TorontoRealtyBlog

Let’s pick up on the topic of conversation from Wednesday, and discuss the “right” way to sell real estate in this market.

I’ll often lay out a theoretical, “What you could do” to the sellers, which represents a road they’re not interested in walking down.  But then when they hear the price they could get if they were to do so, suddenly, they seem a lot more willing.

I had another listing last fall that took over a month to bring to market.  Let me explain…

If you had asked me last year, “Are the stakes higher when selling a condo or a house?” I would have probably replied, “house,” without a doubt.

So far in 2017, through two weeks of action, the houses are still selling in multiple offers, for well over asking, but so too now are the condos.

And while the massive price fluctuations seem higher on $1,399,000 houses that sell for $1,700,000, I’m seeing a lot of condos that wouldn’t ordinarily sell for over the list price doing exactly that, simply because of the lack of inventory.

We’re seeing most condos hit the market with set “offer dates,” and many condos are selling beyond what any “comparable sale” might hint at.

So in 2017, I would say the stakes are just as high for condos, as they always were for houses.  And since the “extra” $10,000 on a 1-bedroom condo sale might mean more to a seller than $50,000 on a 4-bed, 4-bath house, you might argue that the stakes for condo sales are actually higher.

On Wednesday, I led you through a story about a condo I brought to market after a renovation that worked out quite well for my sellers.

That story was about the condition of the property, and how to fix it up, and sell it for more money.

But what about when the “to do” in the listing/selling process has less to do with counter-tops and paint colous, and more to do with life?

Some clients of mine purchased a new home in the west end, which they would be renovating over the course of 8-10 months, and wanted to sell their house in order to finance the project, and take advantage of the hot fall market.

The “problem” in this case, as I said above, didn’t exist in the form of features of the home, but rather features of the sellers and their lives – namely they had a family.

Ah yes, kids!

I can speak first hand about just how much life changes when you add people into the mix!  My 8-week old daughter is making noise in her bassinet as I write this, and I’m just praying she doesn’t wake up…

My clients had three young children, and as just about any parent would attest to, a family “home” looks and feels different from just about any other home.  It’s lived in, it’s busy, it’s vibrant, and it’s usually packed to the brim with stuff.

The house was an absolutely jaw-dropping 1880’s Victorian, full of original character and charm, but with the added modern conveniences and features, such as a dug-out, 8-foot basement with heated, polished concrete floors!

But with three kids running around the house, and with the accumulated possessions of five family members, the house didn’t show as well as it could have.

Of course.  What else is new?  As I said on Wednesday, show me any property, and I’ll show you how to make it look better.

After walking through the house for the first time, I sat with the sellers, and I asked them, “Do you want me to be honest with you?”

They replied, “Yes,” with a smile, palms-opened and raised upward, as if to say, “duh, of course!”

But “yes” is the knee-jerk reaction to a question about honesty.

What was that line in Old School when Luke Wilson catches his girlfriend cheating on him, and he says, “Be honest, tell me this is the first time this has happened?”

She replies, “Well……do you want me to be honest, or do you want me to tell  you this is the first time this has happened?”

I told my clients, “You’re not going to like what I have to say, and you’re initial reaction is going to be that I’m wrong, but here goes.”

And then I told them: “If you want to maximize the sale price of this home, you have to take everything out of it, including yourselves.”

There was silence.

They looked at each other, then myself, then each other.

They said, “What do you mean by ‘everything?’ like what, exactly?”

I told them, “Everything.”

I explained that I don’t take half-measures with a house of this calibre, and when the stakes are this large.

If this were a 1-bed, 1-bath condo, we could finesee it a bit, no problem.

But a 3-storey, 4-bed, 4-bath, Victorian, in a prime location, that could be “the” listing of the fall in that neighbourhood?

You simply take no chances.

I explained that rather than taking out a few items, and bringing in others, I wanted my stager to have carte blanche with the house.  Whatever she says, goes.

I probably did 30 projects with my stager in 2016, and I trust her emphatically.  So if she says she wants a piece out, it’s out.  If she wants it in, well, you know who’s going to win that battle…

I then further explained to my clients that they had to move out of the house two days before we listed, and they couldn’t move back in until we sold.  They’d be out for about ten days, but this was all part of the process.

For this house, I expected between 70 and 100 showings in seven days, and they just wouldn’t be able to work around that with three kids.  In fact, they wouldn’t be able to work around that with zero kids!

They mulled this over, as they facepalmed, shook their heads, sighed, and bit their lips.

Then the question I always get, was asked, “How much do you think this house is worth now, as-is, and how much could we get if we staged it?”

I told them $1,500,000, and $1,600,000.

We’ll come back to the latter number at the end.

They laughed when I told them it was “only” worth $1,5o0,000, as they knew it would sell for more.

I told them that it wouldn’t.  I told them how fickle buyers are, how buyers purchase with emotion, and how when a buyer feels that somebody else wants the house, they want it even more.  And while the house was worth $1,500,000, if somebody walked in here, today, and made an offer based on how it looked, they might not even get that.

They mulled this overnight, and told me the next day, “We’re in.”

Then the fun began.

I was working on the listing with a colleague of mine, Nic Martin, with Bosley Real Estate.  And for the next month, either Nic, myself, or both of us were in that house every single day.

We hired “packers” to come into the house, and the sellers could simply point and shoot at what they wanted done.

We started by packing up all the stuff they would be taking with them to the new house, that they wouldn’t need for 8-10 months.

Then we packed up all the stuff they would need once they moved into a short-term rental in 2-3 months.

Then we packed up all the stuff they wanted back after the listing.

We colour-coded each box so that they’d be easy to find and decipher when the time came.

We itemized every item, listing them on every box.

And we put some items in short-term storage, and other items in long-term storage.

My stager wanted to keep some of their furniture, and she told me, “Sorry, David, you’re wrong about that dining room table!  Do you know how much that thing is worth?”

Well, I’m a real estate agent, not a stager.  Go figure.

She liked a lot of their pieces, which we kept, but we added a whole houseful of furniture and wares.

We painted a large percentage of the house, as paint is just about the best return on investment you can make.

We added a few improvements to the house where we could.  Fix a light here, lay patio tiles there, power-wash the cedar deck and trellis, paint the fence, clean the porch, etc.

The house was nearly 3,000 square feet, and we staged every single inch of it.

But the staging couldn’t have happened if we didn’t first clear it out.

Staging, as I should really explain in a dedicated blog post, always rubs the sellers the wrong way.

Sellers have their own tastes and preferences, and they have furniture, or artwork, that could be expensive, or have sentimental value, or be something that they cherish.

And when you come into their home, take these items away, and replace them with something you plucked out of a warehouse full of stock items, sellers can go ballistic.

Can, and do.  It happens several times per year in my experience, and the sellers aren’t wrong.

The problem is: they aren’t right either.

Maybe their “chest of drawers” really did cost $20,000, as one client of mine explained to me when it was replaced with something that cost 1/10th the price.  But you have to depersonalize a home, neutralize the decor, and make it appeal to as many buyers as possible.

My 3,000 square foot Victorian was had irreplaceable family heir-looms on the walls when I first entered, but by the time we listed for sale, the walls had neutral, modern furnishings.

It took us over a month, but we were ready for sale.

And as I always do with my listings, I had everything done well in advance, with a backup list date in case anything went wrong along the way.

This is how I like to display my marketing:

There’s your 8-page, colour, glossy feature sheets, your MLS listings, your list of renovations and improvements, your floor plans, your home inspection summary, and your complete copy of the home inspection. And just for good measure – the actual home inspection itself.

When buyers walk into a listing that’s presented, and represented like this, they think and often say, “Oh…..yeah…..this place will do well.”

There are so many elements that go into listing and selling a home for it’s maximum value, and then some.

You have to make potential buyers think that other buyers are going to be interested, and you have to make their agents think that you are going to take this listing to the top.

We ended up selling this house for $1,800,000, which absolutely blew away our expectations.

I told the sellers $1,600,000, but I was hoping for $1,650,000, maybe more.

$1,600,000 was what the house was truly “worth” in my mind, but when you take a home to this level, you always have the outside shot of attaining something extraordinary.

