Solds Tell You What the Market Did. Pendings Tell You What It's Doing Now.

A CMA built only on closed sales is a rearview mirror. It tells you, with great precision, what buyers were willing to pay two or three months ago. In a slow market, that is fine. In a market that is moving, you are pricing today's home on yesterday's beliefs.

There is a fresher signal sitting right next to the solds in your MLS. Most agents barely touch it.

The comp type most agents skip

In the 2026 Survey of Best Practices, 90.6% of agents include closed sales in their comps. Only 56.9% include pending sales. That means roughly four in ten agents leave the most current price signal in the MLS on the table.

It is easy to see why. Solds feel safe. The price is final, the deal closed, the number is real. Pendings feel unfinished. But "finished" and "current" are not the same thing, and in a fast market that difference decides your price.

What each status actually tells you

The book breaks the MLS into four signals, and each answers a different question.

Active listings are your seller's competition. They show current asking prices, not sale prices, so they tell you what other sellers hope to get, not what buyers will actually pay.

Closed sales are the gold standard for value, especially those within the last three to six months and about a mile out. They reflect real money, not wishful pricing. Their one weakness is that they look backward.

Pending sales are the prices buyers have just agreed to pay. They have not closed, so you do not yet know the final number, but the trend in pendings is one of the clearest signals of which way the market is moving right now.

Expired listings tell you where the ceiling was. They are the homes that sat, usually because they were priced past what buyers would accept.

Value lives in the solds. Momentum lives in the pendings. You need both.

Why solds lag, and pendings do not

Here is the trap. When demand shifts, closed sales are the last to show it. A sale that closes today was negotiated 30 to 60 days ago, under conditions that may no longer hold. The book makes the same point about automated valuations: lean on old comps and you may be reflecting what buyers were willing to pay six months ago, not today.

Agents feel this. In the survey, one of the most cited challenges in finding comps was markets moving faster than the data, with sold figures lagging 90 or more days behind current conditions.

Pending sales are where the turn shows up first. If pendings are coming in above recent solds, the market is heating and a price anchored only to closings is already behind. If pendings are softening, you get an early warning before a single new sold prints. That is the read most sellers, and plenty of agents, never see.

How to use pendings without overreaching

Pendings are a signal, not gospel. The book is direct about it: pending sales are not final, so they may or may not be useful. You do not know the contract price, and some deals fall apart.

So use them the way a good coach would. Read the direction, not the decimal. Watch whether homes are going pending faster or slower than a month ago. Watch the gap between list price and likely sale. And when you show a pending to a seller, say plainly that the final number is not confirmed. That candor builds more trust than a confident guess ever will.

Put the whole board together

A strong CMA is not a pile of solds. It is a story told across every status. The book's own listing-presentation script does exactly this: a few recent closings to anchor value, the active listings as the competition, a couple of pendings to show where the market is heading, and an expired to show what happens when a home is priced too high.

Solds prove the number. Pendings prove it is still the right number today. Told together, they turn a price from your opinion into the market's own conclusion.

Key takeaways

• 90.6% of agents use closed sales as comps. Only 56.9% use pendings, leaving the freshest signal unused.

• Closed sales are the best indicator of value. In a moving market, they also lag by 30 to 90 days.

• Pending sales show what buyers just agreed to pay and reveal a market turn before closings do.

• Pendings are not final. Read them for direction, and tell sellers the price is not confirmed.

• The best CMA uses every status: solds for value, pendings for momentum, actives for competition, expireds for the ceiling.

The Art of the CMA breaks down how to read every listing status and build them into a pricing story a seller actually believes. Get your copy.

Data: 2026 Survey of Best Practices for CMAs and Listing Presentations, Giant Steps Advisors and Lone Wolf Technologies. 2,165 U.S. agents, 46 states, surveyed November 2025 to February 2026.