Active means exactly what it says — listed, marketed, no accepted offer — but the useful intelligence is in Active's metadata:
• Days on market (DOM): in most markets, a listing's leverage curve bends around the local average DOM. Fresh listings (days 1-10) command list price or better in competitive markets; listings at 2-3x the area's average DOM have a story, and stories are negotiable.
• Price-change history: a listing with two reductions is a seller in motion — the third conversation is usually the honest one.

Coming Soon is a regulated MLS status, not a teaser: the listing is in the MLS with a future "active" date, and under most MLS rules NO showings are permitted to anyone until that date — the rule exists to stop pocket-listing games. The buyer play: you cannot tour it, but you can do everything else — drive the neighborhood, pull the tax and permit history, get your pre-approval letter refreshed, and have your agent ready an offer strategy for day one. In hot segments, the buyer who treated Coming Soon week as preparation week wins the first-weekend bidding.

One caution: "coming soon" advertising OUTSIDE the MLS (yard signs, social posts with no MLS entry) can signal an agent fishing for an unrepresented double-ended buyer. The status protects you; the off-MLS version often doesn't.

These three look identical to casual browsers — the home left the market — and mean completely different things:

• Withdrawn (or "Temporarily Off Market"): the seller pulled the listing from active marketing, but the listing AGREEMENT with the brokerage typically remains in force. Common reasons: holidays, repairs, illness, seller fatigue, or a strategy reset before a relaunch. Buyer note: a withdrawn home usually cannot be bought "around" the listing agent — the agreement's protection clauses still apply. Watch it; many return within weeks at new prices.

• Expired: the listing agreement ran out its term without a sale. The seller is now unrepresented, unsold, and — statistically — was overpriced. Expired sellers are the most-prospected names in real estate (every listing agent calls them at 8:01 the next morning) for a reason: a meaningful share still want to sell and are finally ready to hear the market's real number. For a buyer, a respectful agent-to-owner approach on a recently expired home you loved can open a clean, competition-free negotiation.

• Canceled: seller and brokerage terminated the agreement mid-term — sometimes a dispute, sometimes a strategic reset before relisting with someone new. Functionally similar to expired for buyer purposes, with one wrinkle below: cancellation is also the engine of the DOM-reset game.

Back on Market (BOM) is the highest-information status in the MLS: a contract existed and died. The buyer playbook is one question — WHY? — because each answer is a different opportunity:
• "Buyer financing fell through": the house is fine; the seller just lost 3 weeks and wants certainty. Lead with a bulletproof pre-approval and a fast close — and negotiate the fatigue.
• "Fell apart at inspection": ask for the inspection report (sellers often share it; in many states discovered defects now require disclosure anyway). You may inherit a documented repair list AND the leverage it created — priced into your offer instead of discovered after it.
• "Buyer got cold feet": the most negotiable seller psychology in the market — twice-burned and certainty-hungry.

The DOM shell game: because stale listings stigmatize, some agents cancel and immediately relist to reset the days-on-market counter to zero — sometimes with a $1,000 price tweak to refresh the algorithms. The counter your agent should pull instead: CDOM (cumulative days on market) or the property's full listing history, which most MLSs preserve across relistings. A "new" listing with 140 cumulative days is a negotiation wearing a fresh coat of paint — and portals' price/listing history tabs expose most of it to anyone who scrolls.