$1,800,000, for this house, was exactly that.

And once again, I give the credit to my sellers, who didn’t kick me out when I said I wanted to pack up the contents of their 3,000 square foot house, put it in storage, and send them to live with their mother-in-law for two weeks.

There were disagreements along the way, no doubt.  You often have to take a bumpy road to get someplace special.

But in the end, we smashed records, and exceeded expectations.

And I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.  It was awesome.

I wish every house or condo were sold like this, but if they were, then the prices out there would be even crazier than they already are!

There’s a condo for sale right now in King East for $324,900, holding back offers, likely to get well over asking.

I sold the identical model to a buyer-client in December for $310,000, that was poorly represented, poorly presented, and overall, listed improperly.

A job worth doing, is worth doing well.

Especially in the crazy 2017 Toronto real estate market…

The post A Job Worth Doing, Is Worth Doing Well (Pt2) appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

TorontoRealtyBlog

Most real estate buyers are out there today looking for the biggest house they can find, with features like parking, or a basement apartment, or a backyard.  They’re prioritizing access to transit, school districts, parks, and proximity to a thriving retail strip.

But what about the thing that used to be number-one on everybody’s list?

Safety.

Let me tell you what happened outside my condo earlier this week, and how I feel about it, because how I feel is almost as shocking as what actually happened…

I live in a very safe area of the city of Toronto.

We all do.

And I mean that – we all do.  Most of us, anyways.

Truth be told, the idea of “safety,” and subject of “crime,” in my humble opinion, are things that get blown out of proportion by media who thrive on the negative news stories, and by politicians who can use it for fear-mongering.

Most actual “crime” takes place in the same handful of areas.

Of course, that’s a problem unto itself.

Nobody wants to see pockets of the city where ALL the crime takes place, and where all the residents live in danger.

Well, actually, everybody outside those pockets want to see it.  They just wont admit that outloud, or even to themselves.

If you asked yourself, or the person next to you, “Hey, do you feel bad about all the crime that takes place in XXX-area?  Would you be willing to wave a magic wand, and take 15% of the crime away, and put it in your neighbourhood to lessen the burden on those who live in the crime-ridden area?” is there anybody out there that would say, “yes?”

I moved down to King & Sherbourne over ten years ago, and there was nothing “dangerous” about the area.  There still isn’t.

I used to walk up to Richmond Street to the Tim Horton’s to get my coffee, and the worst you’d see is a homeless guy begging for change.

Go further north, and you’re into Moss Park.

I used to shop at the Dollorama up there regularly, and I’d walk the “gauntlet” of people hovering on the sidewalk on the east side of Sherbourne Street, north of Queen.  They were dirty, and most of them homeless, and/or drug addicts, but I never really felt “unsafe.”

Truth be told, they wanted as little to do with me, as I wanted to do with them.

They wanted to talk to others like them, smoke cigarettes, and wait around until the shelters opened up again.

The last thing they wanted was to interact with an “outsider.”

In the summers, the lawn at Moss Park arena is littered with bums laying out in the sun, no shirt, shouting at the person across the street, looking for half-smoked cigarettes on the street, and generally causing a ruckus.  But just steps away, in the parking lot next to the arena, what do you see?  Audi, Lexus, Mercedes, BMW – cars parking so guys can get out and play summer league hockey.

Nobody says, “I’m not playing summer league at Moss Park because it’s dirty and dangerous.”

I tell people – my friends, family, clients, and especially the parents of clients, “King East and the ‘St. Lawrence Market area’ are super safe, and there’s a sort-of ‘invisible fence’ up at Richmond Street, that the rif-raff won’t pass.  You don’t really want to venture north of Richmond Street, but the rest of our neighbourhood is just fantastic all around.”

I said that then, and I say that now.

Toronto, for the most part is “safe.”

And when something unimaginable happens, literally at your doorstep, it has the ability to change how you feel in an instant.

I was sitting in my office on Monday afternoon, when my phone range – it was my wife.

Now that I have a 10-week old baby, every time my phone rings and it’s my wife, I get anxious.  I assume there’s something wrong.

Does that ever go away?

I picked up the phone, and she calmly said, “Somebody just got shot, dead, right outside our condo.”

And she added, “I want to move.  Now.”

That’s a reasonable request, given the circumstances.

And given the timeframe, ie. it happened literally minutes ago, I think it’s how many people would react.

But as I started my slow, grovelling, submission into our new housing search, my wife interrupted me and said, “I’m just kidding.  But seriously, this is pretty fucked up.”

News started to slowly roll out online, and all the media outlets said, “George & Adelaide.”

My condo, for those of you that don’t know, is at 112 George Street.  It comprises almost the entire city block bordered by George, Adelaide, Jarvis, and Richmond.

So when I heard “George & Adelaide,” I figured it was pretty close to us, but I didn’t get know exactly how close until much later.

A lot of the media outlets were saying “George Brown College,” as in “near” or “close to.”

So I simply assumed that this shooting took place, perhaps, on the south side of Adelaide, just east of George, across from the old Toronto Post House.

But as I would learn later, the media reports were simply saying “George Brown College” to try to give a geographic reference for readers.

My phone started buzzing as friends, colleagues, and even blog readers (crazy how everybody knows where I live, but my life is an open book), started to message me to see if I knew.

One friend even said, “Do you want me to go over to your place and check up on your wife?”

Then minutes later he wrote back, “That sounded really, really weird.  I had good intentions.”

My wife was fine, and soon our building sent out an email saying that the whole block was shut down as police were on site.

Having a father who was a criminal lawyer for 40 years, I know a thing or two about crime.

I knew right away, well, I knew and hoped, that this was a “hit;” that this was a targeted crime, and it left the rest of us out of it.

This wasn’t some mother-of three, or choir-boy, or pleasant senior citizen walking along, minding his or her own business, when suddenly some random, evil-doer decided to end it all for that law-abiding citizen.

Of that, I was certain.  And that’s how I rationalized it, despite how irrational a situation like this truly was.

I went about the rest of my day – I had no choice.

But it wasn’t until I came home around 8:30pm that what had happened, really sunk in.

I drove south on George Street, through Richmond, and past two police cars that were blocking the intersection, but letting residents of Vu and Post House pass through.

I drove under police tape, and past crime scene vehicles, forensic vans, and cop cars.

And that’s when I saw the reality of the situation; I saw an orange tarp.

And under that orange tarp was what used to be a person.

The “evidence markers” were everywhere.  Those little plastic stands with numbers on them that Gil Grissom and the team on C.S.I. place all over the scene – the street was littered with them.

And even though it was dark out, I could see a massive pool of blood on the street.  Two, in fact.

There was a giant overhead light shining down, as thirty police officers combed the grounds, looking for evidence.

Until now, I had no clue how close to home this really was.

This wasn’t “near” Adelaide & George.

This wasn’t even at Adelaide & George, ie. at the corner.

That orange tarp – the one with the body underneath, was literally on the sidewalk adjacent to the driveway of my building.

I’ve walked my dog past there.

I’ve walked my daughter past there.

I’ve sat on that very curb with my golf clubs, waiting for a buddy to pick me up on a nice summer day.

And once I learned that there were twelve gunshots aimed at this person, I realized that the mother-of three, or choir-boy, or pleasant senior citizen could have easily been hit by a bullet as the two perpetrators fired at will.

This was really, really close to home.

I went inside and found my wife feeding our daughter.  “Some day, huh?” I said as I kissed her hello.  “Crazy,” she said.  And that was pretty much the extent of our conversation.

The next day, I had a morning appointment, and decided to head back to the condo to park my car before showing a condo down the street.

As I drove north on George, I could see the orange, sawdust-type material that they poured on the pools of blood the night before to soak it up.  I’m not sure what it’s called, or even what it is – but think about what you pour on a chemical spill, or to cover gasoline at a gas station – there’s something they use for blood, I suppose.

It had snowed a bit that morning, and the orange/sawdust area had some snow on it.

I was waiting to pull into my driveway when I watched as a pedestrian crossed the street, and did that sort of “courtesy hop” that we do to show a car passing by that we’re not slagging – we’re going to give it one hop and skip to show we’re trying to speed up crossing the street.

