You’re smarter than the rest of us.

You have it all figured out.

You don’t believe in the value of a real estate agent, but thankfully, your cousin Mandy, who lives in Burlington and is a part-time spin instructor and part-time real estate agent is willing to work for you for free, or close to it.

I could go on.  I could talk for hours on this.

But instead, I’ll thank God that this is Toronto Realty Blog and not Reddit, YouTube, or Tik Tok where 98% of the readers or viewers are angry, spiteful, and to be honest, probably don’t own real estate to begin with.

Seriously though, there’s a direct correlation between the platform where real estate discussions take place and the opinions expressed therein.  It’s only been one year since I started my podcast on YouTube, but the comments posted there versus the comments posted here are very, very different…

In any event, I don’t expect the TRB readers to agree with me all the time, but what I can say is that there’s a better understanding of the real estate market, the participants therein, and the real estate industry on a whole, here on Toronto Realty Blog than most other places.

So while many readers today might be disenfranchised by the following story, I think you can look at this in two different ways:

1) The actions of the real estate agent described in this post represent the entire industry and explains why every single one of them are scum.

2) The actions of the real estate agent described in this post simply demonstrate why having an experienced, knowledgeable, professional working on your behalf is completely worthwhile.

You decide…

A friend of mine from another brokerage, whom we’ll call Haley, has a handful of listings at the moment, some freehold and some condos, some good listings and some not so much.

One of her listings is a condominium that has been on the market for two months.

Haley listed this condo for $674,900 and after two months, dropped the price to $649,900.

Showings have been scarce.  Interest has been non-existent.

About two weeks after the price reduction, Haley received an offer on the condo.

$580,000.

“That’s actually pretty good in this market,” Haley said to me, and then added what I was thinking: “I don’t even know if I’m joking or not.”

That’s where we are in this market.

Once upon a time, an offer of $580,000 on a $649,900 listing was laughable.  It was an insult.  It would never be taken seriously.

But today, it’s a different story.

Haley figured that this was a “starting offer” from the buyer agent and was hopeful that she could get him up in price.

They say, “Eighty percent of negotiations meet in the middle,” so the midpoint in this situation would have been $615,000.

“I didn’t love it,” Haley explained to me, “But my clients really needed to sell and the difference of five or ten grand wouldn’t have been make-or-break.”

Haley’s clients told her, “Anything over $600,000 is a ‘win’ for us,” and asked Haley to get an indication from the buyer agent of where the buyers would go.

The buyer agent simply said, “I’ve given you an offer.  Sign it back, and we’ll talk.”

He did what any experienced agent would do, of course.  But not all agents, as we’ll discuss later…

Haley’s sellers signed the offer back, and the buyers signed it back again.  This went a few rounds, and eventually they settled at $610,000.

Good price?  Bad price?

The opinions will be split 50/50 on this, but suffice it to say, the sellers were happy, the buyers were obviously willing to pay the price, and all parties went on to the next step: satisfying conditions.

Unfortunately, the buyer elected not to proceed with the purchase after all was said and done.

Why?

Who knows.

When an offer is conditional on three different items, financing, lawyer’s review of the status certificate, and (for some reason) a home inspection (on a condo?), the buyer can walk away for any reason.

Haley was disappointed, as were the sellers, but the real estate Gods were watching, and they rewarded Haley and her clients rather graciously two weeks later.

Haley is…..how do I say this…….nicer than me.  When she told me this story, she referred to the next character in our tale as “really cute,” but I took that to mean “really dumb,” and I have a feeling that you’ll agree with me when this tale has been told in full…

We’ll call this next character “Mandy,” since that’s the name I used at the onset.

Mandy is, in fact, a part-time real estate agent who works for a well-known discount brokerage, with a name that gives me shivers any time I hear it, because I know the agent coming my way is going to be a nightmare to deal with.

Haley substituted “challenging” for what I would call “nightmare,” and she might have put a rosy glow on the situation by suggesting that it was an “opportunity.”

Mandy showed Haley’s listing and followed up with Haley to ask, “Are there currently any registered offers on the unit?”

Hint: if an agent is asking you if there are any registered offers on a condo that’s been on the market for three months, they’re probably a bit naive and they’re definitely not tapped into the current market conditions.

Haley told Mandy, “Nope, nothing at the table on the moment,” and then bit her tongue, said her prayer, and optimistically hoped that Mandy would follow up with something positive.

Mandy asked Haley, “Do you think your clients would be flexible on the price?”

Hint: if an agent is asking you if there’s price flexibility for a condo – in June of 2025, that’s been on the market for three months, they’re definitely naive and they’re definitely not tapped into the current market conditions.

Haley said, “I think the sellers would look at any offer that comes in, and I would encourage you to put something on paper if your buyers are interested,” completely avoiding offering a “yes” but ensuring that she responded favourably to Mandy’s question.

The next day, Mandy sent a text message to ask Haley, “Which forms do I use for the offer?

Hint: if an agent is asking you which forms to use for an offer, not only are they new and/or really bad at their job, but they’re also indicating that they don’t have a colleague, manager, or broker they can ask.

Haley is sharp.  She knew that, as dumb as this agent was, and as much as she could use this to her advantage, she could also put herself and her seller client at risk.  Haley didn’t want to offer any implied representation by helping Mandy, nor did she want to invite a situation where an unqualified agent and an unqualified buyer get involved with her seller, taking everybody for a ride to nowhere.

Haley was very careful in “helping” this buyer agent to follow the trail of bread crumbs to the promised land, and lo and behold, Mandy came through with an offer.

Amazingly, the offer was for $630,000.

Really.

On a $649,900 list price for a condo that had been sitting on the market.

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, but also trying to cover her bases, Haley asked Mandy, “Is this their best offer?”

It was already a fantastic offer.  It was $20,000 more than the previous agreement that fell apart.

Mandy told Haley, “There might be a bit of wiggle room, but we’ll see.”

The only acceptable answer there was “NO,” for the record, not that Haley was going to complain.

Haley called Mandy back three hours later, feigning a difficult discussion with the sellers, but really just going grocery shopping, and then asked Mandy, “Would your buyers go to $639,000?”

Mandy said that she would check with the buyer-client, and an hour later, she called Haley back to say, “Yes!”

Hint: if a listing agent calls you to ask, verbally, if your buyer would come up in price, it means that they don’t want to risk signing back your offer, as it would negate the initial offer, meaning they couldn’t accept it.

Haley papered the change to $639,000, sent it to Mandy, and Mandy’s clients accepted it.

They had a conditional agreement.

But this isn’t the “story,” folks.

None of the actions, decisions, or mistakes made above are anything to get excited about.  I mean, sure, it’s inexperience and poor performance all day long, but that’s common in any industry.

The preceding was merely the preamble for one of the most egregious examples of incompetence that I have ever seen.

The three conditions still needed to be satisfied in order to firm up this deal, and the buyer would spend the next week working to satisfy her financing, conduct a satisfactory inspection of the condominium, and receive a satisfactory report on the condominium’s status certificate from her lawyer.

All three of these conditions were “due” on the same day: Friday.

Haley didn’t hear anything from Mandy all week long, and she figured that the saying, “No news, is good news” rang true in this case.

Now, pay very, very close attention to what happens next.

Those who aren’t in the business and/or haven’t transacted in real estate might not follow, but you’ll want to understand exactly what happens!

So let me provide the following:

In order to satisfy a condition, ie. remove the condition and make the conditional agreement go firm, the buyer signs a “Waiver” of that condition and submits this to the seller.  Only the buyer needs to sign this.  It’s a completely unilateral decision on behalf of the buyer.

Completely unrelated is something called an “Amendment.”  This is used between the two parties, buyer and seller, when one wants to change an item within the Agreement of Purchase & Sale.  For example, the buyer wants to move the closing date up from June 15th to June 1st.  However, this agreement is bilateral, meaning the buyer would draft, sign, and submit the Amendment to the seller, and the seller would have to accept.  This is effectively the same process as an Agreement of Purchase & Sale.  There’s an offer and an acceptance.

Why am I explaining and defining Waivers and Amendments?

Well, because it seems that Mandy had absolutely no idea what these were.

Seems to reason, of course, since so many part-time, discount, and/or inexperienced agents don’t have any training, guidance, mentorship, or interaction with their manager or broker – since there usually isn’t one.

Haley was sitting in her office on Friday afternoon when she received an email from Mandy.

There were four attachments to the email:

1) Waiver of financing condition.
2) Waiver of status certificate condition.
3) Waiver of home inspection condition.
4) Amendment.

The email contained nothing but a subject line, which noted the condo’s address, and these four attachments.  There was nothing in the body of the email.

You’re dying to know what was in the Amendment, right?

The Amendment sought to reduce the purchase price from $639,000 to $625,000 as well as have the seller remedy several silly “deficiencies” found in the inspection, such as fixing the “noisy” bathroom ceiling fan, replacing the frayed cord on the window treatments, etc.

Remember something very important before we move forward:

Waivers are signed by the buyer and once they’re sent to the seller, the buyer can’t take them back.

Amendments offered by the buyer and sent to the seller must be agreed to by the seller and then signed.

Simply put, Mandy had absolutely no idea what she was doing.

By sending those three waivers to Haley, Mandy had removed the buyer’s conditions and firmed up the deal, whether she meant to or not.

And she did mean to, of course.  When she eventually spoke to Haley, she noted that her buyer did want to move forward.

But her buyer also wanted to reduce the purchase price and have a bunch of items fixed in the condo.

The problem, as I think I’ve explained by now, is that the three waivers made the deal go firm, and the Amendment didn’t hold any water.

Haley acknowledged receipt of the three waivers, emailed Mandy to say, “Congrats on a firm deal,” updated the listing on MLS as “SOLD FIRM,” and that was that.

You’re wondering about the Amendment, right?

What Amendment?

Oh, you mean that silly attachment on the email that had absolutely zero value at this point?

Yeah, Haley just ignored it.

Mandy followed up the next day and said to Haley, “Did you have a chance to look at the Amendment?”

Haley said, “Yes, we did.”

Mandy replied, “Oh, okay, so what’s up?

Haley, playing chess against somebody who had never even heard of checkers, said, “We reviewed the Amendment and we’re going to politely decline.”

That was all she really needed to say, right?

The Amendment was offered to the seller, but the seller needed to agree.  In this case, the seller obviously did not.

Mandy said, “Wait, what?  We’re only going ahead with the purchase if the seller changes the price to $625,000.  And we need a bunch of stuff fixed in the condo.  The inspector found all these deficiencies, and my buyer thinks she overpaid at $639,000, so she doesn’t want to go ahead with it if that’s the price she’s going to pay.”

Haley asked, “So then why did your buyer send us three Waivers?”

Mandy said, “Those Waivers go with the Amendment.  We’ll firm up the deal if you reduce the price and fix everything.”

Haley replied, “Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.  Your buyer signed three Waivers and sent them to us – that firms up the deal.  The Amendment needs to be agreed to and signed by the seller in order for it to be valid, and the seller did not agree.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

Mandy started to panic.

She said a bunch of “Oh, my God’s,” and then just muttered “but….but…”

Haley said, “I’m sorry, Mandy, but this deal is firm and MLS is updated, I don’t know what you were trying to do here.”

Amazingly, Mandy said, “I don’t really know what I’m doing, that’s the problem, you see!”

That would make for a great slogan for her brokerage, right?

Now, you might be asking yourself, “What should Mandy have done?”

Draft an amendment as follows:

INSERT:

-Purchase Price: $625,000

-Seller to remedy deficiencies A, B, and C

 

DELETE:

-Purchase Price $639,000

-Financing Condition

-Status Condition

-Inspection Condition

 

Sign that Amendment, insert an irrevocable date, and send it to Haley.

Mandy’s buyer would be offering to delete the three conditions in exchange for a reduction in price to $625,000, and an agreement that the deficiencies are fixed.

Now, Haley’s seller has a choice.

Haley’s seller can agree, sign the Amendment, and firm up the deal for less money, or she can decline and let the deal fall through.

“My seller would have jumped at that, obviously,” Haley told me.  “But lucky for me, this tool on the other end had no clue what she was doing.”

Some of you reading this might not find the humour in it.

After all, Mandy cost her client money!  She screwed up!  Why are we glorifying this?

We’re not.

As I said at the onset, you can choose to see this story however you’d like.

I look at this and think, “Wow, there are some really bad agents in the business.  I feel bad for whoever hires them, but I’m more than happy to take advantage of them to benefit my buyer and seller clients, and I’m completely cognizant of the fact that every industry has better and worse participants.”

But for those of you who want to conclude, “This just underscores how bad ALL real estate agents are,” I don’t think I’ll get through to you.

Oh – and there’s one more way of looking at this, I suppose.

If anybody is wondering whether or not Haley did the “right” thing or whether it was unethical, I simply can’t help you there.  It’s not Haley’s job to do Mandy’s job.

In actual fact, Haley is bound by a representation agreement whereby she must act in the best interest of her client, so it would be absurd to suggest that Haley should have, oh, I dunno, say, called Mandy and asked her what the heck she was trying to accomplish, and then draft an Amendment for her?

