an agent, before writing an offer.

What to check before you trust a listing sheet

Treat the fields that come from public records, price, address, taxes, lot size, as close to reliable. Treat the square footage as a starting number to confirm, not a fact to build a budget on. Treat the remarks as marketing, written by someone paid to make the house sound good, and check the status against how recently the page loaded, since a contingent or pending home can go back to active without warning. Then ask for the disclosure statement early, since it will not show up on the sheet on its own. A buyer's agent reads the fields that matter for a specific house, and asks for the ones the listing never had to include.