And that courtesy hop, up onto the curb, was directly over the orange sawdust on the street.

That pedestrian just hopped over the site of a dead person, who had basically bled out on the street less than twenty-four hours earlier, and he had absolutely no idea.

I watched that person continue on.  He put ear-buds in his ears, and took some gloves out of his jacket pocket to put them on.  He fidgeted with his backpack as he continued on through the courtyard, and eventually he went out of frame.

That person had no idea.

In fact, many people that day, walked that same spot, and had no idea.

On Wednesday, I drove by again in the early evening, and the rain had washed away every piece of that orange sawdust, and there were no longer streaks of crimson lining the street.

There was absolutely no trace of what had happened on Monday.  It was merely a news story – one that was fading, and losing interest, with each passing day.

The world simply kept going, as it always does.

Seeing this spot on Wednesday, after seeing it one day previous on Tuesday, simply reaffirmed what I already felt: absolutely nothing.

Nothing.

I felt nothing.

Is that bad?

Is that normal?

Somebody was murdered in my driveway, and two days later, it was simply a footnote in my month?

January, 2017:
-went to a wedding
-sold a few properties
-saw my baby’s first smile
-somebody was murdered in my driveway
-put snow tires on my car

As I said at the onset, how I felt about this brutal act, to me, is even more shocking than the incident itself.

But perhaps that’s just the world we live in today.

Maybe things like this aren’t shocking anymore.

Maybe because society has become so involved with everybody, everywhere, we can always find something far worse, and thus whatever we are looking at, seems trivial on a relative and comparative basis.

Or maybe because, as we later learned, this was a targeted crime, and the parties involved were gang-members, we’re able to downplay it into almost nothing.

And thus perhaps the knowledge that “lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place” makes us simply overlook this incident entirely.

I started this blog writing about “safety” in Toronto, and in the areas in which we live, so let me finish along those lines.

Despite the fact that somebody was murdered in my driveway four days ago, I don’t feel any differently about the area in which I live.

I feel just as safe, and just as happy.

You might have heard the euphemism, “Something bad has to happen somewhere, at some point, to somebody.”

And as blasé as that might sound, I have to think this perfectly describes how a lot of residents of the area, and those in our building, are looking at this week’s events as we simply “move on”…

The post Too Close To Home appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

TorontoRealtyBlog

Here’s a feature I used to routinely write a few years back.

Sometimes there are a lot of smaller stories that don’t get told, simply because they’re not “blog-worthy.”

It’s not quite a matter of “quality versus quantity,” but rather there’s always so much to say, and so little time.

Here’s a few topics worth touching on…

Two Offer Dates

You’ve been reading stories on my blog throughout 2017, or back in 2016 for that matter, about “bully offers” and how they’re driving the market crazy.

Properties are being listed for sale with a set offer date, say, February 28th, and they’re selling on the 21st only hours after they come out, or on the 22nd after a buyer forces the seller’s hand, or even on the 27th – one day before the scheduled offer date, which makes absolutely no sense.

Some listing agents (myself included) are fed up with the chaos and are saying “No Pre-Emptive Offers” on the MLS listing.

I do this mainly because I think you always get a better price on offer night, but also because, as I explained last week, I want to expose the property to the entire market, not just the first person through the door.  I’d rather have 15 offers on “offer night” than one offer the day the listing hits the market.

In any event, I think listings that specifically spell out “Yes” or “No” to bully offers are important.

If the market is going to be chaos, better to have an organized chaos, I believe.

And then this past week, just when I thought I had seen it all, somebody sent me this:

Unreal.

Absolutely, positively, ridiculous.

It makes no sense.

“If you’re going to break the rules, we’d like you to use our rule-breaking rules.”

Setting an offer date of the 25th, but saying “Seller Reserves The Right To Review Pre-Emptive Offers” is what we’ve come to expect.

But setting an offer date of the 25th, and then setting a second date for bully offers?

That’s crazy town!

What if somebody (gulp!) submits an offer on the 17th?  Then what?

Do you bully, the bully-date, that’s a head of the offer date?

I don’t know where people think this stuff up…

Poker Room At 70 Temperance Street

Are you familiar with INDX?

It’s the name of the condominium at 70 Temperance Street.

I have no idea if INDX is an acronym for something, or if it’s playing off the TSX Index, since it’s located one block away.

Either way, the location of this building – right in the middle of all the bank buildings, means the demographic is like something out of Boiler Room or Wall Street.

The building has some of the most insane amenities I’ve ever seen:

– Lounge
– Party Room
– Boardroom
– Yoga / Pilates Room
– Fitness Centre
– Golf Room
– Movie Theatre
– Barbecue Area
– Poker Room
– Billiards Room
– Exterior Terrace
– BBQ Area
– Dry Cleaning
– Grocery Delivery Service
– Shoe Shine Station
– Concierge Service
– 24/7 Security

And while “shoe shine station” might jump out at you, what really got me was the poker room.

How does this work?

Is it like the gym, where the building simply leaves equipment out for people to use, or like the library, where there are desks at which people can work?

Because if the building is putting out green felt tables at which people can gamble then isn’t this, I don’t know, sort of illegal?

What kind of liability is on the condominium corporation here?

They’re not running a casino, but they’re encouraging one.

And how long until the poker room gets a blackjack table?  Or a roulette wheel?

What are the rules?

Maybe what started as a few tables for people to sit down and play, eventually turns into one guy who plays “the house” and sets up for blackjack dealing.

Based on the demographic of this building, I’m thinking Saturday nights in the poker room at 70 Temperance are busy…

Increase In Toronto Land Transfer Tax

Some of you might disagree with this one, but personally I think Toronto’s decision to increase land transfer tax on properties above $2,000,000 is yet another punishment for the wealthy.

I read an interesting letter to the editor a couple of weeks ago, check this out:

–

Rich Is Not A Crime:

Re: It’s Time To Limit Tax Expenditures That Favour Our Highest Earners (Feb. 7, Globe and Mail): 

Implementing this reasoning would amount to further shafting high income earners and send them scurrying to another geography.

Not only do the 1 per cent account for 11 per cent of taxable income, but the author suggests let’s take a little more by taxing capital gains at 80 per cent instead of 50 per cent, closing in on full-pop taxation.

So basically, take away more than half of their marginal income – and also more than half of the investment income from what they are able to save from the less than half they are left with.

How about better accountability for what happens to our tax dollars? It is not a crime to be a high earner.

T.J. Machado, Mississauga

–

I can’t say I disagree, especially with the last part about accountability, and the notion of it being a “crime” in today’s society to be a high-income earner.

And raising the land transfer tax by 0.5% for the value of properties over $2,000,000 is punishing those earners yet again.

Many of you don’t care, and I don’t blame you.  You’re trying to figure out how to make ends meet in today’s economy, and in a city that’s being taken over by generational and foreign wealth.

But just consider that a buyer of a $4,000,000 home pays a downright stupid $152,200 in land transfer tax.

That’s a completely arbitrary tax, and always has been.

It’s not about city services related to housing, like garbage pick-up, snow-clearing, hydro lines, etc.  That’s what property tax is for.

Land transfer tax is the most ridiculous, and most arbitrary tax I’ve ever seen.  It’s worse than the Liberal government’s sneaky eco-taxes.

Agents Losing Keys

Here’s one the public doesn’t care about, but is worth telling.

You all know the drill regarding keys and lockboxes, right?

Be it a house or a condo, there’s a door key in a lockbox, maybe with an access FOB, and the real estate agent opens the lockbox, retrieves the key, shows the house or condo to the buyer, and puts it back.

“Puts it back” is the most important part.

Keys go missing from time to time, it happens.  On a long enough time horizon, an agent is bound to forget to put back a key.  The agent gets chatting with his or her buyer clients outside, for twenty minutes, and then forgets the key is in his pocket, and drives off.

But what really, really bothers me about this, however, is that nobody ever admits to it.

Not one agent, in all my years, has said, “Oh geez, yeah I woke up this morning and there was a key in my pants pocket, sorry about that.”