You don’t want to think that things like this can happen, but they do.

There are a lot of market participants, and not just agents, who suffer from serious inexperience and a lack of knowledge.

There’s an arbitrage opportunity in the market at every possible turn, depending on who is standing around the corner.

You might say that Haley lucked out, but it’s not luck; it’s circumstance.

Last night, I sold one of my very stale condo listings for far more than it’s worth, with all the concessions made on the buyer’s side, in an exceptionally difficult condo market.

What was the differentiator?

The agent on the other side.

To call these “rookie mistakes” wouldn’t be fair, because many of these inexperienced or incapable agents have been in the business forever, but only sell one property per year, and develop bad habits, cut corners, or aren’t caught up on industry changes, new forms, and modern protocols.

But Mandy.  Poor, poor Mandy.

I hope she can pedal all that anger away when she teaches her next spin class…

The post Rookie Mistake! appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

People do crazy things, right?

I mean, I just started watching the fifth season of “You” on Netflix even though that show totally sucks, and I said I wouldn’t watch the fourth season after I hated the third season.

Don’t tell me how it ends.

But also, don’t tell me that the ending sucks, since this is one area in which I can read the future…

I was talking to a team member yesterday about all the “fires” that arise regularly in our business and how, despite not being able to foresee these fires, we can identify a common thread as to the origin.

People.

I’ve always remarked, “people are the largest variable in our industry,” and they are both the cause of and often the solution to many of the problems that arise.  Buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, home inspectors, contractors, mortgage brokers, friends, family, colleagues, you name it.  People have a huge impact on everything that goes on in real estate, and because everybody is different, you simply can’t control nor can you plan for every outcome.

People do crazy things.

When it comes to the market out there today, this is especially true.

But what about the market today and yesterday?  More specifically, what about the market over the last three years?

What if I told you that there was a listing that has been for sale for three full years and it hasn’t sold?

What would you say is the reason?

Is it the market?

Is it the house?

Is it the location?

Nope.  None of the above.

Let me go through the listing history for a west-side Toronto home that has literally been up for sale for three years, and we’ll look at all the different prices, “strategies,” and decisions therein…

–

Listing #1: March 25th, 2022
$1,429,999

I know you see the $1,880,000 figure in the picture above, but the listing always shows the most recent price.

The property was first listed for $1,429,999, but of course, with an “offer date.”

But that offer date didn’t bear fruit, so the price was increased by a mere $450,000 to $1,880,000.

In total, the property remained on the market for 33 days.

The listing was terminated.

–

Listing #2: April 27th, 2022
$1,199,000

After terminating at $1,880,000, the property was re-lsited for a mere $1,199,000 and without an offer date.

No offer date?  Really?

As in – they’ll gladly accept the list price of $1,199,000?

No, of course not!

It was simply listed $600,000+ below what the sellers wanted, with no scheduled offer date.

Totally normal, right?

This listing was terminated after only 9 days on the market.

–

Listing #3: May 6th, 2022
$1,199,000

Wait…..what?

Deju-vu?

Nope.

Just another listing for $1,199,000, even though the sellers clearly wanted something in the $1,800,000 range.

I suppose they eventually realized that this isn’t how the market worked, since the listing was terminated after only 14 days.

It’s about 13 days longer than was necessary…

–

Listing #4: May 26th, 2022
$1,349,000

Here’s where the second listing brokerage came into play.

New listing, new price!

New strategy!

Listing at $1,349,000 with an offer date, but alas, the offer date didn’t produce a sale.

So then, increase the price to $1,800,000 again?

Nope!

They left the listing up for sale at $1,349,000, which was their “under-listed” price that accompanied the offer date, for a whopping 42 days.

Then…

–

Listing #5: July 7th, 2022
$1,600,000

This kinda makes sense, right?

They initially wanted $1,800,000, based on the high list price of $1,880,000, but now they’re down to $1,600,000.

It just took them several listings and several failed offer dates to get here.

And they left the previous listing up at $1,349,000 for 42 days for some reason.

So they’re on the right track.  Right?

Unfortunately, this listing didn’t produce a sale, and the listing was terminated after 26 days.

–

Listing #6: August 3rd, 2022
$1,449,000

Here’s where things get impossible for the seller.

Listing at $1,449,000, down from $1,600,000, up from $1,349,000 – with an offer date, and up from $1,199,000.

The market and its participants are completely and utterly confused by this point, and there’s simply no way to know what this seller wants.

Think about it:

The seller was listed for $1,199,000 without an offer date, but wanted $1,800,000.

Then, the seller was listed for $1,349,000 without an offer date, wanting something in the $1,600,000 range.

Then, the seller was at $1,600,000.

Now, the seller is at $1,449,000.

I would think much, if not most of the buyer pool would think this is another “boy who cried wolf,” and nobody is really going to think this house is available for sale for $1,449,000 or less.

The seller completely shot him or herself in the foot by this point, but usually, seller knows best.

The listing was terminated after 12 days.

–

Listing #7: September 26th, 2022
$1,190,000

New listing brokerage!

New fall market!

New strategy?

Nope!

They listed for $1,190,000, with an offer date, and that didn’t work so they increased the price to $1,498,000.

They couldn’t sell in August for $1,449,000, so why not try it at $1,498,000 in October, right?

May I remind you what happened in the spring of 2022?  The market began its descent.

While these sellers are following the market down, they’ve for some reason raised the price in a market that was cooling.

The listing was terminated after 61 days.

–

Listing #8: March 29th, 2023
$1,788,000

“Don’t call it a comeback,” said LL Cool J.

Although he most certainly wasn’t talking about the market in March of 2023, as there was absolutely, positively, no reason to increase the asking price of this house by nearly $300,000.

The market did not increase by 19.4%, so I don’t quite know what the sellers were thinking here.

But this was now the fourth listing brokerage!

New contestant to the game, and this one is located even further away from the property, so perhaps he or she knows what all the local agents don’t?  Maybe there’s a reason for the $290,000 price increase?

Nah.

The property sat on the market for 56 days.

–

Listing #9: June 2nd, 2023
$1,488,000

Question:

If I took a fresh piece of Bubalicious out of the pack, out of the wrapper, and then chewed it for seven straight hours, then I put the gum back in the wrapper, do you think you’d be able to tell that it’s been chewed?

That’s how I feel about houses that are listed for a certain price, then under-listed at a “new” price, along with an offer date.

We’ve discussed this on TRB many times.

I liken it to a doctor prescribing a drug and then telling you explicitly, “This is a placebo.”

Yes, this property was listed for $1,788,000, then re-listed for $1,488,888 with an offer date.

The offer date didn’t work.

The property sat on the market at the under-list price for weeks before the listing was terminated after a total of 27 days on the market.

–

Listing #9: July 4th, 2023
$1,728,888

There’s not much to write home about here, folks.

Except for that “3 + 0” bedroom situation happening, which I really don’t undertand.

Are they trying to point out that there’s no basement bedroom?

In any event, this “massive” price reduction from $1,788,888 to $1,728,888 SHOCKINGLY didn’t produce a sale.

The listing was terminated after 38 days.

–

Listing #10: February 13th, 2024
$2,000,000

I know what you’re thinking: David must be really tired.  He made a typo.

But that’s not a typo, folks.

In February of 2024, after listing ten times previously, these folks decided to increase the list price from $1,728,888 to a whopping $2,000,000.

Can we just back up for a moment?

Remember when the house was listed for $1,600,000 in July of 2022?

It didn’t sell.

Then the price was raised to $1,788,000 in March of 2023.

It didn’t sell.

Now, here we were in 2024 and the price was raised again to $2,000,000.

But all the while, the market was declining from 2022 to 2023 and remaining balanced from 2023 to 2024.

None of this made any sense!

This was a new listing brokerage, by the way.  The fifth, if you’re counting.

If you thought the fourth listing brokerage bought the listing, then I don’t know what to say about these folks…

–

Listing #12: February 22nd, 2024
$1,288,000

This might be one of the top-3 oddest decisions in the course of this entire journey.

After listing for a ridiculous $2,000,000, the sellers re-listed for $1,288,000, with an offer date.

Again, the chewed gum, the placebo, you know my analogy.

But who in their right mind thinks this is going to work?

Picture this buyer:

“Gee, I saw this house listed for $2,000,000 and I can’t afford that.  I can only afford $1,500,000.  BUT WAIT!  It’s now listed for $1,288,000.  I think I’ll make an offer, and if I’m in competition, thankfully I can bid up to $1,500,000.  Except, wait, now I’m really excited, it’s offer night, there are pretty girls with pom-poms and we’re all hepped up on goofballs, so now I think I’ll bid $1,750,612, because my wife and I got married on June 12th.  I hope I win!”

Nuh-uh.

Not going to happen.

After the failed offer date, the price was raised to $1,788,000 and the listing was terminated after 99 days on the market.

–

Listing #13: October 10th, 2024
$1,860,000

New listing brokerage!

The sixth!

Also, a sharp new price: $1,860,000, which is higher than the previous price at which they sat for 99 days.

Does that make any sense to you?  No?  Just checking.

Also, the listing also features “3 + 3” bedrooms, which means three basement bedrooms magically appeared.

Cool.

SHOCKINGLY……….the property sat for 154 days before the listing was terminated.

–

Listing #14: March 31st, 2025
$1,638,000

New year, new listing brokerage!

The seventh.

That’s my lucky number!

But alas, the property didn’t sell, even though it was priced at a “mere” $1,638,000.

The listing was suspended a couple of weeks ago.

–

This is one for the books, folks!

I know I’ve run this feature before on several different houses.

I know we’ve seen properties listed more times, or with more offer dates.

But I don’t recall a house that was listed off-and-on for three years!

And the worst part is: they started this in March of 2022, which was literally the peak of a twenty-year bull market cycle!

Sure, I have the benefit of hindsight now, but imagine them not selling for $1,600,000 in 2022 and then trying $2,000,000 in 2024?

What do you think the buyer pool makes of this?

Who among the buyer pool has any interest in a house that’s been listed fourteen times, by seven brokerages, with six or seven offer dates, and multiple listing prices that were nowhere near what the seller would actually accept?

I would imagine the buyer pool has completely tuned this listing out.

Any agent or buyer looking at this property says, “Yeah, well, that house isn’t really for sale.  Who knows what they want, or if they’ll sell.”

And can you blame them?

I am continually amazed by the decisions of some sellers out there.

But something tells me it won’t be more than a few months before I find another listing just like this one…

The post Does It Really Take Three Years To Sell A House In Toronto? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

I really wanted to post a follow-up to Monday’s blog today.

It seemed logical to follow Monday’s stats blog with yet another stats blog, not to mention, one that’s related to Monday’s topic.

At the conclusion of Monday’s blog, I said the following:

A colleague of mine suggested that the only reason why the GTA average home price wasn’t lower is because the condominium market is so weak, condo sales are scarce, and thus the average home price is being “propped up” by the fact that there are proportionally fewer condo sales than usual.

So is that what we’re going to discuss today?

No.

Back-to-back stats blogs are a no-no here on TRB, as mandated by random, forgettable readers, in an indeterminate year, at some point in the past.

Alas, you will have to wait until Monday, but I promise it’ll be worth the wait!

Today, I want to talk about how deals are routinely being “lost” in 2025.

This is to suggest that the four parties to a transaction – buyer, seller, buyer-agent, and seller-agent, are individually or collectively ill-equipped to adjust to the current market conditions, and thus their actions are serving as roadblocks to successful transactions.

A “lost” deal could have two results:

1) The would-be buyer purchases a different property.
2) The would-be buyer does not purchase any property.

In the first case, there’s no sale “lost” as far as the market goes, and thus it doesn’t explain why sales are at an all-time low.

In the second case, a buyer who would buy but doesn’t buy helps to put a face and a reason to the low sales figures.

I suppose the opposite could be true; there could be a seller who sells to somebody else, but in my experience, that’s not happening.  In my experience, when that seller doesn’t sell to one person, for whatever reason, it’s unlikely that a second person comes along and is able to fill in the gaps and get the deal done.

As I said, there are four parties to the transaction that could, individually or collectively, stand in the way of a deal.  Today’s story is about how listing agents can get in their own way…

Two weeks ago, I visited an east-side starter home with my buyer clients and the buyers really liked the home!

While there is a lot for sale in this price point on the east side, that’s not to say that all properties are created equal.

Every buyer has a different set of evaluation criteria for a home, different needs, and different wants.  This particular home had an owned parking space, which was an absolute must-have for my buyers, it provided the backyard space that they coveted, and it hit the marks for square footage, bedrooms, and bathrooms.

How many other buyers would put this particular home atop their list?  Well, that’s what we were about to find out!

As with every other freehold in the city, this house was listed for sale at a price that was below fair market value, and an “offer date” was set.

Once upon a time, this was a can’t-miss strategy in our market, but as we all know, much has changed since then.

The house was listed for sale for $999,000, along with many others like it on the east side, and my clients and I figured the true “value” of the home was around $1,250,000.

On the day of offers, my buyers went to the bank and secured a certified cheque to accompany their offer (which fewer and fewer buyers are doing in this market), and we registered our offer around 10:00am.

