AWC-anything means Active With Contingencies. That’s real estate-speak for the seller took an offer, they’re under contract, but there are contingencies that must be met before the sale will go through. Essentially, it’s already sold but the seller is trolling for backup offers, for a variety of reasons.
The reason (i.e., contingency) might be that the buyer whose offer was accepted has a home of their own that they must sell and close before they can purchase this home.
However, in metro Phoenix today, the most common reason homes show up as AWC-I is that they are short sales with an accepted offer that’s awaiting bank approval. (edited August 2: 89% of the properties in the AWC-I status are short sales. If you see a property coded AWC-I there’s only a 1 in 10 chance that it’s not a short sale.)
The seller has accepted an offer and sent it to their lender for the lender’s blessing on the sale. Waiting for the seller’s lender’s blessing on a short sale can take several months. Meanwhile, you (as a buyer) can look at the home. You can make an offer. But your offer is considered a backup offer, and you can’t buy it unless the first offer falls apart.
Sadly, these homes show up as “Active” on many, many real estate websites. They’re not really active, but AWC is a strange, hybrid status that metro Phoenix uses that isn’t recognized by a lot of the national websites’ data aggregators. It can be really frustrating for online shoppers to see homes marked Active that are really sold, and just awaiting final approval of the closing.
For more information, scroll down to our Categories, then click the Foreclosures/Short Sales category. Or try this, this, and this.
Heather Barr is a Realtor. She's a chow hound, a gym rat, and the only political junkie in the USA who can actually keep her political views to herself. Instead, she focuses on educating her clients about the often-confusing world of residential real estate.
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