It’s never happened.

Last week, a key went missing at one of my listings.

I called the last three agents that had shown the property – the previous night at 7:00pm, 7:00pm, and 8:00pm.  Three appointments, three agents.

All three said they handed off the key to another agent.

One agent gave me a long, convoluted story about how he had no cell phone signal in the stairwell, and had to go back down to the main level to get a signal, to check his phone, to get the code, to open the box back up and put in the key.

Then he added that he could see somebody in the unit an hour later, as he was in the building across the street, and looks into my listing.

Me thinks thou dost protest too much?

In the end, as it always does, the key magically reappeared an hour later.

But not before my client had to leave school, Uber to the condo, get another key, and go to place it in the lockbox – where the original key had now been returned.

Those are the two constants with lost keys:
1) Nobody ever admits to it.
2) The key always seems to magically reappear.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

A seller of mine came home to her condo last week, after a day’s showings (which in this crazy market is seventeen appointments), and found the following:

1) The door handle to her balcony was broken right off, and left on the counter.
2) The kitchen drawer track was broken.
3) Somebody left a Starbucks coffee cup in her bedroom.
4) Somebody left a Booster Juice cup in her sink.

This is a busy listing – $599,000 in King West, in today’s 2017 market, means close to 80 showings in a week.

But that doesn’t mean that this ceases to become “a home” and simply becomes “an asset.”

The kitchen drawer was sticky – so somebody yanked on it really hard, and broke it.  Maybe that’s an honest mistake.  Same goes for the balcony door, I guess.

But what really gets me is leaving behind a coffee cup.

And the person who left the Booster Juice did so knowingly, since they decided to place it in the sink!  Maybe the person with the Starbucks just forgot.  No excuse, but it could have been a mistake.  The person who left the Booster Juice took the time to place it in the sink.

I guess they thought the maid would pick it up?

A Realtor’s Dinner

I reached a new low-point last week.

Or maybe it’s a high-point.

It depends on who you asked.

I told this story to a colleague, and he said, “That’s awesome.  You’re a beauty.”

I told this story to a snobby friend-of-a-friend, and she said, “You tell a story that most people would be mortally embarrassed by, like you’re somehow, like, so proud of it.”

And then she induced vomiting so she could fit into that night’s dress…

A busy real estate agent is often on the road all day, and well into the night.

When the market is in full-swing, I’m often getting home at 10-11pm every night, and it means I’m always on the lookout for a meal.

It’s easy to forget to eat when you work in this business.  I always seem to remember to drink coffee, but sometimes I get to 5pm, my stomach hurts, and I think, “Oh wow, I forgot to eat today!”

Many nights I’m presenting an offer at 7pm, then heading off to showings, then back to deal with the offer; it’s back-and-forth, east-to-west, all over.

Last week, I was insanely hungry around 10pm, and I found a Sobey’s on Dupont Street just east of Ossington.  I figured I’d get one of those ready-made sandwiches or wraps, but by the time I got there, they had already cleared them all out.

I looked around everywhere, but the “prepared foods” section was completely closed.

There was only one item of prepared food left anywhere.

And it was one of those “Family-Sized” BBQ chickens.

Not exactly the “grab-and-go” type of food, is it?

Not quite something you can eat in the front seat of your car?

Well, I was absolutely starving, and I didn’t want to eat three bananas and a Granny Smith apple, thank you very much.

So I went to the cash with a travel-size Purell, a box of Kleenex, and a BBQ chicken.

And then I went into the parking lot of Sobey’s, at 10:30pm, and ate that chicken….

…..on the hood of my car.

Bare hands, just ripping and chewing, like our ancestors in 10,000 B.C. would have, except I was in an upscale neighbourhood and it was 2017.

I mucked about two-thirds of that bird, and then cleaned up with my Purell, and erased any trace of my carnivore behaviour with a piece of Dentyne Ice.

And you know what?

That car-hood dirty-bird was the best meal I had all week.

The post Quick Hits appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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The spring of 2017 was the hottest market I have ever seen.  It was probably the hottest market that any Realtor, regardless of his or her experience in this city, has ever seen.

I told a lot of stories back in the spring on TRB, many of which conveyed exactly how hot the market was.

But one story was left untold, because it just concluded.  And ironically, it took place after the market changed, as our journey began in June.

Allow me to regale you with the Tao of the 2017 Buyer…

Back in 2014, I wrote an epic four-part blog series which I entitled, “The Tao of the 2014 Buyer.”

Ah yes, 2014 – back when I wrote four blogs per week, rather than the three that I cut it back to in 2015 when I started my Thursday “Pick5” feature.  Four blogs.  Wow.  I actually just got anxiety thinking about that…

A four-part series wasn’t how I set out to tell that story, but as I began the framework for a post that I thought might result in a “To Be Continued,” I soon realized that in order to properly convey the story, I needed to let the post write itself.

I remember that spring, 2014 market very well.

It was a continuation of a 2013 fall market that just seemed to come out of nowhere, culminating with a whopping 11.3% year-over-year increase in average home price in the month of November.  Yes, 11.3%.  Remember when that was significant?

When the spring of 2014 began, we all knew it would be busy.

The average home price of $520,398 in December continued to rise and rise throughout 2014, hitting $585,204 – a 12.4% increase in a mere 5 months; an annual rate of close to 30%.

I was working with a lot of buyers in that market, and every buyer who purchased between January and June continued to follow new listings, and send me emails with, “Did you see the sale price of such-and-such house?  Wow, am I ever glad we bought!”

One of my buyer couples from that spring (actually from the fall of 2013, if you read the series) had just about the worst luck I had ever seen, in all my time in the business.

While we often say there is no “luck” involved in buying real estate, that’s not entirely true.

I’ve sold houses to buyers on the night of a storm, or an election, or a holiday, that would have, could have, should have sold for more.  That’s lucky, for certain.

I’ve won in multiple offers because the buyer picked a price that ended in say, “512,” because they got married on May 12^th – enabling them to beat the second-highest offer which ended in “000.”  That sounds skillful, but it’s luck.

Luck is ever-present in real estate, especially on the buy-side.

But my clients from the 2014 “Tao” blog series had no luck, and as a result, they lose EIGHT offers, before finally securing a property on their 9^th try – a journey that began on October 1^st, 2013, and ended on May 5^th, 2014.

They bid $781,200 on a house, and lost to a bid of $785,100.

They bid $800,000 on a house, and lost to a bid of $805,000.

They bid on eight houses, with an average loss margin of 3.0%, and taking away the two blowouts, their loss margin was a mere 1.45% on six lost properties.

Well, if this doesn’t entice you to read a four part blog series, then I don’t know what will!

I’ll make it easy on you, here are the four parts:

The Tao of The 2014 Buyer – Part I

The Tao of The 2014 Buyer – Part II

The Tao of The 2014 Buyer – Part III

The Tao of The 2014 Buyer – Part IV

–

My clients paid $776,00 for a house that’s probably worth $1.1M today, and like so many people before them, they likely thought, “This amount of money is just absurd for what we’re getting,” only to watch the market continue to grow, month after month, year after year.

A question I’m asked by a majority of buyers at the onset of the search is, “How many properties would you say your average buyer sees before they buy one?”

That’s a good question, but unfortunately, the answer is of zero help to the buyer.

“Eleven point four,” I might tell them, whether that’s in any way accurate.

The problem with putting a number to that question is, if the number is high, the buyer might feel like he or she should pass on the perfect property, right there in front of them, in order to simply “see more of what’s out there.”  If the number is low, the buyer might feel rushed into making a decision, when he or she isn’t really ready.

Every buyer is different, pardon the obvious.

Every buyer comes into the search with a different amount of knowledge, about real estate, but also about personal finance, mortgage regulations, Toronto’s geography and demographics, and a host of other variables affecting the search.

The second question I get with regularity, specifically in the midst of hot market cycles, is, “How many offers do your buyers lose before they win one?”

Great question.

And perhaps this time, the answer I provide could shed some light on their search.

I don’t know the answer, but if we’re talking freehold buyers, in 2016 through 2017, I’d say probably 2.5.