Then we waited.

We waited to receive an email that read, “SECOND (2) OFFER REGISTERED,” which could then be followed by a subsequent email that read, “THIRD (3) OFFER REGISTERED,” but those emails never came.

At 6:00pm, we had the only registered offer on the property.

I called the listing agent to confirm that we had the only offer and he sighed and said, “Yep, it looks like it.”

This is where things get really, really difficult in our market and where deals are both made and lost.  Buyers, sellers, buyer agents, and listing agents all play a role in whether a deal is made or not, and I’m inclined to say that the personalities and emotions of those four parties have a massive influence on what happens next.

We submitted an offer of $1,100,000 on the property.

Here’s where many people would agree with us but just as many would disagree.

“Why would you bid against yourselves?” some people might ask.  “The property is listed for $999,900 and you’ve bid $1,100,000 – there’s no reason for that!” they might argue.

But the point is: we know the seller is not going to accept $999,000 for their house that’s worth somewhere around $1,250,000, give or take.  Truth be told, we also know that the seller isn’t going to accept our offer of $1,100,000, so it’s all the more reason not to offer the list price and frustrate the seller, thereby creating an obstacle to getting a deal done.

Right before I emailed my offer, I called the listing agent one more time to ask, rather rhetorically, to confirm that we were the only offer on the table, which he did.  I needed him to understand that we were the only buyer in the city for his listing, but without pointing this out to him directly, and risking bringing his emotions into the mix.

Our objective was to see what type of sign-back the seller would provide after receiving our offer of $1,100,000.

We figured the value was around $1,250,000, but would the seller sign back lower?  Maybe they didn’t value the house the way we did, or maybe they were anxious and wanted to get the property sold.  Would the seller sign back higher?  Maybe they valued the house at a much loftier figure, or maybe they were greedy, and/or out of touch.

What do you think they did?

Did they sign back at $1,250,000?

Higher?

Lower?

Pick any one of the three options, and you would be wrong.

Why?

Because the seller refused to sign the offer back at all!

The listing agent called and asked me, “Can your buyers come up in price?”

This is very common, and not in any way out of line.

Of course my buyers could come up in price.  We had discussed it in advance and our offer of $1,100,000 was strategic in nature, and didn’t represent a max price or a final offer.

I told the listing agent, “This isn’t their final number for the home,” and he rather excitedly said, “Great, so go get that on paper, and we’ll discuss.”

This is where things went off the rails.

Once upon a time, his response was not only valid but expected.  That time, however, was when he had nine offers in hand, not one.

I told the listing agent, “Well, we’re not going to get a higher offer on paper,” and explained that we had submitted an offer, the seller had received it, presumably reviewed it, and that we were now waiting on the seller to counter.

The listing agent said, “No, but, well, um, this is our offer night.  So you need to come to us.”

I told him, “We already did.”

The problem here was that this listing agent was acting like his big offer date had paid off and he had multiple offers, so he could tell “all” the bidders that they needed to improve their respective offers – like this was 2022, 2023, or even 2024.

But it’s 2025.  And he had one offer.

Amazingly, he proceeded to explain to me how an offer night worked!

“We have set an offer date, and we’re going to review offers,” he told me.  “We’re not interested in working with your offer of $1,100,000, so you can resubmit another offer if you’d like.”

I asked him, “Why wouldn’t you sign our offer back?”

He paused and I could feel him thinking through the phone.  He tried to speak, but caught himself, then sighed.

After another beat, he offered me the explanation that I knew was coming.

“You don’t sign an offer back on your offer night.  We’re in a position of leverage here, not you.”

Huh.

Is that a fact?

Well, unfortunately for this agent and so many like him, the market is the market, and they’re all going to need a crash course in “How To Sell Real Estate In 2025.”

Throughout the city of Toronto, listing agents are showing their inexperience as they attempt to do business as though it were three years ago, and it’s simply not working.  These agents lack the ability to work with other agents and not against them.  They lack a set of critical skills, notably communication and understanding.

But there’s one more important factor here that’s playing as large a role as any in our market: fear.

The listing agent was afraid to advise his clients to sign our offer back for a multitude of reasons.

For starters, he’d never done it before!  Because he’s never worked in this market!  It was simply, “Fear of the unknown,” and when some people don’t know what to do, they don’t do anything at all.  They just freeze.  But this agent was also worried about signing back too high, too low, or really, signing back at all.  He didn’t know what move to make so he said, “You make the move, I’m not doing it!”

For years, listing agents were absolutely spoiled.  They could simply set an offer date and have buyer agents line up outside their doors, and we’d never know if they did a good job or not, since the property would sell, and we couldn’t determine if another agent would have sold for more or less.

But in today’s market, negotiating, communicating, strategizing, and cooperating are paramount to getting any property sold.

“Never let a deal die.”

There’s a classic real estate saying, and while there are exceptions to the rule, it typically holds true.

“I’m not going to let this deal die on my operating table,” a similar saying among agents goes, as every agent knows that a buyer or seller can’t accept an offer that isn’t in front of them.

“How am I supposed to advise my clients to sign what they don’t have?” you could also ask.

Returning to our story where we left off, I asked the listing agent, “Can you explain this concept of ‘leverage’ as you see it?”  I wasn’t being snide, but rather I wanted to get him talking about the position he felt he was in.

“We have under-priced this house,” he explained.  “We’re not going to sign the offer back because we don’t need to show our true hand,” he naively continued.  “That’s not how offer nights work.  The buyers submit offers, the sellers review and consider them.”

I let him say his piece, and then I pointed out, “You said offer(s), plural.  But you don’t have offers.  You have an offer.  You have us.  You have paperwork in front of you with a price on it.  If you don’t like the price, then change it, initial it, send it back to me, and I will present it to my clients, review, evaluate, and report back.”

Then I added a critical piece: “But you have to act, because that offer is not going to change itself.”

Without so much as consulting with his clients, he aggressively shouted, “Looks like we’re done for the night” and hung up.

And that was it.

That is an example of what’s happening every night in this city, and it’s why so few transactions are being done.

The listing agent called me the next afternoon and asked, “Are your people still interested in the house?”  I said, “Yeah, probably,” since nothing had really changed in eighteen hours.

Shockingly, instead of providing us with a counter-offer, a verbal price, or any indication that they wanted to engage, he reminded me, “Well, our house is still for sale, so feel free to resubmit an offer.”

He hadn’t learned anything.

I consulted with my clients and they declined.  Not necessarily because they didn’t like the agent, the process, or had lost interest in the house, but because by that evening, they had already seen two new listings on MLS that piqued their interest, which is a risk that every seller runs in this market.

They were still interested in the first house, don’t get me wrong.  But they wanted to play the field!

We went out that night and saw the two houses, one of which was fantastic.  The listing agent for that property called me the next morning and said, “We do have an offer date, but seriously, that’s just for show.  You know this.  Bring me an offer, let’s work together, let’s get a deal done, David!”

What a novel idea!

So after mulling their options that evening, my clients called me the following morning and said, “We’re in.”

They went to the bank and secured a certified deposit cheque, sent an offer over to the listing agent – technically a “bully offer,” but call it what it is in this market, and the listing agent graciously thanked me for my offer and our efforts.

She said, “Good luck to us all!”

I received a notification from BrokerBay: “PRE-EMPTIVE OFFER REGISTERED,” and I knew we were in business.  A good listing agent doesn’t email buyer agents and say that an offer is registered unless that agent intends to accept the offer.

Two hours later, the listing agent called me and said that the sellers were going to accept the offer.

In my opinion, we got the house for slightly less than we thought it would have, could have, should have sold for, but you never know.

The listing agent was an absolute pleasure to work with; professional, accommodating, and understanding in every way.  She made that deal happen for her sellers.

Three days later, the agent from the previous property called me.  His listing was still on MLS at the pre-offer-date price of $999,900, even though the offer date was well passed.  He said, “We’re thinking of re-listing, but wanted to see first if you’re people were interested in coming back.”

I asked him, “What are you going to re-list at?”

He said, “Well, that’s between me and the sellers.  But before we do that, I wanted to see if you guys wanted to make a move.”

It sort of felt like he was selling tickets to last year’s Superbowl.

I followed up, “Can you give me a range in which you’ll be re-listing?  Like, some sort of indication?”

Still feeling his “leverage,” he told me, “You should know what the range is.  If you know the market, and you know what properties are worth, then I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

I thanked him for the call and told him to have a fantastic night.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t inform him that my buyer-clients purchased a different house three days ago, it’s because I simply don’t care to do so.  The minute you feel the need to “show” somebody, you’re no better than they are.

That property remained on MLS at $999,900 for another week before they finally changed the price to $1,299,000.

It’s still for sale, and it will be for some time.

With sales in the GTA at all-time lows, I have to think that lack of consumer confidence is a major factor, and it’s one that’s being talked about in real estate circles and the media.  But the elephant in the room, which looms larger than you can imagine, is the inexperience of real estate agents and their seller clients which has put roadblock after roadblock in place.

There would be far more sales if market participants just learned how to put emotion aside, but more importantly, if they learned to adapt to a market climate that has changed…

The post Here’s Why Sales Are Being Lost In 2025! appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

I wrote about my first half-marathon attempt here on TRB back in 2023.  I probably shouldn’t say “attempt,” since I finished the race, but my knee gave out after 10KM and I had to sort of run-walk the last seven kilometres.

That was demoralizing.

Worse was a sports medicine doctor who told me, “You should train a full year for a 5K.  Then the next year, train a full year for a 10K.  Then the following year, or the year after, train for the Half-Marathon.”

Sage advice for a normal human, but that advice made my head explode.  There was no way I was going to wait four years to try this again.

I took seven months off from running; October of 2023 to May of 2024.  I started back slowly and didn’t do more than 5KM until January of 2025.

Yeah, maybe I could have trained for the half-marathon in the fall of this year, but just look at that photo above with the cherry blossoms!  It doesn’t get any better than that!

Special thanks to long-time blog reader, Sigruper, for being an unofficial running coach in my stable of people whom I pester with questions.

I texted him on the weekend and said, “I’ve done everything I can to get my knee ready.  Yoga, massage treatments, foam rolling, and ice baths.”

Being an older chap, he sarcastically wrote back:

“It’s so hard being in your 40’s….”

True that.

Makes me want to do better next time.

Special thanks to blog reader Anwar for providing me with some running advice and encouragement over the last few months.  A little goes a long way.

And a shout out to @thebibbygroup, aka Chris Bibby, who probably holds the record for most combined real estate sales and marathons.  The poor guy is probably at his in-laws for a nice family dinner when his phone goes off and it’s some real estate agent asking, “Would I be crazy to wear leggings in this weather?  What’s the ideal temperature for a racerback?”

But he answered!

Full transparency: I’m writing this from my bed, with massive ice packs on both knees.  My wife brought me my laptop.

“Anything else, sire?”

She deserves a shout out too, considering had a slumber party with the kids in the basement on Saturday night so I could go to bed at 8:00pm and be completely undisturbed.

Alright, thanks for indulging me.

I expect the TRREB stats to be released on Monday or Tuesday and that will be the topic of conversation when I return here on Thursday.

Actually, I partially expect that to be the topic of conversation on this thread over the next few days because I know you guys…

The post 2025 Toronto Half-Marathon! appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

I feel like I’ve done this one before.

To be honest, this happens to me quite often.  As we approach the 18-year anniversary of Toronto Realty Blog, it comes as no surprise that I often have an idea for something, only to find that I wrote it several years ago.

Last month, I wrote an entire blog about open houses only to find that I wrote essentially the same blog post six years ago!

So let me quickly Google this…

…ah, right:

One is from 2024 and one is from 2015, but after reading both of these just now, I think today’s blog is going to quite different.

After all, we’re talking about how not to sell real estate in 2025.

This is different from 2015 and it’s different from 2024.  We’re in a different market, we have different problems, and dare I say that more now than ever before, the problem is agents.

In last Thursday’s blog post, I introduced the analysis of Toronto condominium statistics with a story about a recent condo sale that I had completed.  I mentioned how the buyer agent, who brought me an offer on a listing, remarked that so many other agents he had spoken to told him “don’t bother.”

I am of the mindset that one of the major reasons why more transactions aren’t being completed is because of agents, both on the listing side and the buying side.

Interest rates, inventory levels, quality of listings, timing, and economic uncertainty are all playing major factors, but there would be more sales if agents didn’t keep getting in each others way, and more importantly, in their own way.

Today, I want to share three stories that explain exactly what I’m talking about.

I could share more, believe me!  But something tells me this will be a theme as we move throughout the rest of the spring market, so I’m going to hold a few back.

As the lead singer of The Crash Test Dummies once said…………”Let’s begin!”

–

1) Define “Market Value”

In February, a buyer-client of mine expressed interest in a west-side semi-detached house, nicely renovated, lacking a real parking space, but otherwise checking all the boxes.

The property was listed for $1,199,000, with an offer date.

The offer date was pretty standard, not only for this property type but also in this price point.

I figured that the property was probably worth $1,400,000 or more and had the potential to get up to $1,450,000.

