Coming Soon Listings in Big Bear: How They Work
What does a "coming soon" listing mean in Big Bear?
A coming soon listing is a home where the seller has already signed with an agent, but the property is not yet active on the MLS and is not taking showings. It's a marketing status, not a sales status. The listing goes live on a set date, and until then you can usually see the photos and the address but you can't walk it or write on it. For buyers in Big Bear, that window is the best free advance notice the market gives you — if you're set up to use it.
By Rachael Smith | September 9, 2026
I was getting ready to film a coming soon walkthrough this week when my daughter Nora took the camera and decided she'd handle the tour herself. What came back was not a property video. It was, however, the most honest four minutes of real estate content I've posted all year.
Watch it, and then let's talk about what "coming soon" actually means and how to work it.
She covered the bar, the pantry, a bookshelf, and a small stuffed bear wearing glasses. Zero square footage. Zero price. She may still be coming for my job.
Coming soon is a countdown, not a listing
Here's the part most buyers get wrong: they treat a coming soon listing like a home they can go see. It isn't, and that misunderstanding costs them the one advantage the status offers.
When a home enters coming soon status, three things are true at once.
- The seller is committed. The listing agreement is signed. This is not a maybe. The home is going on the market.
- The home isn't ready. Something is still in progress — a repair, a final clean, staging, photography, or simply the seller moving the last of their things out.
- The clock is public. There's a go-active date, and every buyer watching that listing sees the same date you do.
That third point is the whole game. Coming soon status hands you a known deadline in a market where almost nothing else is knowable in advance. The buyers who win these homes aren't the ones who found the listing first. They're the ones who used the runway.
What to do during the window
The days between "coming soon" and "active" are working days, not waiting days. Use them for the four things that slow buyers down after a home goes live:
- Get fully underwritten, not just pre-qualified. A pre-qualification is a conversation. Underwritten approval is a decision. In a competitive situation the second one wins, and it takes days you don't have once the home is active.
- Drive the neighborhood. You can't go inside, but you can absolutely see the street, the grade of the driveway, the neighbors, the tree cover, and how far you actually are from the Village. In the mountains, the lot tells you as much as the house.
- Pull the comparables. Ask your agent for recent sales on that street and in that pocket. Decide your number before you see the kitchen. Emotion is a terrible negotiator.
- Get on the showing schedule for day one. Have your agent register interest with the listing agent so you're booked for the first available slot rather than the fourth.
Do those four and you'll walk into that first showing already knowing whether you'd buy it. Everyone else will still be doing math in the driveway.
I post Big Bear walkthroughs, market updates, and the occasional four-year-old-narrated property tour on my YouTube channel every week — including homes before and right as they go active. Subscribe here and you'll see what's coming to the market before it's competing for your weekend.
Why sellers in Big Bear use it
If you're on the selling side, coming soon status is a timing tool, and Big Bear is a market where timing carries real weight.
Our buyer traffic moves in waves. Ski season, summer lake weekends, holiday stretches — those are the periods when out-of-area buyers are physically in town and able to tour. A home that goes active on a dead Tuesday in shoulder season is competing for attention that isn't here yet.
Coming soon lets you start the marketing while you finish the preparation. Photos circulate. The video posts. Buyers save the listing and set alerts. Then you go active on a weekend when people can actually show up, and you arrive at day one with demand already stacked instead of starting from zero.
It also gives you room to finish properly. I would much rather a seller spend six days in coming soon status getting the touch-up paint done and the last boxes out than go active on Thursday with a half-staged living room. First impressions get one shot, and in a market with real inventory, a rushed launch is expensive. That's the same logic behind getting your list price right the first time — momentum in the opening days is much easier to build than to recover.
Where it goes wrong
Two honest cautions, because this isn't a free tool.
A long coming soon window looks like hesitation. A week reads as preparation. Three weeks reads as a seller who isn't sure. Buyers notice, agents notice, and the days start counting against you in perception even when they aren't counting on the MLS.
The rules are not optional. MLS regulations govern what can happen during coming soon status — showings, offers, and open houses are typically restricted. Sellers occasionally push to accept an early offer from a buyer who saw the video. That's a compliance problem for your agent and it can create fair-housing exposure by limiting who had a real chance to compete. Wait for the go-active date. It exists to protect the seller as much as anyone.
How to actually find them
Portal sites carry some coming soon listings, but they pull on a delay and they don't carry everything. By the time a home surfaces on a national search app, local buyers have often known about it for a day or two.
The faster channels are all local. MLS alerts set specifically to coming soon status. Brokerage previews. Agents talking to agents about what's being prepped on their street. That informal layer is where I hear about most Big Bear homes first, and it's genuinely the part of this job that a search algorithm hasn't replicated.
If you're buying here, the single highest-value thing you can do is tell a local agent exactly what you want — price band, neighborhood, whether you need short-term rental potential, whether a steep driveway is a dealbreaker in January. Specific criteria get remembered. "Something around $600,000" does not. The buyers I place in pre-market homes are almost always the ones who gave me a sharp enough picture that I thought of them the moment something matched — and who had already avoided the preparation mistakes that sink most mountain purchases.
The short version
Coming soon means the home is real, the date is set, and the doors are closed until then. Treat it as a countdown and use every day of it. Get underwritten, drive the street, know your number, and be first on the showing calendar.
Sellers: use the window to finish the work and land your launch on a weekend that has buyers in town. Just don't stretch it so long that the market reads it as doubt.
I share Big Bear homes as they're being prepped, listed, and sold — sometimes with a proper walkthrough, and sometimes with whatever Nora decides to film. Subscribe to the channel to see what's coming to market next.
And if you want to be on the list for pre-market Big Bear homes that match what you're actually looking for, reach out and tell me what that is. It's a short conversation and it puts you ahead of the go-active date.
About Rachael Smith
Rachael Smith is a top-producing real estate agent with RE/MAX Big Bear, specializing in mountain homes, short-term rental investments, and luxury properties in Big Bear Lake and surrounding areas. With over a decade of experience and hundreds of homes sold, she helps buyers, sellers, and investors make smart, strategic real estate decisions. Through her strong online presence and data-driven approach, Rachael connects clients with opportunities both on and off the market.
RE/MAX Big Bear · DRE# 01923537 · 909-744-2190 · rachaelsmithrealestate@gmail.com
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