Now, because I know that you’re very curious to know the answer, I’ve just taken about 45 minutes while writing this, to log all the offers I made in the spring, and find out the real answer to this question.

I think this will be tremendously helpful for active buyers, even though the market has changed.

Of all the freehold properties I sold to buyers in the spring, 2017 real estate market, and not including buyers who made offers but didn’t eventually buy (there were a few), here is the number of offers that my successful buyers made:

1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
4
4
9

That’s an average of 2.53 offers per buyer.

And since I had guessed 2.5, I feel like I just wasted an hour of my life.

Oh, the things we do in the pursuit of integrity…

You’ll notice that at the bottom of the list, is the number “9.”

At the risk of spoiling the conclusion to this blog series, let me clarify that, yes, this is the story I want to tell today.

The tale, story, journey, or Tao of the 2017 real estate buyer, but also the excitement, heartache, anguish, anxiety, frustration, and experience of two very normal people, well-informed, well-qualified financially, and extremely intelligent, who, as was the case with my couple in 2014, simply had, dare I say, bad luck.

This is, as you would assume from the list of offers above, not the typical real estate experience.  But it’s a learning experience for those of you reading it, since we had not one, but many odd situations and events through the course of our search.

All of these events make for those learning moments that so many would-be buyers seek while reading Toronto Realty Blog.

You just hope that they don’t all happen to you…

Jake and Amanda emailed me in March of 2017 to say that they were getting married, and needed more space, and like many buyers in their position, they found that browsing what was available on Realtor.ca wasn’t providing enough information.

I had sold Jake the condo way back in 2010, and while small, it had brought him through a series of transitions in life that one in their 20’s and 30’s would experience while living in downtown Toronto.  When I think back to where I was in life when I bought my first condo, and where I was when I left five years later, I can’t believe how many miles I put on the odometer of life.

Jake’s condo was small, and I could imagine how two people living there would be tight.  Imagine my surprise when we finally met up and they told me they’d been living there together, in 540 square feet, for several years!

That is  certainly getting the most out of your investment!

What’s more, is they absolutely loved the place, and Amanda beamed as she told me what life in the condo had been like.

We got together in April when their search went from browsing online to checking out open houses in person, and they told me that they were looking to spend around $850,000, but were completely open to location, style, and size.

Everybody says they’re completely open; flexible, willing to compromise, make concessions, etc.

In practice, however, I find most buyers have no idea what “concessions” really are, and when you’ve got Cadillac-tastes on a Pontiac-budget, in this market, it makes it very difficult to get in tune with reality.  Many of these buyers, unfortunately, get left behind.

But once I started searching with Jake & Amanda, I realized they really were open to just about everything.  Our search would eventually take us from Scarlett Woods to Scarborough, and just about everywhere in between.

That flexibility ultimately enabled them to look for value in a market where there often wasn’t any, and draw a firm line in the sand with each and every property.  Rarely, if ever, did they get emotionally involved with a house.

After our initial meeting in April, Jake & Amanda hammered out their “must have” list as follows:

Must Haves:

• 2+ Bed; 1.5+ Bath
• Turn key (limited renos if any (cosmetic only); finished basement)
• Walkable neighbourhood; near transit
• Parking
• In/Around Toronto (40 minute max commute to, say, Eaton Centre)

They set their ceiling at $800,000 even, and our search began.

When meeting with clients who have broad search criteria – whether it’s geographic in nature, or rather they’re open to various housing styles, I find it’s best to see a property, any property, and do a thorough walkthrough, pointing out the pros and cons.

The first property we saw together was a small rowhouse on Norwood Terrace, just west of the bridge on Main Street, south of Danforth.

While walking up to the house, we encountered a middle-aged man doing crossfit on the sidewalk, completely in a zone.  He was skipping, doing burpies, and I believe he did a few overhead dumbell snatches as well.  If that isn’t “a sign” that this is your future neighbourhood, then I don’t know what is.

I immediately saw how organized Jake & Amanda were, as Jake came equipped with pages of notes, transit routes, and important questions to ask.

Listed at $668,000, I told them I thought the house would push $800,000, and for a 2-bed, 2-bath, with no parking, they just didn’t “connect” with the house.

It ended up selling for $765,000, and they had no reaction whatsoever.  They had already moved on to other options.

This would become a pattern in a very rational, unemotional search, the likes of which are extremely rare in this business.

The following week, I took them to Danforth Village to check out a few houses that I really liked, and we would end up putting our first offer on paper…

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

The post The Tao Of The 2017 Buyer appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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Call me dramatic if you want to, but a story worth telling, is worth telling right.

I’ve told bits and pieces of Jake & Amanda’s real estate journey through some of my May and June blog posts, but in this series, you can see how one of the busiest 4-month real estate journeys I’ve ever seen, first began, and ultimately how it ended.

We made our first offer in the month of May, after the market had begun to cool.

But as you might have expected in a changing market, the sellers had no idea what was going on…

As I sit and write this (probably a while before publication), I just got the call that I lost in multiple offers tonight – my first big loss of the fall market.

There were five offers, and while that sounds like a lot, it pales in comparison to what took place in the spring market.

On the buying end, I was involved in a 24-offer melee on a property that was mere land value.

On the selling end, I received 22 offers on a condo in a building that historically has not sold well at all.

You almost began to expect double-digit offers on most properties, and you felt good when there were only three or four on offer night.

The interesting part about Jake & Amanda’s property search, which began in May, was that while they bid on nine different properties, the most competing offers they ever faced was five.

That’s how the market began to change in April, as I wrote about several times through the end of the month, and into May.

The Ontario government would have us believe that their ingenious “16-Point Plan” was responsible for the cooling of the market, but in reality, it was a host of factors: the Ontario Fair Housing Plan, the Home Trust scandal, articles about mortgage-backed securities, Easter & Passover falling in the same period, and buyer fatigue; lots and lots of buyer fatigue.

You might argue that “what goes up, must come down,” and the spring market was just so insanely hot, with year-over-year appreciation figures over 30% in March, that ultimately it did cool – as many said it would.

By the time Jake & Amanda were ready to make their first offer, we had already felt the cooling.

It was a very, very strange market, and quite tough to read.

In May, I wrote to blog posts that foreshadowed what was to follow

“Real Estate’s New Problem: Listing & Re-Listing”

“Listing & Re-Listing: Is THIS The Reason For The Surge In Inventory?”

When the market began to slow, sellers refused to acknowledge market conditions.

What proceeded was one of the most frustrating market cycles – all of about two months, that I have ever worked in.

It was a period of blatant, comical false advertising, where sellers would list at an artificially-low price – as had been done before so many times, but without the response that was usually generated in previous market cycles.  When they didn’t get the price they wanted, they would re-list higher, and often wait a week to do so – leaving the house up for sale at the price they had no intention of accepting.

What’s worse is that many sellers and their listing agents simply listed at those artificially-low prices, with no advertised offer date, and told anybody that inquired, “We may be listed at $929,000, but we’re not accepting less than $1.3 Million.”  Those listings would stay up for weeks at fake prices.

I was urging Jake & Amanda to consider looking north of The Danforth, as far east as Woodbine, maybe even toward Main Street.

I was monitoring a house on Springdale Boulevard, which had been completely renovated and was up for sale for $849,000.

The house had been on the market for about 14 days, and while they had originally set an offer date, that date had past by a full week, meaning it was now “for sale” for $849,000.

Or so we thought.

The listing had been updated and the “Offers Reviewed On May 12th” part had been removed.

I spoke to the listing agent, and specifically asked if they would consider the list price, or if they were going to re-list higher like so many sellers were doing.   He told me to show the property, and that he “liked where they were priced.”

So we took a look, and we loved it.  What’s not to love?  A 3-bed, 2-bath, fully-renovated semi-detached, for $849,000?  It seemed too good to be true!

It was, evidently.

The listing agent grovelled about my short irrevocable date, said he would get back to me after he presented the offer to his clients in person, and then amazingly – never contacted me again.

It was bizarre.  It was an experience like none-other, and I remained utterly confused.

I told my clients the truth: “I haven’t heard back from him,” and explained that this was a first, for me.