My client decided to proceed with an offer on the scheduled offer night and we were one of eight bids that evening.

We offered $1,405,000, assuming that this particular agent (you can just tell…) would ask us to improve our offer no matter what, unconditional, with a deposit cheque to accompany the offer.

Sure enough, the listing agent called me and said, “You’re going to need to improve your offer,” and I asked her a series of questions that I always ask, even though I know the listing agent won’t answer.

“What are the other offers like? I asked, and amazingly she replied, “Well, you’re one of four offers that’s at $1,400,000 and change.”

I was shocked that she told me this, but she continued, “The other four offers are fucking bullshit and I don’t even feel like I need to call them back.”

Well, alright.  That’s one way of doing business.

But then without any prompting, she said, “I mean, your offer and the other three are all bullshit too.”

I thought she was kidding.

I waited for her to add some variation of “only joking,” but what followed next was amazing.

“God, does anybody know anything about real estate anymore?”

I said, “Well, I dunno, maybe you could educate me a little?”  Not trying to be sarcastic, but hoping she would just keep talking.

“Eight offers,” she said, “And not one of you could put a real offer on paper.”

A real offer, eh?

With four offers “at $1.4M and change,” it sort of felt like that was the market value for the property, give or take.

I asked her, “What’s a real offer on this property?  Are we talking, like, high-$1.4’s?”

She said, “More like over $1.6M,” and then asked, “Do you know much about the neighbourhood?”

I called my buyer client and told her that we weren’t going to be players for this property, and she agreed.

The next day, the listing was terminated and the property was re-listed for a ridiculous $1,649,000.

It’s still on the market at that price today.

A couple of weeks later, I was chatting with an agent who brought an offer on one of my listings and I used this story as an example of “how not to sell real estate,” and he told me that he was one of the eight offers that night!

“That listing agent was nuts,” he said.  “My client offered $1,415,000 and she called and basically yelled at me, saying I didn’t know anything about the quality of the house, that I didn’t know how to value their renovation, and that I wasn’t providing my buyer with a ‘proper’ evaluation.”

So it wasn’t just me that received special treatment…

–

2) What Year Is It?

Many of you know that an overwhelming number of real estate brokerages in Toronto use an appointment system called “BrokerBay” which was invented by a real estate agent and then rather oddly was purchased by Carrier Global Corporation, but I digress…

In any event, I’m not a huge fan of the automated emails that are sent through the system, most notably those requesting “feedback” on listings.

If you’re a listing agent and you want feedback, pick up the phone and call the buyer agent!

Imagine being a buyer agent and you show six houses on Saturday afternoon; by Saturday evening, you receive six emails from BrokerBay requesting feedback, and then on Sunday morning, you receive six more emails.

BrokerBay also emails agents for new listings, price reductions, re-listings, and general ‘announcements’ by listing agents.

One of those announcements is often for price reductions, and I’m always interested in seeing which properties are reduced in price, and by how much.  Not only that, but after how long.

Earlier this week, I received a BrokerBay notification that read:

Thank you for showing my listing at 123 Fake Street, #456.  Please note that the property has been reduced in price from $889,000 to $879,000.  This wonderful property is available to show any time, please bring your clients back for another look!

I had never heard of this property before, and no, it wasn’t actually on Fake Street.

I was so curious since I usually track all the properties that I see with clients, so I looked up my email history to see if I had booked an appointment.

And guess what?

I had!

But the date of the showing was Saturday, June 8th…

….of 2024.

I showed this property to a buyer-client ten months ago and my buyer purchased a property two weeks later, closed in August, spent the fall in the property, celebrated Labour Day, Halloween, Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s Day, Family Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and just about got to Easter while this other property is still listed for sale.

This was crazy.

The property had been on the market for one year and was only now being reduced in price by a whopping $10,000.

But the best part was this:

“Please bring your clients back for another look!”

Does this listing agent assume that buyers who were active in June of 2024 are still in the market?

–

3) You Can’t Spell “Misrepresentation” Without “Representation”

Here’s a story that a colleague of mine started to tell me back in February, and here we are in April with the saga still ongoing…

We’ll call my colleague “Colby” for now, and let’s just say that none of us can believe this saga is ongoing.

Colby visited a property in Mississauga with her buyer clients who were looking to get into a particular neighbourhood and school district, even though they didn’t quite have the budget.  They always figured that if they purchased a “fixer-upper,” they could get in on the ground level, and upgrade the home over time.

I love that idea.  I’ve had a lot of clients do this over the last two years.

They found a home that was a classic estate sale; very old, untouched for many years, and being represented by an agent that just sort of reflected the state of the home, if you know what I mean.  And if you don’t know, you will shortly…

Colby’s clients were really anxious about the condition of the home and the major systems and components since they wouldn’t have a huge budget for upgrades.

The listing agent pestered Colby for a full week after their viewing, offering to “answer any questions” if it would help the buyers get on side.

Colby took the listing agent up on that and sent her a lengthy list of questions, notably about the age of the roof, windows, furnace, air conditioner, and hot water tank, as well as the last time that electrical and plumbing were updated.

The listing agent emailed back (so this is in writing, which will be important later…) and answered all the questions, representing that the roof and windows were from 2023, the furnace, air conditioner, and hot water tank were from 2020, and that there was no knob-and-tube wiring, clay pipes, lead pipes, cast iron stack, and provided answers to several other questions including one about “asbestos, UFFI, vermiculite, or any other concerning material.”

Colby’s clients submitted an offer on the property which was conditional on a satisfactory home inspection, and after a back-and-forth negotiation in which the listing agent routinely belittled Colby about the buyers’ ability to afford the home (as a negotiating tactic) and after a refusal to move much from the list price (of $1,199,900), a deal was reached for $1,190,000.

The next day, Colby attended the home inspection with the buyers and it was an absolute horror show.

The house was full of knob-and-tube wiring.

There was a cast-iron plumbing stack, highly visible to the naked eye.

The furnace was installed in 1992 and was approaching thirty-three years old, which is miraculous, but not the type of miracle the buyers were looking for.

The air conditioner was from 2006.

The hot water tank was from 2016 and was rented through Enercare.

The roof was in an awful state of disrepair.  There was no date stamp on the shingles, like there is with a furnace or air conditioner, but the home inspector estimated that it was at least two decades old.

The windows were all from the 1970’s.

There was also vermiculite in the attic, which came as no surprise by this point.

Suffice it to say, this was not what the buyers were expecting.

More to the point:

The listing agent had completely misrepresented the property.

Colby called the listing agent, assuming that the listing agent would be horrified with the results of the inspection, but the listing agent went on the offensive and told Colby that she was “making a mountain out of a molehill” and that any buyer looking to purchase a home, being sold by the estate, should be planning to do a substantial renovation.

But that was besides the point.

Colby asked, point-blank, “Why did you give us this list of dates associated with the components of the house that were completely incorrect?”

The listing agent just skirted the question and said, “You have the information you need now, let’s not get lost in the details.”

Colby said, “Alright, well before we start looking at a dollar amount for an abatement, the first thing you need to do is reimburse my buyers for their home inspection…”

The listing agent basically yelled…

…”you MUST be joking!”

Colby said, “You completely misrepresented the property and I have this in writing from you.  We did a home inspection and it revealed that nothing you said was true.  The least you could do is pay them for the inspection.”

“I will do no such thing,” the listing agent replied.

Colby decided to simply “let paper talk” and rather than trying to work colleague-to-colleague, she would have her clients sign an abatement, send it to the listing agent, and let the estate make the decision.

Colby sent an amendment to the listing agent that deleted the condition on a home inspection and inserted a new price of $1,170,000.

Twenty grand.

That was it!

That was all the sellers had to give up in order to get their property sold firm; the same property that had vermiculite, knob-and-tube wiring, a cast iron plumbing stack, 1970’s windows, an exceptionally old furnace, and more.

But the estate balked.

In actual fact, they went on the offensive!  Rather than signing back the amendment with a counter-proposal, or even communicating with Colby, they simply waited until the amendment expired, which was when the original condition expired, and let the deal fall apart.

The listing agent reached out to Colby the next day and said, “The house is still available but they’ll want the full list price this time.”

In hindsight, you can see how ridiculously misguided this was.

Colby’s clients moved on and looked elsewhere.

Ten days later, the listing agent called Colby and said, “I’ve been able to talk some sense into the estate,” as though she herself hadn’t been driving this ship all along.  “They’ll pay for your home inspection and, as a measure of good faith, offer you $5,000 as an abatement.”

Colby could have put her foot on this woman’s throat, but she took the high road and said, “No thank you.”

Two full weeks after that, which was about twenty-four days after the original deal fell apart, the listing agent called Colby and said, “Okay, you win!  My clients will agree to your $1,170,000 price but they’re not paying for the inspection.”

Colby thanked the agent very much for the offer, but told her that they would politely decline.

What Colby didn’t tell the listing agent was that her clients had purchased a home two days prior.  They told Colby, “Things happen for a reason, and we got a better home three weeks later because that greedy estate refused to work with us after our inspection!  Things happen for a reason, really, they do.”

The clients were super happy.

Two weeks after that last phone call, the listing agent emailed Colby a reverse-offer for the property at a price of $1,160,000.

They were essentially throwing their hands up and saying, “We messed up.  Take this property for $10,000 less than you offered us!”

But Colby didn’t blink.  I mean, her clients had already bought a house, but Colby didn’t feel the need to tell the agent about this.  She just said, “Thanks, but as I told you last time, they are not interested in your home.”

Five days later, the listing agent sent Colby another reverse offer, this one for $1,150,000, and the listing agent said, “If they’re really not interested, that’s fine, because we’re going to take the house off the market.”

This time, Colby told the agent, “Hey, thanks, really, but my clients bought a house…”

And one week later, which catches us up to the present, the property was re-listed for $1,149,000.

Is it greed?

Or is it stupidity?

You’ll say “greed,” but honestly, this is just another example of how real estate agents are getting in their own way, every single day.

Alright, well this was truly a grind!

Sunday night at midnight and I’m absolutely spent.

I’m going to admit this just because I feel like sharing: when Rory Mcllroy won The Masters tonight, I cried.

I did.  My daughter looked at me and said, “What are you doing?”

Rory fell to his knees on the 18th green and cried.

I fell to my knees on the family room carpet and cried.

I’m a Rory superfan.  There.  I said it.

He’s my second-favourite golfer of all time, after the great Tiger Woods, and he’s just an incredible person and an amazing spectacle to watch every week.  He absolutely deserved that victory and it was eleven years in the making.

No exaggeration: I’ve been daydreaming about a putt for the win on the 18th hole for years.  I certainly didn’t daydream it to be during a playoff after an epic choke on the same 18th hole fifteen minutes earlier, but I’ll take it!

Seriously, this is by far my favourite sports moment of the last six years.  The only thing that can top this was, coincidentally, when Tiger won The Masters back in 2019.  Nothing has got me excited since then.

Leafs.  Jays.  Raptors.  Meh.

Congrats, Rory!

For Northern Ireland!

The post How Not To Sell Real Estate In 2025 appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

I was trying to explain the concept of negative temperatures to my daughter the other day.

She’s 8-years-old.  I thought she would understand.

-2 is colder than -1.

-2 is less than zero.

“How could something be less than zero?” my daughter asked.

I suppose that’s a fair question.  We teach that “zero is nothing,” so if you have an integer that’s less than zero (which is not to be confused with the Bret Easton Ellis novel…), then it’s fair for somebody to ask, “How can something be less than nothing?”

While you and I might think that the math is simple, the idea of “less than nothing” could be significantly more difficult for an 8-year-old girl to understand, or, for an unfortunate, confused, entitled real estate agent and “investor” to grasp when selling his home at a loss.

This story brings us back to last summer when a client of mine purchased a small west-side home and, upon closing, the listing agent had some very interesting ideas about how to go about making up his financial loss on the property.

Perhaps we should take a quick pause here just to get some simple math out of the way.

870 – 850 = 20

Right?

“20” is a positive integer.  So if you had 870 apples and you gave 850 away, you’d still have 20 left.

850 – 870 = -20

870 is more than 850.  If you have 850 apples, you can’t give 870 away.  If you try to subtract 870 from 850, you are left with a negative.

And in the case of a real estate investment, if you owe more on the property than you sell it for, you’re going to make up the difference.

At least, in theory.

The following story demonstrates just how misguided some sellers can be in a market where a financial loss is looming.

I suppose that if I wanted to accept some responsibility for this, I should say, “I should have seen the end result coming.”

The process of getting this house sold came with some oddities and red flags.

This house had been on the market, off-and-on, for essentially two years.  The initial price was an astronomical $1,200,000, which made absolutely no sense, and it was listed for $899,900 with an offer date, then $1,179,000 again, then it was put up for lease, then it was leased, then the tenants left and it was listed again, and again, and again.

You know the drill.

I’ve told this type of story many times here on TRB but this is one of the few cases that I can remember where I actually sold one of these houses.

The house was listed for $899,900 in August and my client loved it.

She was looking for a condo townhouse but the opportunity to purchase a freehold in her price range was something that she couldn’t overlook.

