Contract for Deed means your are looking to purchase the property at the closing, not leasing, renting, exchanging or swapping. You & the seller are contracting with each other for the deed to the property. Most regular sales are contract for deed sales.

If your buyers agent is a Realtor and the listing office is a Realtor your agent can ask for the terms & dates of the contract the listing agent has with their client (the lender). It's in the Realtor Code of Ethics. If either of them aren't then there's no Code to enforce disclosure. The listing agent may not be allowed to disclose certain terms or conditions and that's fine but when they utilize the MLS they have to agree to certain rules to operate by. You'd have to look into the exact nature of the listing brokerage, type of listing agreement and any confidentiality agreements or contractual agreements regarding disclosures. The lenders are notorious in the way they make decisions. Some are very fast, others take a long time.

Your getting a bit into the management & operations of a brokerage, sometimes the broker of record (manager, owner, responsible person) may need to get involved to contact the other brokerage to verify how everything came to be. This is one area where our agency laws are helpful, all agents & broker associates work under the licence of a Broker of Record for the office/firm that represents you. They can also be a great source for more detailed info & advice on policies & proceedures.

I don't know exactly what went on with your situation but sometimes things might get explained incompletely or incorrectly or a misunderstanding might occur. This is where the guidance, advice and leadership of a broker of record may come in and talk broker to broker with the listing office.

Hope that helps,

This probably has to do with the listing agents web site. It will probably show what are called pending sales but maybe other agencies websites will not show these under contract homes. It is unusual to not be able to verify if an offer is made. Where I am from, Kansas and Missouri, it is required to provide offers to sellers, the seller may not respond back but this is their choice.

Thank you Scott. I have an additional question (and I adore my buyers broker but have only worked with her for 2 weeks, no contract with her right now, our kids go to school together)

Is it POSSIBLE even if it is a reach....that the listing agents contract with the selling bank has expired which caused the listing to fall off the MLS, and the listing agent changed the status on its own website to under agreement to compensate for having told a buyer or buyers that another offer was accepted during those last few days?

Also the terms on the listing was "contract for deed", I asked my broker if it was possible that we lost our offer because we submitted with an FHA approved loan and she wasnt sure what contract for deed meant. I wondered how firm a bank was on using that method (which I now understand is more like a rental with a definitive end date at which time the rentor owns the property).

Welcome to the fustrating world of REO properties on the MLS. I won't get into if the way the listing agents operate is fair or just. The local MLS (MLS-PIN) has rules on when a property is changed from Active to Active with a Flag or Under Agreement. The listing office may be getting a bit more tread out of their listings by having them still searchable. You mentioned you have a buyers broker and your still getting feeds from 3 realtors. You'll really have to consult your buyers agent for the exact disposition of an individual property. The general MLS feed from agents/brokers direct from MLS-PIN is the most accurate & up to date. The 3rd party sites (even some real estate company sites) rely on a feed system to maintain their list of properties. This is dependent on how often they update their feeds & how completely they update. Some only update once a day others once a week, some only search for price changes or new pics. This is why the real MLS feed is important. You'll have access to it through your buyers broker.