Several days later, the property was increased in price by $150,000, to $998,000.

Again, the agent never called to inform me.  It was like he just couldn’t have been bothered.

I mean, I get it – the house was worth more than the $849,000 price at which they were listed.  They ended up sitting on the market at $998,000 for 60 days, before listing for $799,000 in a pathetic attempt to trick the market, which of course worked, and they eventually sold for $880,000 in July.

But back in May, we submitted an offer, and never got a response.

This was just as things were starting to get weird, and of course, this was Jake & Amanda’s very first foray into the real estate market.

A week later, we found ourselves on the other side of the city, out at Eglinton & Keele.

Jake & Amanda were very intrigued by anything along the future Eglinton LRT route, and as you’ll read, we ended up spinning our wheels out here quite a few times.

A detached house came up for sale on Yarrow Road, at $799,900, but it didn’t sell on the scheduled “offer night.”  Notice a trend?

The house was re-listed for sale at $829,000, and we went and took a look at the open house.

It was a 25-foot frontage, 3-bed, 3-bath, with parking, and in pretty good shape overall.

It was definitely worth what they were asking, but the market was acting strange.

We made an offer for $800,000 even, listed at $829,000, and I remember the listing agent saying, “This is a good offer, we’ll work with it.”

As luck would have it (another trend in this story…), a second offer was registered a few hours after ours, since this was Sunday afternoon, right after the public open house.

Jake & Amanda didn’t want to go any higher than $800,000, which was their magic number coming into the search, and we ultimately lost to a bid of $820,000.

Of course, the winning bidder, as I learned when I checked MLS and saw the buyer agent’s name the next day, happened to be the couple that we saw at the open house earlier in the day; the couple that I told my clients “probably weren’t interested” as they walked through the house in only a couple of minutes.

Live and learn, right?

We were now 0/2 on offers, both bad beats, as we lost the most recent one to a bid that might not have come in if we’d acted a day sooner, and we lost the first one without even being in competition!

See how things had changed since February and March?

Back then, you’d lose to 10, 11, or 12 offers.

Now, we were losing to the market and the chaos is was causing.

A mere nine days after Yarrow, we found ourselves bidding on a bungalow in the Lambton neighbourhood.

I knew the listing agent for this house; we had done several deals together, and I felt like that might give me an edge.

He had also just had his first child, and being a new dad myself, we bonded a little bit over fatherhood; as much as two competitors from different brokerages can bond.

The house was completely different from the first two we had bid on, which you’ll notice is yet another theme of this story.

Jake & Amanda were so open to areas, styles, sizes, and different value propositions, that it ultimately enabled them to make offers on a multitude of properties.

The first house was a 2-storey semi-detached, the second house was a 2-storey detached, and now we were bidding on a detached bungalow.

The house was on a gorgeous 30-foot frontage, which we figured would be ripe for development in 7-8 years as the area gets built up.  In fact, we had already seen a few properties down the street where bungalows had been razed, and 2,800 square foot homes were being built in their places.

Something about this house just seemed to “fit” for Jake & Amanda.  On their “nice to have” list was a space where Jake could have a home theatre, possibly in the basement.  Well in this particular house, there was a home theatre, with an 80-inch projector-TV already installed.

The main floor layout was something that really “spoke” to Amanda, with all the original interior free-standing walls removed, presenting an open, inviting kitchen, dining, and living area.

The house was listed for $749,000, and we went in with a max of $850,000.

The comparable sales were all over the map, and you could argue this house was worth $700,000 just as easily as you could argue it was worth $900,000, since the market had changed, and was continuing to fluctuate every day.

I’m usually very rational, and realistic about the clients’ chances on offer night, but I really hoped with this one that there would be maybe one competing offer.  I just felt as though the market had changed, and while this house was clearly under-priced, we would have a really good shot at $850,000.  In fact, I started to think, “If there’s only one competing offer, what price to we lead with?”

In the end, there were three competing offers, so it was a case of putting your best foot forward, and crossing your fingers.

The agent did do me a solid – he told me if we got blown out, he would just tell me, rather than doing what every other agent does, and “send me back to improve,” which is often a fool’s errand.

We led with our $850,000 bid, and alas, he called to say “You got beat.”

The house sold for $888,000, which some of you might think is “only” $38,000 more than our bid, and thus the agent could have sent us both back, but assuming the other offer improved as well, they’d be pushing $900,000, and that was just too far from our bid, which I already conveyed was our max.

It was a bad beat.  This one hurt.

With four offers, you’ve got a 25% chance of winning.  But where we stood with our $850,000 bid at the onset, I really, truly thought we had a 75% chance.

That $888,000 bid was more of a “spring price,” and we were one day away from June.  The sellers did well; they effectively got early April’s price at the end of May.

But Jake & Amanda, once again, shed no tears.

They never made any house out to be “the one,” but rather always seemed to have a backup option.

One week later, we were bidding on yet another house – our fourth bid inside a month.

We were into June now, the media was hammering away on the real estate market, the average home price in Toronto had dropped, on paper, 6.6% from April to May, and was about to drop a further 8.8% from May to June, and I figured we were going to start to see those on-paper numbers translate in practice.

I was wrong.

The next house had more competition on it than any house yet, and while the Lambton bungalow was a “bad beat,” this one was even worse.

Not only did the competition surprise us, and not only did we lose by a hair, but we lost in those “questionable circumstances” that would start become all too familiar to us…

(TO BE CONTINUED)

The post The Tao Of The 2017 Buyer (Part II) appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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Have you heard the saying, “You don’t know the market has bottomed out until you’ve bounced up off that bottom, and are already on the way back up?”

Well the same can be said for when the market is going the other direction, and in May and June of last year, a lot of sellers and listing agents weren’t aware that we had rolled off an April real estate peak, and seemed to be two months behind.

As the market did continue to change, there was always a spring-like sale mixed within the pack, and you just hoped you didn’t find yourself up against six other bidders, in a market that was supposed to be cooling…

When we spoke last, my buyer clients, Amanda & Jake, had lost out on three bids for freehold properties: a semi-detached, 2-storey; a detached, 2-storey, and a detached bungalow, in Danforth Village, Caledonia, & Lambton.  Three very different properties, in very different areas.

Through the first four months of 2017, prices were increasing rapidly, and each successive sale set a new benchmark for buyers.

The run-up in prices was unparalleled, as were the number of offers on some of these houses.

Yet here I was in June, with Jake and Amanda, trying to navigate a changing market, and deal with a cast of characters who either didn’t know the market was changing, or did, and didn’t want to acknowledge it.

We had come off a real estate peak, and the media coverage had gone from celebrity-worship at hot open houses to the-sky-is-falling rhetoric, and the average sale price in Toronto had dropped two months in a row.

Jake & Amanda had their eye on yet another house in Danforth Village (where we started, three offers ago), listed at $799,000, that probably would have sold for $1,000,000 easily back in March.

Having increased their budget for this property, on account of the location and the lack of work needed in the home, they told me they would go as high as $900,000, but I really thought they wouldn’t have to.

The house was probably worth $900,000, but would the market really bring the number up that high from a $799,900 list price?

I went to present my offer at the listing brokerage, and had multiple copies of “Page-1” of the Agreement of Purchase & Sale ready to go, with various prices, based on various scenarios.

When I arrived at the listing brokerage, I found not one, but two agents sitting in chairs next to me, which was odd, because I was told there was only one competing offer.

For many listing agents, especially inexperienced ones, keeping your cooperating agents informed as to the number of offers can prove difficult.  And while I don’t mean the actual task itself is difficult, since it’s moronic in nature, the act of keeping agents informed often goes unfulfilled.

In this case, I suppose you could say the agent’s excitement got the best of him, and he simply “forgot.”

Oops!

Whoops!

No big deal, right?

Except that not only do you have a legal duty to keep cooperating agents informed as to the existence of registered offers, but it would also work in your seller-client’s favour, since the more offers there are, the higher the price somebody would likely offer.

I went to present my offer after the other two agents, and once I was inside the room, one of the first things the listing agent said was, “…we still have a couple more offers to go through.”

I told him, “Well that’s odd, because I know there are only three offers, and I already saw two agents present.”