It was clear that this was an investment property, having been initially purchased by the owner for $450,000 in 2016, renovated, rented, re-rented, and then finally offered for sale.

The listing history didn’t bother my client, who we’ll call Jane.  She was very pragmatic about it, simply saying, “I would buy this house in a heartbeat for $850,000.  I don’t care if it was listed for $1,200,000 two years ago, or if it’s been leased to three different tenants over eight years.  I know that I like it and I know what I would pay.”

So that was that.

I spoke to the listing agent, who we’ll call Ron, and told him that we had interest.

He was excited and told me to bring an offer, but I asked him, what his expectation was.

Call me a hypocrite, since I’ve long opined that I don’t like when agents ask me this question, but in a situation like this, where the property has been listed for sale for two years, it’s very different from asking an agent with red-hot listing that has a set “offer date” what they expect the home to sell for.

Ron was willing to play ball.  He said, “My strike price on this would be $850,000.”

That was perfect.

That was Jane’s number.

I called Jane and told her what Ron had said, and I asked Jane, “Do you want to try something lower and see what we can get?”

Jane said, “Honestly, I would be super happy at $850,000.  So if he’s in agreement, then let’s not risk blowing this up by trying to come in at $820,000, sign back-and-forth, so we can eke out an extra $8,000.”

We put together an offer for $850,000 and I sent it over to Ron.

Ron thanked me and sounded excited, and I waited to receive an accepted offer in return.

Only, Ron didn’t send back an accepted offer.

He sent a counter-offer for $920,000.

I called Ron and simply asked, “Ron, what the heck are you doing?”

Ron said, “Well, I’d really like to get $900,000 for the house.”

I said, “Ron, you told me earlier it was $850,000.”

He murmured, “Uh huh.”

I offered, “Not only that if you wanted $900,000 for the house, why wouldn’t you sign back at $900,000 instead of $920,000?”

He murmured again, thinking of something to say, but I interjected and said, “Ron, is this ‘negotiating‘ on your part?”

He said, “Well, yeah, I mean, I owe a ton of money on this house.  I have a private mortgage.  I want to make some money on this in the end, I’ve owned it for eight years…”

I said, “Ron, how about this: I’ll talk to my client and we’ll send a revised offer of $700,000.  Then we can ‘negotiate.’  We can spend a week going back-and-forth, and maybe we land at $850,000, or maybe we don’t.”

Ron replied, “No, don’t do that.  It’s fine.  I’ll do the $850,000.”

I told Ron that I was pleased, and I said I would send over a fresh offer at that price.  Ron responded, “No, I can just accept the $850,000 offer you sent earlier,” to which I explained, “You can’t accept that offer because as soon as you provided a counter-offer, that original offer was null and void.”

Ron said that he understood, but I wasn’t sure that he did.

I had Jane sign a fresh offer for $850,000 and I sent it over to Ron.

Ron then signed the offer back at $865,000.

“Ron, what the heck are you doing?” I asked.

Ron replied,”Oh, yeah, huh, well, I mean I’m just running my numbers and I’m trying to make this work.”

“What numbers?” I asked Ron.

Ron said, “Well, I’m looking at the two mortgages that I have on this, and I need to get $865,000 to clear them.  I can’t sell the house if I can’t clear that, so your client needs to make up the difference.”

I explained to Ron, “What you owe on the house has nothing to do with what my client ‘needs’ to do, wants to pay, or will pay.”

Ron said that he understood.

I said, “Ron, I’m going to send you one more offer for $850,000, and if you accept it, great.  If you don’t, then we’re moving on.”

Ron said that he understood.

I had Jane sign a fresh offer of $850,000 and we sent it to Ron.

Ron then sent the offer back and guess what?  The Confirmation of Acceptance was signed!

Hooray!

Except, wait, one problem: Ron had struck out the 2.5%+HST commission payable to the buyer brokerage and replaced it with 0.5%+HST.

Say what you want about the value of a buyer agent, or my role in this, but the point remains:

You cannot change any terms and conditions of an offer and then accept it.

Because if Ron can change the commission payable to the buyer brokerage, then what’s to stop him from changing the price to $6 Billion and then accepting his own changes?

Amazingly, Ron, in his infinite wisdom, had gone onto MLS and changed the posted commission payable to the buyer brokerage from 2.5%+HST to 0.5%+HST just to ensure he was covering his bases.

“Ron, what the heck are you doing?” I asked him when I called him immediately thereafter.

“Yeah, oh, that.  Well, I figure if I can pay you a lot less, then I can make up what I need on this house.”

I told Ron that in my twenty years in the business, no cooperating agent had ever done what he just did and that it was wrong both ethically and legally.

Ron said, “Alright, okay, I get it.”

I asked, “But do you, Ron?  I feel like we’re having the same conversation over and over.”

Ron replied, “Send me a fresh offer, terms and conditions as you like,” and it will be accepted.

So I had Jane sign a fifth offer and we sent it over to Ron.

This time, he accepted.

As is, no changes, legally-binding, the deal was done.

From there, we didn’t have any hiccups and it seemed like the very odd encounter with Ron as we tried to purchase the property was simply a one-off.

But two days before closing, Ron emailed me an Amendment and it was bizarre.

The Amendment sought to have the seller gain access to the $50,000 deposit funds the day before the transaction was scheduled to close.

I had never seen anything like this.

The entire reason why a deposit is held in trust with a listing brokerage is so that the seller can’t gain access to the funds without one of three things:

1. Court order
2. Mutual release
3. Completion of a transaction

Now, Ron was seeking to get the $50,000 before the transaction was closed?

I called Ron and asked him what this was – also asking why he didn’t call me to discuss, let alone why he left this until two days before closing, and Ron’s answer was simple:

“I need to pay off my first and second mortgages tomorrow because the next day, I owe a mortgage payment, and the deal closes, and I don’t have the money.”

Oh.  My…

Here’s where things went from odd to utterly bizarre.

I said to Ron, “So you’re essentially looking to ‘borrow’ the deposit funds from my client, putting her at risk and removing a lawyer of protection for herself and her money, so that you can pay off your debts?”

Ron said, “No.  That’s not it at all.”

So I asked for an explanation, and Ron said, “Your client can’t close this deal unless the mortgages are discharged.  So she has to allow the funds to be released ahead of time so the mortgages were discharged.”

Well, that was an interesting way of putting it.

It was like saying, “I didn’t punch you; my fist did!”

I asked Ron, “Are you trying to say that this is my client’s problem?”

Surprisingly, he said, “Yes, it is.”

He added, “What you don’t seem to understand is that the purchase price of this house at $850,000, minus the real estate fees, taxes, legal fees, and mortgage discharge fees, is more than what is owed on the house.”

I asked him, “Ron, if you paid $450,000 for the house in 2016, then why and how do you owe more than $850,000 on the house?”

This was supposed to be rhetorical, but Ron took the bait.

“Because I refinanced!” Ron shouted.  “Because I’m an investor!  I’m using the money to work on other projects!”

I asked Ron, very calmly, “Is this also my client’s problem?”

Ron said, “You’re not understanding.  None of this matters.  The only thing that matters is that if your client doesn’t release the $50,000 deposit, then the mortgages aren’t discharged, and she can’t close.”

That’s when I said, “Ron, if the mortgages aren’t discharged and my client can’t close, then you’re in breach.”

Shockingly, Ron said, “No, your client is in breach!”

I can still picture the day, time, and place of this conversation.  I was standing in my office on a hot, summer day, and Lindsay was watching me on the phone, whispering, “You should see your face right now.  I’m worried your jaw is going to touch the floor.”

But I was speechless.  Absolutely speechless.

Ron was arguing that my buyer was in breach because she wouldn’t allow him to gain early access to a $50,000 deposit, held in trust, to pay his debts on the property?

It was asinine.

I said, “Ron, if you don’t find a way to close this deal on Friday then you’re in breach and you’re responsible for every penny of financial hardship that my client endures.  Her hotel stay in the interim, her extra legal fees, and associated fees with respect to her mortgage.”

Ron shot back, “No, if your client doesn’t release the funds, then she is breach, and I won’t close on the sale, and then I’ll go to court and get her deposit – which I will get.”

At this point, I realized that Ron was either crazy or he was so distressed with his own personal finances that he had lost sight of logic and reason.

“Ron, you’re over-leveraged.  That’s what’s going on here.  This isn’t my buyer’s problem.  This is a you problem, and you alone need to fix it.”

Ron laughed.  Over and over.  His conviction made me think that he believed what he was arguing.

“Ron, you purchased the property for $450,000 and you owe $850,000.  That’s because you’ve used the property as an ATM.  This has nothing to do with the buyer of the property,” I said.

Ron told me, “This is how it works in these situations.  Your client needs to help mitigate.”

I interjected, “Okay, so what happens in a situation where you owe $1,100,000 on this house that you sold for $850,000?  Then what?”

Ron said, “I wouldn’t have sold.”

I said, “No, but Ron, seriously, entertain the hypothetical, what happens then?”

Ron said, “I never would have sold.”

I told Ron, “Okay, so in a different situation, where somebody else owns this house, and they owe $1,100,000 but they sell it for $850,000 they alone are responsible for that loss and it has nothing to do with the buyer.  You think this situation is different because you have a $10K, $20K, or $30K shortfall here and there’s a $50,000 deposit which can help you out.”

Ron said, “But the money is there.”

I told Ron, “It’s not your money.  Not until the deal closes.  If you need money to make up the shortfall, then you use your money.”

That’s when Ron shouted, “I don’t have any other money!”

This much was clear.

He said, “Not in my chequing, not in my savings, not on my line of credit, I don’t have it!”

I told Ron, “Respectfully, Ron, that’s what’s called a ‘you-problem,’ and it has nothing to do with my buyer and her $50,000 deposit which is safely being held in trust and will only be released when the sale closes.”

Ron hung up on me.

I called Jane’s lawyer to explain what had just transpired, then I called Jane.

Unfortunately, the deal did not close on Friday as planned.

The deal closed on Monday and I don’t know why, how, or what happened, but I didn’t care.  I just wanted to ensure that Jane was able to get into her new house, that her $50,000 deposit was protected, and that she was on title with a registered mortgage, and that Ron was no longer financially tied to the property.

All was now well.

Just to satisfy the 1% of my mind that wondered whether I had misread this situation, I spoke to our in-house legal counsel, my personal lawyer, and my mortgage broker, and all three of them expressed bewilderment by this situation.  The consensus was, “People will do crazy things when the financial pressure gets to them.”

But I wonder what another agent would have done?  And another buyer?

What could have happened in a situation like this if the cast of characters were different?

Sometimes, you just have to realize that a seller being unable to close on a sale isn’t the worst-case scenario…

The post What Happens When A Seller Can’t Close? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

Perhaps by the time you sit down to read this on Monday morning, we’ll already have the October TRREB stats in hand.

But as I write this blog post (over the weekend), I can only guess as to how October sales will look.

In my monthly “TRREB Stats” blog post, I always examine three essential statistics in our real estate market: price, sales, and new listings.

We can hone in on any one of the three and get far more specific, ie. prices in particular locations, prices in particular market segments, or analyzed by a group of different price points.

But on the whole, a great measure of the market is simply looking from the top down in any one of the categories.

Last month, I offered this chart:

That’s right; sales in September were the second-lowest ever.  And by “ever,” as the regular readers know, I mean post-2000 when I began tracking this data, since the city was half the size in the late-1990’s…

Now why are sales so low?

If you looked at any product in any market, you’d come to one of two general conclusions:

1) Low demand
2) Low supply

But the latter simply isn’t the case, as evidenced by this chart, also offered last month:

As an aside, I would argue that the level of “quality listings” is low, but there’s simply no metric to track this.

Ask any active real estate agent or any active buyer and they will tell you that there’s just “nothing out there” right now.  I’m feeling this with all of my buyer clients, and although the level of “New Listings” is near an all-time high, we feel like what we’re looking for isn’t represented in that statistic.

Nevertheless, there is a third reason why sales could be sluggish, and it can be applied to many markets for products and services, aside from just real estate:

Sellers do not accept current market prices.

That, in my opinion, is the number-one reason why sales are slow right now.

There is demand, no doubt about it.  Sure, there will be more demand in the spring of 2025 when interest rates are even lower, and you’ve heard me question why people are waiting until next year, when they can purchase today, close on a variable rate mortgage, and experience lower payments in a few short months.  Regardless, we have demand in this market.  We also have inventory.

What we don’t have, it seems, is a host of sellers who are willing to sell today at today’s price.

And nobody is forcing them to, of course.  If a seller has the luxury of waiting a month, or two, or ten, and if the seller has a crystal ball that he or she can look into with certainty, then who could blame them for not accepting today’s price?

Having said that, part of the reason why sellers aren’t willing to accept today’s price, in my opinion, is yet another classic issue in a lukewarm market:

Agents aren’t willing to have difficult conversations with their sellers.

Let me run through a few recent examples of what I’ve witnessed in the market trenches…

Last month, I was showing downtown condos to a client of mine who is ready to buy tomorrow, and essentially close the next day.

