The under-contract playbook: what to do the day a buyer goes pending
By Andy Mazzolini
Everyone celebrates the signed contract. The agents who build referral machines know the truth: going under contract is the starting line, and the first 24 hours decide whether the next month feels smooth or like a rescue mission.
Here is the playbook I run, and the parts I now let the system run for me.
The first 24 hours
- Executed contract to every party: client, lender, title, TC. One email, one thread, everyone introduced by name with their role.
- Every date on the calendar the same day: option period, financing deadline, appraisal, closing. A deadline nobody calendared is a deadline you will meet by luck.
- Inspection scheduled, not just discussed. Inspector availability is the first bottleneck in most transactions.
- Set the communication contract with your client: here is what happens next, here is when you will hear from me, and no news is good news between milestones.
Turn off what no longer fits
This is the step almost everyone misses. Your buyer just committed. The worst thing your systems can do now is keep showing them shiny new listings. Every alert that lands after pending is an invitation to second-guess a decision they already made.
In Hive Centra this now handles itself: when a buyer goes under contract, their property alerts pause automatically, and resume only if the deal falls through. The contact moves to an ACTIVE stage with a journey progress bar and a follow-up plan tuned for a client in a transaction, not a client in a search.
Milestones are marketing
Every completed step is a chance to be the calmest person in the deal. Inspection done, appraisal in, clear to close: each one deserves a proactive message before the client thinks to ask. Milestone alerts mean nothing slips, and each touch is a small deposit in the account you will draw on at referral time.
The mechanical half of a transaction should not live in your head. Let the system carry the dates, the alerts, and the cadence, and spend your attention where no software can go: keeping two nervous humans confident until the keys change hands.
Common questions
What should a buyer's agent do first when going under contract?
Within 24 hours: send the executed contract to all parties, calendar every deadline from option period to closing, introduce the lender and title contacts in one thread, and get the inspection scheduled. Speed here prevents almost every late-transaction fire.
Should property alerts keep sending after a buyer goes under contract?
No. Continuing to send new listings to a pending buyer invites second-guessing and cold feet. Hive Centra pauses buyer property alerts automatically at pending, and resumes them if the deal falls through.
How often should you update clients during a pending transaction?
At every milestone, even when nothing is wrong. A weekly no-news-is-good-news touch plus an update at each completed step keeps the client calm and stops the anxious calls before they start.
Ready to run a team, not a database?
Start now and watch an AI team learn your business from day one.