He replied, “Oh no, weren’t you told?  There are actually six offers.”

But before I could say, “No, I wasn’t told, since you didn’t tell me,” he added this little nugget: “…..and one of the offers is my own.”

And with that, we were basically out of the running.

Six offers, and the agent – who doesn’t do a lot of business (I looked him up in IMS…) had his own offer.

I told my clients, and Jake said, “This house is going to sell for $915,000, I just know it.  I have a feeling, and it’s a strong one, and I know we’re going to lose by fifteen-grand; twenty at the most.”

The listing agent called me later that night (when I know I’ve lost, I often head back to the office, or sometimes – home) to give me the proverbial, “Thanks so much for your offer, but we’ve decided to work with another.”

And the next day, to nobody’s surprise, I saw that the property had sold for $915,000, and the listing agent had double-ended it.

Ah, yes, – the double-ender!  One of 2017’s hottest real estate topics!

Topic for another day, but regardless, this was our fourth loss inside of a 30-day period, and this one had a bit of a stink to it.

Less than two weeks later, we were at it once again, making an offer on a gorgeous, fully-renovated house on Leslie Street, in prime Leslieville.

This house, listed at $799,000, would have been a $1.2 Million house back in March, and must have been worth $1.1M today.  It was just too good to be true, and when my clients first looked at it, I told them, “Don’t even bother, it’s so far beyond us.”

But they did look at it, and they loved it.  Who wouldn’t?

So I told them, “Let’s keep an eye on it, and if there’s no action on offer night, we can always put our best foot forward, and see if the seller will play ball.”

But would the seller play ball?  Even with the drop in the market, this had to be a $1.1 Million house, right?  Or even a million?  We were bidding on houses in the $800’s!  We had no business looking at it!

Offer day came, and we registered our offer first thing in the morning, just in case there were buyers on the fence who would be calling all day to ask if there were any offers registered.

By 6:00pm, we still had the only offer, and as crazy as it sounds to bid $900,000 on a $799,000 listing, when you have the only offer, that’s what we did.

And it’s not crazy, because this was a $1.1M house, or should have been.

I got to the listing brokerage, and in walks an agent I know very well; a top-producing agent, who everybody in the industry knows, and I just thought to myself, “She has an offer.  I know it.”

And guess what?  She did.

As was the case the offer presentations in Danforth Village one week earlier, once again, I was caught off guard by the existence of another registered offer.

This time around, I don’t fault the listing agent.  He’s as good as they come, and he told me about her offer within minutes of her showing up.

Nevertheless, we went in with our $900,000 offer, on this $799,000 property, up against one other offer.

I went out and waited in my car, watching people scoop up ice cream at Sweet Jesus on Queen, and the listing agent called to say, “Can you meet me out front of the brokerage?”

I knew right then and there, that the house wasn’t going to sell tonight.

It wasn’t a “yes,” and it wasn’t a “no,” but it also was too cryptic to have anything to do with price or the offer itself.

The listing agent told me, “My client will sell this property tonight for $1,000,000.”

I laughed.

I waited for him to laugh too, thinking he would crack a smile, since the idea of telling somebody who just bid $900,000 that they need come up a mere $100,000, but he was stoic, and I think he really thought we could do a deal.

So on the sidewalk on Queen Street, at 7:30pm on a warm summer day, I figured, “What the hell,” and called the other buyer agent over.

“He wants one of us to come up a hundred-grand,” I told her.

“I know,” she said.  “But my people are out as well.”

I told him we were out as well, and he thanked us for our time and efforts.

Then the three of us stood there and talked about the market for twenty minutes, as though the preceding hour hadn’t happened.

The house was re-listed the next day for $1,050,000.

Two months later, the house was listed for $699,000, and sold for $912,000.

We were now 0/5 in offers, but this one didn’t sting since we knew it was a long shot.

The next offer, however, probably hurt more than all the rest combined.

I wrote about this experience at length in a June blog entitled, “What The Heck Is An Escape Clause?”

Read the blog if you’re curious, but let me sum it up for you now, and provide an addendum as well.

We were back in the Rockcliffe-Smythe area, looking at a stunning custom-built, 4-year-old semi-detached home, which you could only dream of finding at this price point, if you came this far out of the core.

Listed for sale at $799,900, the listing agent had set an offer date, which we had missed – and when we went to submit our offer, we found out that the property had sold, but of course, it just hadn’t been updated on MLS for a week…

But here’s where things get interesting: the property had sold to the listing agent’s own buyer-client, aka “multiple representation.”

But it was sold conditional on three thing: financing, inspection, and the sale of the buyer’s property.

I hadn’t seen a “conditional on the sale of buyer’s property” clause in my 14 years selling real estate, and I was shocked that the agent would advise his sellers to work with the offer.

But then, was I really shocked?

It was his client on the buy-side too.

He told me that there was an escape clause in the agreement, which was another aspect of an offer I hadn’t seen in a long time, and thus the door was left open for us.

I explained the situation to my clients, as well as the odds that were stacked against us, and we submitted our offer – well above the list price, and crossed our fingers.

Two days later, his buyer removed the condition and submitted a waiver to his seller, and the deal was firm.

I was shocked when I saw the sale price – about $30,000 less than we were offering.

And three weeks later, the strangest thing happened: I got a call from the seller.

In a 20-minute phone call, she cried, and explained to me that the listing agent hadn’t presented our offer to her in time for her to make a decision with respect to the escape clause.  She wailed when I told her what our offer price was, seeing that money fly out the window, and it was worse when I said, “Our offer was also unconditional.”

I knew that agent was a sleaze from the get-go, as the 3-condition, sale-of-buyer-property, multiple-representation drama wasn’t something I had ever encountered before.

I told her to speak to her lawyer immediately, and he called me a few days after that.

I’ll never know what really happened.  I can’t take her at her every word, but I think she was deliberately misled.

I’m not even sure if I ever told Jake & Amanda the conclusion of that story, since by the time I heard from the seller and her lawyer, we had already bid on several other houses.

You would think they’d be upset, as any buyer ought to be.  But something tells me they’d draw upon that Buddhist, “Live in the present” mentality, and refuse to dwell on it.

Two weeks later, we bid on another house in the Caledonia pocket – our seventh bid in total.

The house was a detached, fully-renovated property, which once again, would have cost $300,000 more if it were 800 metres east.

Listed at $849,900, we figured it was a $950,000 proposition, but put our best offer forward at $920,000, up against two other bidders.

This was in the final days of June, and the market was really waning.

The listing agent, who acted as though he were on Million Dollar Listing, told me up front, “We’ll likely only do two rounds of bidding, probably working with the top three offers.”

It took all my strength to avoid laughing into the phone at his insanely misplaced sense of confidence.

He was acting as though it was March, not June.

He only ended up with three offers in the end, and true to his word – he “worked with the top three.”  Somewhat fitting, and ironic.

I told him from the start, “We’re putting our best foot forward, don’t send us back because we aren’t improving.”  And when he called to say, “We’re going to start a second round of bidding,” I told him, “Let me know.”

He called later to tell us that we had lost, which was a foregone conclusion.

That property was a longshot, but whereas in the spring, when you have a 0.00% shot of a longshot paying off, approaching July, we figured it might eventually pay off.

I didn’t like how the agent handled that listing.  I mean, it worked – he got a great price for the house.  But on a long enough time horizon, with that sense of false confidence and entitlement, he’s going to push buyers and buyer agents away.

“Rounds of bidding.”  Really.  In June?  With three offers?

A funny thing happened after that bid, after we had lost our seventh offer in a 45-day period: we didn’t make another bid for a month.

It wasn’t intentional, it’s just the way things went.

The Canada Day long weekend came and went, and the market just wasn’t providing us with new listings.

Folks, I swear I’m not trying to drag this story on, but understand – nine offers is a lot, and unless I increase each blog post to 4,000 words, the conclusion is going to have to wait.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

The post The Tao Of The 2017 Buyer (Part III) appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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Through the first three parts of this series, you’ve undoubtedly witnessed the Toronto real estate market change as we went from a red-hot spring, through a transitionary April, into a slower May and June, and finally into a tepid July.