Suffice it to say, he’s the buyer that sellers want.  He’s got cash, a pre-approval, and an itchy trigger-finger.

We went out to look at four units in and around his price range, but I knew the one he’d like the most.  Sure enough, we saw that one last (by coincidence), and he was ready to make a play for it.

This unit was listed for sale at $769,900 but it had an asterisk:

There was an “offer date.”

The offer date was quite silly, however, since this property had already been listed seven times and there had already been one previous offer date.

But as I’ve written on my blog lately, this is an unfortunate reality of our market.  Many sellers and agents have to try and/or experience different “strategies,” whether success was ever a possibility or not, in order to eventually get in line with market reality.

This property had just been listed for $860,000 three days prior.  The listing was up for 42 days and the property didn’t sell, so now it seemed that the seller and the agent were going back to the well, once again, to try a “strategy” that likely wouldn’t pay off.

I told my client, “The list price and the presence of the offer date are meaningless.  Pretend they don’t exist.  Look at the property and decide on your own if and how you’d like to proceed.”

That’s exactly what we did.

We decided to put together an offer for $800,000 even, which was obviously less than the seller was “hoping for,” but far more in line with market reality.

Consider that when the property was listed for $860,000, it didn’t sell.  It didn’t sell for $860,000, but it also didn’t sell for $850,000, $840,000, or $830,000.

What this property was “worth” depended on what a willing buyer in today’s market would pay for it, and we figured that this was somewhere in the low-$800’s.

The listing agent was kind, courteous, and grateful to have the offer.  She didn’t seem all that optimistic about the prospects of coming to a deal however, and that’s when I tried to speak to her from experience.

“You have an offer,” I told her.  “That’s good.  That’s the first thing you need to get a deal done for your client,” I explained.

She told me that the sellers “Really wanted $860,000 for the property,” and I explained that the property was already listed for $860,000 – for 42 days, and it didn’t sell, so the sellers needed to come to terms with the fact that their expectations weren’t in line with the market.”

She talked about what a “great property” it was and how it was “so undervalued,” and I reiterated that her job was to present the offer to the seller and present market reality.

I’ll be honest; I was optimistic.  Despite the nonsense that’s going on out there right now, this unit has been listed since February and surely it was time for the sellers to pull the trigger.

I was in North York showing houses on a Sunday morning when I received an email from the listing agent that contained her client’s counter-offer.

Her email was full of positivity, but it was directed in the wrong place.

Lots of fodder about the “rare opportunity” it was to get into this unit, even though there were fourteen other units listed for sale in the building.

Some sales-speak about the high ceilings, loft-esque features, and descriptions of parts of the unit that I wasn’t exactly unaware of, even though I was now on the receiving end of a tutorial.

Call this “sales” if you want, and tell me that she was “doing her job,” but I already knew where this was going.

I knew I was going to receive a terrible sign-back.

What I didn’t know, however, was that the sign-back would be worse than you could possibly expect.

What I didn’t know was that this was a listing agent and a seller who seemed to look outside at the hot summer sun and think now was the opportune time to build a snowman, if you will.

That’s right.

They signed back at $888,000.

They signed back higher than their previous listing price.

This made absolutely zero sense, and while you might try to rationalize this, just to play Devil’s Advocate, there’s no substance to that argument.

This unit had been listed for sale for $860,000 for 42 days and didn’t sell.

It was now listed for sale at $769,900 with an offer date, which wasn’t going to work.

We provided them with an offer of $800,000 and they chose to sign it back at $888,000.

It really didn’t make any sense, but this is what’s happening in the market right now and this is part of the reason why sales are so slow.

I called the agent and asked her, “What’s the logic here?”

She spoke in euphemisms and said, “We’re ready to make a deal that works for both parties!”

I asked her for just a bit of humility and perhaps some honesty, but she went on about the “rare opportunity to get into such a fantastic space,” and continued talking up the unit.

At the risk of coming off as a jerk, I decided to be blunt.

I said, “I noticed that you have ‘CNE’ in your email signature; that’s the ‘Certified Negotiation Expert’ designation.”

She offered an “Uh-huh.”

I said, “In what part of that course did they teach you to sign back higher than your previously unsuccessful listing price?”

Silence.

I let the void continue and offered her an opportunity to fill it, and eventually, she said, “Well, I mean, we’re just looking to get what’s fair.”

The problem in our market right now is that sellers don’t understand “fair market value,” since their own definition of “fair” is what’s fair to them.  Fair, by definition, is the intersection of what’s fair for the seller, what’s fair for the buyer, and what results in an accepted agreement.

Their offer date failed, by the way, in case it wasn’t obvious.

The property was re-listed for $860,000 again, and I wondered how in the world the seller and the agent thought their sign-back of $888,000 was ever in the realm of “good ideas.”

Don’t get me wrong; I understand the concept of “negotiating.”  Just as I didn’t expect the seller to accept our offer of $800,000 even, with no questions asked, the seller certainly didn’t expect the buyer to accept the sign-back of $888,000.

But as far as I’m concerned, a seller signing back at $888,000 when the property sat for 42 days on the market at $860,000, is basically telling us to go away.  Or worse.

Our next example will feel similar to the first, but this one will draw on some of the themes from last week.

A small freehold property in the west end was listed for $899,900.

I mean, it still is.  Don’t misunderstand – this property will never sell, as the following story will explain!  But my story takes place in the past, hence the past tense…

This house was listed for sale in the spring for $1,099,000.  It sat for quite some time.

The house was re-listed for sale in the summer for $999,900.  It continued to sit on the market.

By the time my client and I got to it, the house was listed for $899,900 and had been on the market for 18 days.

It seemed like exceptional value, but the fact that it was sitting for almost three weeks offered us the opportunity to try an offer below the list price and see what would happen.

My spidey-sense was already tingling here.  I just didn’t trust this offering.  Whether it was the listing agent, the listing brokerage, or the way the house was presented (vacant, no staging, no marketing, misrepresentations in the listing), I just didn’t expect to offer $875,000 and have the listing agent smile, thank us, and send a copy of an accepted APS.

I mean, $875,000 on an $899,900 listing.  Not bad, right?

Not bad for the seller and not bad for the buyer.  In fact, some of you might offer, “David, you’re not negotiating hard enough!”

But I just had a feeling.

And when the seller signed back to us at an absolutely ridiculous $1,060,000, I felt like my feeling was justified.

I don’t know why but I just knew this was coming.

There was zero reason for it and zero indication that it would happen.

But on a long enough time horizon, you just learn to sniff these things out.

I asked the agent for a little bit of context on the sign-back, and he said, “Well I’m sure you ran the property history here.  They paid $1,050,000 for the house in 2022.”

He was right.  I did run the listing history.

Not only did I see that they paid $1,050,000 for the house in 2022 (which was a massive overpay back then, and perhaps why they were now using a discount 905 agent), but I also saw that they were listed for $1,099,000 for four months without a sale, and then $999,900 for three months, also without a sale.

“They don’t deserve to lose on this,” the listing agent explained.

“Deserve ain’t got nuthin to do with it,” said Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.

I didn’t tell him that, by the way.  I’m just going with my stream of consciousness here…

The concept of what is “deserved” in any market is a moving target but there’s been this expectation in the Toronto real estate market that nobody can ever lose.

In this case, the seller simply wasn’t willing to acknowledge the true fair market value of the property, and when the listing agent admitted to me (accidentally?) that our offer of $875,000 represented the first offer they had received on the property, it should have been like a flashing neon light in front of their eyes.

But it wasn’t.

Whether they didn’t know what “fair market value” meant or whether they just didn’t care, they refused to consider our offer.  The listing agent even pushed as further out the door as we walked away, saying, “If you do sign our offer back, make sure it has a ‘1’ in it, or we won’t even look at it.”

If you read last Monday’s blog, you might ask me, “David, isn’t this false advertising?  The property is listed for $899,900 but they won’t actually sell for this price, and there’s no offer date here.”

You would be correct.

At least, this is my definition of false advertising, as I outlined in last Monday’s blog.  But in the Toronto real estate market, sellers are making up their own rules as they go.

I’ll offer a third story today, and this one involves a friend of mine from another brokerage.

Farrah showed the same west-end house to her buyer-clients that I showed to mine, only mine were a “pass” and hers were a “maybe.”

She and I both agreed that the house, listed at $1,899,000, was over-priced even though there was an “offer date” set for it.

The listing agent gave me a hard sell, even when I told him, “My clients aren’t interested.”

Farrah told me, “This guy’s been all over me; all week long.”

I told her in advance of the offer date that this one had a bit of an “odour” to it, just like the story I told previously.  The more the listing agent tried to sell the shit out of us both on how amazing the house was, the more I began to think that he and his clients were massively overvaluing it.

As I said at the onset, many listing agents just aren’t willing to have difficult conversations with their clients.

This felt like a case of the clients saying, “We’ll only sell for this price,” and the listing agent taking the listing when he knows that the home isn’t worth it.

The offer date came along, and guess what?

Zero offers.

Farrah put together an offer for her buyer clients who liked the house but didn’t love it, and thus the offer was for $1,850,000.

The listing agent jumped right down her throat.

He emailed her “comparable sales” and ranted and raved about “value.”

She told me the whole story and I was actually mad at her for sitting there and listening to his nonsense.

“The more you let him talk, the more he thinks he’s making a point.”

This is the problem in our market right now.

Ego.

Combine the ego of a listing agent with the fear that agent has of the seller-client, and it results in all kinds of over-priced listings that won’t move, and bonafide offers of fair market value that are turned away.

The listing agent provided Farrah with a sign-back of $2,100,000 and her buyers instantly walked away.

That property was probably “worth” somewhere between $1,800,000 and $1,900,000.

Ultimately, it’ll prove to be “worth” what somebody pays for it, but the property might not ever sell.

Or maybe it sells in December.  Maybe it sells in February.

Who knows.

But it seems as though many sellers out there in this fall market don’t “need” to sell and thus they don’t feel the need to consider what fair market value for their home actually might be.

Then on the flip side, many sellers do “need” to sell, but still won’t accept fair market value, and they create a massive mess for themselves.

The real estate equation out there this fall is quite simple:

Willing Buyer + Willing Seller = Sale

Yes, it’s simple, and yet the market doesn’t seem to be working in lock-step.

It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.

The buyers are out there on the dance floor looking for a partner.

But the sellers are waiting off the side of the floor, thinking they’re too good to dance, even though most of them have two left feet…

The post It Takes Two To Tango: Why Sales Are Sluggish This Fall appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

Don’t ask me how I found this because I honestly can’t remember.

For some reason, I was searching listings in this area (which shall remain nameless so I can claim that I never identified the address), and I saw the outside of the house and thought, “Huh, that’s not a bad price.”

Little did I know, this was a bad price, but not “bad” as in, the property isn’t worth it…

In our real estate market, sellers are free to enact any pricing strategy that they see fit.

If an individual owns a house that’s worth around $1,500,000, there’s nothing to stop that person from listing the house for sale for $2,000,000.  Or $3,000,000.  Or $2,222,222.22, if they want.  It’s completely up to them.

By the same token, there’s nothing to stop that same individual from listing at $999,900 and setting an “offer date,” if that individual feels that the best way to get buyers through the door, and to maximize the price, is to “under-list” and hold back offers.

If neither strategy works, then the individual is free to change strategies.

At no point is that seller ever somehow “forced” to accept an offer of a certain price, nor should they be.

However, and here’s where I’ll delve into the grey area, there is a somewhat “acceptable” code of conduct in the real estate community, and from time to time, we see exceptions.

Actually, it’s not from time to time.  It’s constant.

In our company meeting last week, we discussed some new leadership at TRREB and how certain individuals were being proactive and tackling long-standing issues.

I raised my hand and asked

“Back in the spring of 2017, we started to see agents listing properties for sale and noting ‘Seller Reserves The Right To Accept Pre-Emptive Offers With Zero Notice.’  Is that going to be addressed?  It’s been seven years now.”

Time will tell.

But that’s an example of something that is blatantly against the rules of organized real estate and nothing is being done about it.

On the flip side, there’s nothing in the “rules” that says you can’t list your house over, and over, and over, and over, and over, at stupid prices, with stupid strategies, for years at a time.

Nope.

Stupid is as stupid does, and every day in this market, we see another example.

I have written many blog posts over the years with examples of ridiculous listings, ridiculous strategies, and properties being listed over-and-over.  But in today’s blog, without exaggeration, I’m going to show you the single worst example.

There are three reasons why this listing takes the cake, through seventeen years of blogging on TRB, but I don’t want to play spoiler here, so I’ll detail those three reasons at the end.

Let’s start from the beginning.

March 15th, 2023, a house is listed for sale for $2,499,000.

Pretty innocent, right?

There is no offer date for this house, so it’s simply a $2,499,000 house.  Right?

Except, well, it’s not.

Despite the lack of an offer date, this house isn’t worth $2,499,000.  It’s worth much more, but the seller and the listing agent seem to have “strategized” and decided to list $1 Million below their target and not set an offer date.

That didn’t work.

March 30th, 2023, the price was increased to $3,500,000:

That didn’t work.

The property remained on the market for another five days, and on April 4th, 2023, the listing was terminated.

Now here’s where things start to get ridiculous.

April 6th, 2023, the house is listed for sale at $2,589,900.

Huh?

What?

This house was just listed for $3,500,000 two days ago.  Not only that, it was listed for $2,499,000 three weeks ago, so clearly the market has already seen this “under-pricing” strategy, right?

Yes.

So, surely there must be something different this time around, right?

No.

And the property remained listed for sale at $2,589,900.

On April 18th, 2023, the price was increased to $2,950,000.

But wait, are they planning to accept a price like this?

No, of course not, as you’ll see by the end of the story, and that’s yet another reason why this is the worst listing “strategy” I have ever seen.

On April 29th, 2023, the price was reduced to $2,888,000.

Again, there’s zero indication that the seller would have ever accepted a price like that, but away we go.

On May 24th, 2023, the price was increased to $3,500,000.

That’s a very familiar price, so get used to seeing that.

On May 25th, 2023, that listing was terminated.

Alright, so let’s regroup:

So far, we’ve seen two listings for this property at six different prices over the course of 70 days.

But that was only the beginning…

On May 26th, 2023 the house was listed for sale for $2,180,000.

That’s not a typo.  They listed this house for $1,320,000 less than they were previously listed for, as crazy as that sounds.

This time, the listing description noted, “Priced To Sell.  Motivated Seller.  Bring Your Clients To Make A Deal.”

Uh-huh.  Sure thing…

But this time, they tried something different!  This time, instead of just under-pricing and hoping that buyers would, for some reason, flock to the property and throw dollar-dollar-bills at it, they enacted this thing called an “offer date.”

But it didn’t work.  And why the hell would it?  Who was going to “bid” $1,320,000 above the list price?

On June 10th, 2023, the price was increased to $2,880,000.

This was still $620,000 lower than what the seller presumably wanted, and the insanity of this listing continued.

The listing remained untouched for five days.

Then on June 15th, 2023, the price was increased to $3,500,000.

Crazy, right?  What in the world was happening?

They didn’t sell at $2,180,000, they didn’t sell at $2,880,000, so they raised the price again, for the third time in this listing, representing the ninth price for this home since March.

June 16th, 2023, the listing was terminated.

June 16th, 2023, the house was listed for sale for $2,280,000.

What the actual eff?

They just did this three weeks earlier.  They literally already did this.

But they set another offer date!

But it didn’t work.

June 23rd, 2023, the price was increased to $2,980,000.

Why, I don’t know.

Then the pattern continued…

June 30th, 2023, the price was increased to $3,500,000.

June 30th, 2023, the listing was terminated.

Here’s where I start to think that maybe, just maybe, these people sort of have a method to their madness.  Don’t get me wrong – this whole thing is insane.  But the fact that they increased the price to $3,500,000 right before they terminated the listing says that they are calculated….event though they’re totally lost.

Fair?

June 30th, 2023, which evidently was a very busy day, the house was listed for sale for $1,899,000.

That’s right.  They listed $1,600,000 below the price they hoped to attain.

And yet again, they set an offer date:

At this point, we know this “strategy” isn’t going to work, so now it becomes a question of: “What would they increase the price to?”

July 10th, 2023, the price was increased to $3,300,000.

Ah, okay.  So not $3,500,000?  Maybe they actually would consider less than this magic number, now that they’d been on the market for four months, over five listings, at fourteen different prices?

Nope.

July 17th, 2023, the price was increased to $3,500,000.

July 17th, 2023, the listing was terminated.

Only this time, the listing would remain terminated.

And that was that…..

…until……2024!  Hooray!

March 14th, 2024, the house is listed for sale for $2,389,000.

And an offer date is set, but the really, really odd thing is: the offer date is 29 days away!

They also say that thing that I hate – about how an offer can be accepted “any time without notice,” even though rules dictate that notice must be provided to interested parties.

Thankfully, in this case, nobody was interested in the house.

April 20th, 2024, the price is increased to $2,980,000.

April 25th, 2024, the price is decreased to $2,589,000.

Amazingly, another offer date is set, even though it’s the same listing:

This makes zero sense.  But does anything in this make sense?

April 30th, 2024, the price is decreased to $2,489,000.

Why decrease the price of this listing now – before an offer date?

May 24th, 2024, the price is increased to $3,500,000.

May 29th, 2024, the listing is terminated.

June 8th, 2024, the house is listed for sale for $2,995,000.

There is no “offer date” this time around, so perhaps the new and improved price of $2,995,000, with a new and improved real estate agent representing the sale, truly is what the seller would consider selling for?

Maybe.  Watch this…

June 15th, 2024, the price was decreased to $2,899,000.

June 21st, 2024, the price was decreased to $2,799,000.

Maybe they finally want to sell?

Nope.

This was merely the start of the most ridiculous use and manipulation of the MLS system that I have ever seen.

Watch this…

June 25th, 2024, the price was increased to $2,995,000.

June 26th, 2024, the price was decreased to $2,799,000.

June 20th, 2024, the price was decreased to $2,699,000.

July 14th, 2024, the price was decreased to $2,599,000.

July 20th, 2024, the price was increased to $3,500,000.

What an absolute joke this had become.

July 20th, the listing is suspended.  But interestingly enough, the listing wouldn’t be terminated until two weeks into the next listing.  That’s right; they effectively had the house listed twice at this point…

July 27th, 2024, the house was listed for sale for $2,689,900.

Once again, no offer date.

August 2nd, 2024, the price is decreased to $2,499,900.

August 3rd, 2024, the price is increased to $2,689,900.

August 4th, 2024, the price is increased to $3,500,000.

August 5th, 2024, the listing is terminated.

Are you getting angry yet?  Because I am.

Maybe you don’t agree, but I consider real estate to be a profession filled with professionals.

Behaviour like this gives us all a bad name.

It’s unprofessional.  It’s wrong.  And it’s pathetic.

August 6th, 2024, the house is listed for sale for $2,698,800.

September 18th, 2024, the price is increased to $3,500,000.

September 18th, 2024, the listing is terminated.

September 18th, 2024, the property is listed for sale for $2,398,800.

This time, an offer date is set:

Uh-Huh.

“All the offer,” you say?  As in all of them?  Like so many?

Because this property is so in-demand?  Because you’re going to be flooded with offers?

Oh, and you’re also specifying you have the right to accept pre-emptive offers.  Got it.

September 23rd, 2024, the price is increased to $3,500,000.

September 28th, 2024, the price is decreased to $2,398,000.

October 21st, 2024, the price is increased to $3,500,000.

October 21st, 2024, the listing is terminated.

October 21st, 2024, the property is listed for sale for $2,398,000.

And guess what?

There’s an offer date.

Sigh.

I’m not sure what bothers me about this the most.

Is it the cluelessness?

Is it the stupidity?

Is it the steady line of real estate agents (four and counting…) who are willing to play this game, and who won’t stand up to a seller’s ridiculous demands?

Is it the manipulation of the MLS system?

Or is it the fact that I hold myself and those around me to a higher standard, and I can’t make sense of something like this when it happens?

I suppose it’s a combination of all of the above, but there’s another part about this that bothers me:

There aren’t any rules that prohibit this behaviour.

As a listing agent, you have a fiduciary duty to your seller.  If your seller instructs you to enact this “strategy,” you can’t exactly say no.

And as for the rules that govern the MLS system, I have long maintained that it should be considered “false advertising” to list a property for a price that you’re not willing to accept – unless you have an offer date set, that indicates this is essentially a ‘starting bid.’

Over the years, real estate broker-owners have disagreed with me, and many TRB readers have argued that simply “setting an offer date” doesn’t significantly alter the implications of under-pricing.

But it does.

If you list a house for $999,900 and write in the MLS listing, “Offers Reviewed On Monday, October 27th,” then we know the format of this listing; the property is, at least potentially, under-listed and the seller is going to consider offers at that date.

If you list a house for $999,900, with no offer date specified, and the property has been on the market for 88 days, then the public is led to believe that this $999,900 list price is acceptable to the seller.

So when it’s not acceptable to the seller, in that case, I believe we have blatant false advertising.

In the case of the property we’re analyzing today, the were multiple listings, at multiple times, for months where this property was listed at a price that the seller wouldn’t accept.

The price was moved up-and-down like a yo-yo, sometimes 4-5 times per week.

And yet nothing about these collective listings seem to be problematic, otherwise, I would think that TRREB or RECO would have done something about it.

So why is this the worst example of a ridiculous listing strategy that I’ve ever seen?

• 11 listings
• 39 prices
• 8 offer dates
• 4 listing brokerages
• 592 days and counting

If you can find a better (ie. worse) example, you where to find me.

Happy Monday, folks!

The post The Worst Listing “Strategy” I Have Ever Seen appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

Great news: my 4-year-old son is really, really into G.I. Joe.

Now, it might have something to do with the fact that I named him “Duke” after the leader of the Joes, and it might have something to do with the fact that I’ve scattered vintage G.I. Joe action figures and vehicles all around the house, but in any event, he’s super into the Joe’s.

What a kid, honestly.  When I put him to bed at night, I ask him, “Do you want to read some books?” but he answers, “No, I want to look at pictures of G.I. Joe on your phone.”

He’s already telling me he’s going to ask Santa for some vintage figures for Christmas this year, which really excited me.

My daughter, however, is turning eight this fall and is starting to wise up.  When she heard this, she asked, “I thought Santa makes toys.  How could get Dukey toys from the 1980’s?”

Damn.  She caught me there.

So I did what any parent does best: I lied.

I told her that Santa has a warehouse of toys that were made but never delivered to children and that he could see if there are any 1980’s G.I. Joe figures or vehicles left over.

She bought it.

To distract her from further thought, however, I went into my online photo archive and said, “Hey, do you want to see a photo of when I got the G.I. Joe command centre for Christmas of 1989?”

Then I showed the kids this:

It’s funny because when you see people today looking down at their hands like my dad and sister are doing, you assume they’re on their cell phones.  But there were no cell phones back then.  Ah, yes, it was a better time…

As glorious as that G.I. Joe Command Centre is, my daughter looked past it.

Amazingly, she asked, “Daddy, did you live in a log cabin?”

I was bewildered.

Then I noticed the walls of our basement rec room at 128 Parkhurst Boulevard and remembered that this was all the rage back in the 1980’s.

Faux logs, it would seem.  Wood panels to make your basement look like…..what…..a ski chalet?

Perhaps another photo of the basement, just to drive home the point:

Yeah, that’s definitely 80’s for ya.  Gramma Fleming looks to be hacking a dart, although I honestly can’t remember anybody ever smoking inside.

Side note: those are Beta-Max cassettes you see on the wall.

In any event, I showed this photo to my daughter as well and she still thought that our home was made of pine logs.

Keep in mind, my daughter has never seen anything but drywall in her life!  I think a lot of kids today are in the same boat.

But here’s where today’s blog theme comes into play.

Eventually, my daughter began to ask to see other photos of our childhood home because she was so interested in the styles and trends from when I was a kid.

This got me thinking about all the fads we’ve seen over the years and all the styles that have come and gone.

I’ve often mused that one day in the future, our children (our grandchildren…) will be aghast that back in the early-2000’s, we had steel kitchen appliances!  Although, this fad has lasted almost two decades, so maybe it’s here to stay.

So I’d like to share with you what I shared with my kids last week and perhaps we can all reminisce.

Younger folks: tell me just how bad you think these are.

Older folks: I want to hear all your stories.

Here’s what my kids and I looked at the other night…

Wood Paneling

If you’re a child of 1970’s or 1980’s, you can picture this in your mind’s eye.

In fact, some of your parents who never renovated their homes may still have this in their homes today:

How many friends of yours had this in their basement?

How many Grade-8 parties did you slow dance to in a room that looked like this:

Unlike some of the other trends that return years later, I don’t see any reason why this one will make a comeback.

Unless we’re talking fake logs and you’ve got a real obsession with ski chalets…

–

Leopard Print Rugs

I’m fairly certain that my grandfather’s house had a carpet pattern like this:

Tell me there’s another name for this.  Please.  It can’t seriously be intended to resemble an animal, can it?

The amazing part about this photo above is that it has other elements of fads I have or will mention today…

–

Massive Brick Fireplaces

This is something else that I remember from my grandfather’s house as a child.  In my mind’s eye, the fireplace took up the entire room!

Maybe something like this…

That has a bit of a “Brady Bunch” feel to it, does it not?

But my grandfather’s fireplace wasn’t on the ground like the photo above.  I remember it being elevated a few feet off the ground.

More like this, perhaps:

It was a sort of combination of the two above, but my goodness did it take up a lot of space!

Then again, I was probably only 10-years-old the last time I was there, and our childhood memories have a way of exaggerating things for us, but you can be certain that in the 1960’s and 1970’s, these massive fireplaces were all the rage!  So those of us who grew up in the 1980’s

–

Brown Floral Couch Patterns

Images like this from childhood are seared into my brain.

Considering that most couches in 2024 are a solid colour and/or pattern, it’s one thing to imagine flowers adorning every square inch of a couch, but it’s another thing entirely to imagine brown flowers.

And isn’t the design above messing with your eyes a little?

I’m seeing a man riding a horse.  Are you?  Seriously – look closely.

And how about this one below – tell me that’s a barn in the background, right?

I love that this couch also happens to be in front of a wood-paneled wall…

–

Glass Block Windows

We still see this all the time in Toronto houses in 2024, but these are relics from the 1980’s and maybe 1990’s:

I can’t tell you how many glass block windows I saw in houses growing up.

Does anybody use these in interior design today?

Maybe.  But This feels a bit more tropical to me and I might expect to see this in Florida or when I’m vacationing in the islands.

Could you see this in a 2024-build in, say, the Beaches?

Again, I think it’s a maybe.  We seemed to have more than our fair share of glass block windows in the 1980’s.

Then again…

–

Glass Block Stairs

If I failed to make an impact with the glass block stairs, how about glass block railings?

Can you remember a house like this?

Any chance you lived in one?

What in the WORLD were people thinking back then?

Sorry, but when and where did this look good?

Like I said: I’m not an interior designer, but this is a fad that I hope never comes back.

–

Red & White Checkerboard Floor Tiles

Surely you or a friend of yours had a kitchen floor like this in the 1980’s:

We’ve all seen black-and-white checkerboard floors before, and you could probably find an updated style of that flooring in the foyer of an eclectic Rosedale house today.

But what about red-and-white?

If your friend or family member had a kitchen in their basement back in the day, I’m willing to bet the floor was this pattern.

–

Pattens Everywhere!

Speaking of patterns, another fad back in the day was patterns on just about every piece of decor.

Pillows, carpets, couches, curtains, you name it.

And while this photo might make you think 1970’s, I saw a lot of this growing up…

–

Carpeted Bathroom Floors

My grandmother had carpet on her bathroom floors.

It made me nervous, for some reason.

Then again, she had carpet on the toilet lid, so maybe I was just constantly in a state of shock.

–

That’s about all we covered the other night, and while it might seem like a lot, my kids still wanted more.

They always do though, right?

It’s any wonder they got to sleep before 10pm, but I digress…

Which of these do you remember?

And what else stands out in your mind from the time you were growing up?

I’d love to know!

And on that note, have a wonderful long weekend, everybody!  See you back here on Tuesday with a look ahead at the fall real estate market.

The post Yesterday’s Fads Or Tomorrow’s Fashions? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

I’ve never been much of a card player.

This might come as a surprise to you (that was sarcasm) but I simply don’t have the patience for it.

A while back, my friend Aimee told me, “I’ve been crushing it lately in online poker.  I think I’m going to make this a career!”

I told her that she, like millions of other people, were no different than the scores of pretty and handsome young folk that arrive in Los Angeles every single day, thinking they’ll be the next star on the Silver Screen.

But she challenged me on this.  She said he had real talent.

So I told her, “Come to the office next week and we’ll go into the conference room and play poker.  If I beat you, then you give up this dream now, no questions asked.”

She agreed.

While many of you think you know how this story is going to end, let me warn you in advance: I did not teach her a lesson.

Instead, I got exceptionally bored of this game in short order, annoyed that most hands resulted in a fold, and that any actual hand played ended up in a small pot, and that led me to make rushed, improper decisions.

And she won.

Patience is a virtue, and when it comes to playing Texas Hold ‘Em, I simply don’t have it.  I’m not going to blame the day, or how busy I was, or the temperature of the conference room.  I simply do not have the patience to fold thirty hands in a row and keep shuffling the cards and re-dealing, while moving the “BIG BLIND” chip back and forth, and anteeing up again and again.

I can keep my cards very close to my chest.  My problem is: I want to play them.

When it comes to the inner workings of the real estate market, I have no problem being patient.  In fact, I find my nature is actually the complete opposite as it would be while playing poker.

But patience is only one trait that can apply both to playing poker and selling real estate.

A more obvious one, and a trait that could have a greater impact: overplaying your hand.

While the following story might sound a bit like previous blog posts of the “How not to sell real estate in Toronto” nature, this one is more about an agent overplaying her hand, which stems from overvaluing her hand, which stems from not really understanding the game she’s playing.

Back in early February, clients of mine asked to see a home listed for sale in the east end.

They had a budget of $1,200,000 and were relatively new to the market, so I took a look at the listing, the history of the property, and comparable sales in the area, and was ready to talk shop with them when we met at the house.

The property was listed for exactly $1,000,000, which is a really odd list price.

Read my blog post from March, “The Psychology Of Real Estate Pricing” for more on this.

Why not list at $999,000?

I don’t believe this is a case of “everybody jumping off a dock, so you should too,” but rather I just think it was the first sign in what would prove to be an extremely odd listing, from start to finish.

I figured that the house was worth around $1,200,000, maybe more.

But the house really didn’t show well at all.

It wasn’t staged and all the furniture was old, out of style, and way too large for the home.

The basement could have been functional, and with a minor investment in painting and lighting, and with a basic staging of the space, this house could have had a great “rec room,” but instead felt like a dimly-lit cellar with tile floor and marks on all the walls and ceilings.

There was no pre-home inspection, which was odd in this market, especially considering this house was “under-listed” with an offer date.

Our appointment was from 7:30pm – 8:00pm and my clients had two children with them.  At about 7:59pm, the front door opened, and a lady walked inside.

I asked, “Hey, are you an agent?  Do you have an 8pm viewing?”

The lady said, “No, this is my home.”

She then proceeded to take off her boots and sit on the couch.

Odd.  Very odd.

My clients felt like it was obviously time to leave, so we did.  And for the record, the only thing to do in this situation, if you’re the seller, is to say, “Oh, take your time, please, make yourselves at home!” and then step outside.  I mean, if you actually want to sell your house for the most money.

My clients were somewhat interested, so I called the listing agent to chat the next morning.

I asked her if there had been interest and she said, “A shit ton!”

She said that the market was crazy busy and that the property was “blue chip” all the way.

This house, by the way, was located on a very busy street and there was a TTC bus stop directly in front of the house.

In any event, I asked her if there was a home inspection and she said, “No way, don’t need one.  This house is solid.  They don’t build ’em like this anymore.”

I replied, “No, they don’t, but that’s sort of the point – this house was built in the 1940’s so I’d love to have seen a pre-inspection.”

She said, “Any intelligent buyer is gonna look at this house and know it’s solid.  Agent too.”

I thanked her for her time and that was that.

My clients called me that afternoon and said that, although they liked the house, they were too new at this to “jump into competition” and that the timing was off.

No matter.

I flagged the listing and watched their offer night as it took place.

Listed for $999,000, and with my valuation around $1.2 Million, the house only received one offer.  That too was rather odd.

Keep in mind, this was now mid-February and the market for freehold homes was very busy!  To see an under-priced home in this price bracket not receive multiple offers was odd.

The next day, the listing agent called me and said that the property didn’t sell and that she would be re-listing at a higher price.

I asked, “Can you tell me what the price is going to be?”

She said, “Well, you just gotta do your homework, right?  The comps are out there.”

But before I could even ask her which ones (which I wasn’t going to do…), she volunteered it!

She named three houses, all of which were on prime streets (remember, this was on a very busy street; think something like Gerrard Street East), all three of which were larger, one of which was detached (her listing was a semi), one of which had a private driveway (her listing had a widened mutual), and two of which had fully finished basements.

All three houses were more modern, more upgraded, and “prettier.”

But above all, these three listings were all staged and presented exceptionally well.

Those three houses, by the way, sold for between $1.35 – $1.4 Million.

The house that she was selling was previously listed for $999,000 and I had pegged the value at $1,200,000.

I continued to play dumb and I said, “Yeah, I remember seeing (property address), that was a nice house!”

She said, “Yeah, they got something like twenty offers.”

“Twenty-two,” I told her, since I knew the inner workings of that offer night intimately.  But that house was emptied, cleaned, painted, staged, and represented by a fantastic listing agent.

Her house was not.

The next day, I received an email through BrokerBay:

123 Fake Street – Re-Listing Next Week At Fresh New Price! Stay Tuned!

I was thinking, “Okay, sure.  They’re offering us a…..teaser?”

It was innovative, I’ll give her that.

But I was absolutely, positively shocked when I got another email from BrokerBay the following week that said:

123 Fake Street: Now Available @ $1,388,000

Good lord!

This agent was really overplaying her hand!

She didn’t seriously think the property was worth that much.  Did she?

The house showed like dogshit!  It’s on a main street!  You can literally sit on your living room couch and see the whites of the eyes of a stranger seated on the TTC bus outside.

The agent called me three days later and said, “Hey, we spoke a couple of weeks ago about 123 Fake Street.  I’ve just re-listed it.  Did you see?”

I told her that I had seen it, and she said, “Any interest?”

At this point, my clients had passed on the house and were already looking at other properties.  I told her, “Thanks for the call, but we moved on.”

She said, “Oh, that’s too bad.  Well, what was the deal-breaker here?  I mean, why did you move on?”

I said, “Well, to be honest, I think it’s the price.”

She said, “Really?  That’s so surprising.  What were you thinking?”

I said, “Well, being honest here since my clients have moved on, and from one professional to another, I think you’re going to have a hard time getting more than $1,200,000 for that house.”

I don’t know where she was calling from, or what the ceiling height was over there, but I’m pretty sure she hit the roof.

Even though she called me, and even though I told her my clients weren’t interested, she berated me for not having “sufficient market knowledge” and told me “my clients were losing an opportunity.”

The house sat on the market at $1,388,000 for 45 days.

But since I had shown it, and since my name was in the BrokerBay system, I was still receiving all communications about the listing.  So before that 45 days was up, I received another email from BrokerBay:

123 Fake Street – New Price Coming Soon!

I swear, I have never seen this before.  Maybe it’s a novel idea.  Maybe…

The property was re-listed for $1,350,000 and it sat for another 19 days.

Then it was reduced on MLS to $1,299,000.

I wondered why it was reduced and not re-listed, and I wondered why I didn’t get a “COMING SOON” blast from BrokerBay.

It wasn’t something I was following closely, but I usually have about 50-75 listings “flagged” on my MLS system that I scroll through every day, so I always look for sales, terminations, and price changes.

The property sat on the market for another 16 days before I received yet another email from BrokerBay:

123 Fake Street – Re-Listing Next Week At Improved Price!

That improved price, evidently, was $1,249,000.

We were now into the month of May, by the way.

Recall that we first came across this listing in early-February.

The property sat on the market at $1,249,000 for several weeks before it was terminated and re-listed for $1,199,000.

But I didn’t get an email from BrokerBay.  No happy “COMING SOON” this time.  No teaser!

Not lost on me was the fact that the property was now priced below what I had felt it was worth three months prior.  I understand that “Not everybody is in a rush to sell,” but just consider this for a moment:

In a hot Toronto market, no property takes three months to sell.  Unless there’s something wrong.

What’s “wrong” could be the price, the listing strategy, the listing agent, or all of the above.

In this case, it was the agent, the overplaying of her hand, the overvaluing her listing, the lack of staging, the lack of a home inspection, and just an overall poor quality listing.

She wanted to get top dollar for the house without putting in the work.

The three comparable sales that she noted in February weren’t just better houses; they were better listings and they were listed by better agents.

A few weeks later, I noticed the “SC” next to the listing on TorontoMLS and I though, “Oh, wow, they finally did it!  They finally sold!”

Sold conditionally, of course.

Not having provided a pre-home inspection, I figured that perhaps the condition was on a satisfactory home inspection by the buyer.  I clicked on the listing and scrolled down to the bottom to find that it was not conditional on a satisfactory inspection, but rather something that I have not seen in Toronto in a long, long time:

The sale was conditional on the sale of the buyer’s property.

You have got to be kidding me!

In twenty years I have never sold a home conditional on the sale of a buyer’s property, and to be frank, this is really an “outside of the GTA” thing.

To see a property in the central core sell conditional on the sale of a buyer’s property is madness.

And yet, it just sort of “tracked” in this case.

The property remained “SC” on the MLS system for several weeks, and it remained in my “FAVOURITE LISTINGS” during that time.

Then last week I received an email through the BrokerBay system that read:

123 Fake Street – Good News: Property Still Available For Sale

Good news?

For whom?

Not for the seller, that’s for sure!

I checked MLS and saw the exceptionally rare “DFT” designation, for “deal fell through,” and simply shook my head.

That listing was terminated two days later and the property was re-listed once again for $1,199,000.

It’s still available for sale on MLS, by the way.

This property has now been listed for almost five months.

And now that we’re into July, with buyer activity down, there’s absolutely no way this house is going to sell.

It simply doesn’t take five months to sell a single-family freehold in Toronto.  I don’t care what market you’re in.

This debacle is the by-product of the listing agent overplaying her hand right from the start, whether it was the quality of her listing, the value of the home, or the leverage that she thought she had, but didn’t.

I was just telling Lindsay, who works as our client care coordinator, what I was writing about today.  She said, “Gosh, were do people find these agents?”

I don’t know.

Hopefully not at the poker table, that’s for sure…

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