Only one of my buyer clients could say they experienced the entire market cycle, and as is the case with many markets, they were the beneficiary of some good luck by the end.

Allow me to present to you the conclusion of one of the most interesting property searches I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on…

As I alluded to in the first chapter of this story, the idea for this post came to me when a client recently asked me, “How many offers does the average buyer make before they’re successful?”

I can provide an average, but it doesn’t represent much for one set of buyers versus the next.

Every buyer is different, and some are destined to be successful on the very first try, whereas others would be a good bet to lose multiple times before winning.

In my 2014 edition of “Tao,” the story of my couple who lost seven times before they won had some real close calls and heart-breakers.  It was more bad luck than anything else.

As you’re reading in the 2017 edition, the nine-offer journey with this particular couple had more to do with a changing market, circumstance, and an unemotional approach to buying, the latter of which is something every one of you reading will suggest you’re capable of, but in practice, very few are.

When we last spoke, Jake & Amanda had gone almost a full month without finding a house on which they wanted to submit a bid.  This represented a complete one-hundred-eighty-degree turnaround from the previous 45 days, when we had submitted 7 offers.

On a Sunday afternoon, we saw two houses: a detached on Bowmore Road in the Upper Beaches, and a detached just past the boundary of Toronto & Scarborough.

The houses were similar if only for being detached, otherwise, they couldn’t have been more different.

The house on Bowmore was in great shape structurally and mechanically, and had stood the test of time.  But it was a bit tired, and the lack of parking, while not an issue for my clients who didn’t have a car, was tough to swallow at the $950,000 asking price.

The house in Scarborough was essentially a 3-year-old house; a complete gut-renovation, with a huge footprint, and more square footage than we’d seen in any house, save for perhaps the one semi-detached in Keelsdale.  Listed at $849,000, it had been on the market for about five weeks.

Bowmore had come onto the market in mid-July, after a period dominated by sellers listing artificially-low to try and get multiple offers, but who would most certainly end up re-listing higher after their Plan-A failed.  I wrote a lot about this on my blog last summer, and I blamed the sellers and listing agents equally, as the sellers didn’t want to face the reality of a changing market, and the listing agents didn’t actually know what any house was worth.

The $950,000 listing price represented the new trend in the market, where you’d come out at, or above, fair market value.

It was a welcome change for buyers who were worn-out from the spring, or for just about any market participants who simply tired of the “game” of pricing.

The house had been on the market for two weeks by the time we’d seen it, and my clients liked it.

But they also liked the detached, 3-bed, 3-bath, 24 x 110 foot lot in Scarborough as well.

The Scarborough house, if you can believe this, was originally listed for a whopping $1,097,000, which was just so insane, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.  A series of price-drops left the house sitting at $849,000, but with the price so high to begin with, plus zero marketing effort whatsoever, the market just hadn’t responded, and the house continued to sit.

My clients realized they were in an enviable position, and one that no buyer in the spring market had been in: they had choice, and time.

Choice AND time.

Consider that one of those, on its own, is significant.

But both?  Together?  It was unheard of in the freehold market.

Now, throw in price flexibility, and you’re just laughing.

What a market we found ourselves in.

My clients decided that they wanted to “try their hand” at the Bowmore house, and just the idea of “trying one’s hand” was incredible, since it wasn’t something you did in the spring.

In the spring, if a house was listed at $799,900, and there were twelve offers, it just didn’t make any sense to “try your hand” with an $825,000 offer, when the house was going to sell for $1,100,000, or more.

But now we were looking at a completely different situation.

We put together an offer for $900,000 even, and submitted it with the caveat that we were “almost” firm on price.

Why almost firm?

As emotions run high when selling one’s home, many sellers don’t like to feel strong-armed, or like they’re losing a battle.  We could have offered $910,000 as a “take it or leave it,” but rather we submitted an offer for $50,000 under asking, for a house that had been on the market 14 days (an eternity in this area), and suggested that this represented just about our best price.

It was now up to the sellers to decide what their price was.

Because if it was $940,000, there was no deal to be had.  $930,000, same story.  $920,000, and perhaps they might think we’d play ball, but they might not want to risk losing us.

We had expected a sign-back to arrive the next afternoon, but the listing agent called me and said they had received another offer.

The market was cooling, but that didn’t mean we were in a buyer’s market.  There was always the threat of a competing offer, and once one came in, the seller could sit back and ask both of us to submit our “best” offer.

Instead, we did something that buyers so seldom do in this market: we walked away.

Our best price was $910,000, and who knows – maybe if we received an actual sign-back at $914,850, sitting in front of us, we’d have accepted it.

But with the prospect of a competing offer, and knowing we were $50,000 under the list price, Jake and Amanda simply said, “Shall we switch our focus to the Scarborough house?”

Bowmore sold three days later for $923,000.

But by the time Bowmore had sold, Jake and Amanda had already bought a house of their own…

Listed for $849,000, we had all the leverage here.  This house, which was listed by a relative of the sellers, was on its fourth listing now – this one for 33 days.

We submitted an offer for $825,000, and gave them a “take it or leave it,” but of course, I wouldn’t phrase it like that.

And perhaps the most interesting term of the offer was that it was conditional on a home inspection – something we didn’t see in the spring, when every house had a pre-inspection, and the buyers had to either rely on that inspection, or conduct their own, before “offer night” when a dozen unconditional offers would materialize.

We tied up the house for $825,000, conditional, amid a lot of groveling from the other side, but no real action.

I don’t blame the listing agent for acquiescing.  He simply had no leg to stand on.  You can’t bargain without any chips.

We used my preferred inspector from Carson Dunlop, somebody I’ve used probably a hundred times, and he gave the house rave reviews.  My clients are extremely intelligent, and far more informed about the inner workings of a home than most buyers, and they hit it off with my inspector as we went through the house.  The inspection revealed a few things to “keep an eye on,” but more importantly, it identified how well-done some of the renovations were.

We signed the waiver of our condition, and voila – we had bought a house!

Anticlimactic?  Maybe a little, based on how I allowed the end of the story to unfold.

But that’s the point with this particular real estate journey: despite the nine-offer process, there were never any tears, and a fraction of the emotion you might otherwise expect.

Now, the story isn’t over quite yet.

Jake and Amanda had purchased a home, but the next order of business was selling their condo.

A funny thing happened this past summer, which has since been documented: while the freehold market, which has traditionally outpaced the condo market in virtually every arena, started to slow, the condo market just kept on going.

Jake and Amanda owned a small, 1-bed, 1-bath condo, about 539 square feet.

We were working off two sales in the building, both 568 square foot models, which sold for $425,000 and $418,000 respectively back in the spring.

Based on the price per square foot of the latter sale, Jake and Amanda’s unit would be worth $396,704.

The problem, of course was that the comparable sales were from the spring, and that represented the peak of the market.

Those two units also faced south, were higher up, and had better views.

As a result, I felt Jake and Amanda’s condo was “worth” around $380,000.

But as we know, a property is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it, not what comparable sales suggest.

I told Jake and Amanda that we should price the unit at $399,900, and that anybody who walks through the door in the first 48 hours and likes it would probably end up submitting an offer for near the asking price, regardless of the comparable sales.

I don’t believe that today’s buyer agents, many young, many inexperienced, many poor “A.F.” as the kids say, have any clue what any condo is worth.  As a result, I often price my listings higher than they’re worth, because I know some rookie buyer-agent who needs a paycheque is going to do the “selling” for me.

But as it would turn out with Jake and Amanda’s condo, we didn’t need an inexperienced, rookie agent to sell the unit, since the market sold the unit for us…

On the second day of the listing, an agent (yes, a young, inexperienced guy) registered an offer, and called me to discuss.  I naively assumed it would be at the list price, and also naively assumed it would be irrevocable until 11:59pm that night.

I was wrong on both accounts.

Not only was the offer for $389,000, which was $10K under list, but it was also irrevocable until 6pm the next day, meaning I had time to sit and wait, and let other agents know we had an offer.

I asked him, “Why in the world are you coming in under the list price?” and he told me, “We’re here to negotiate.”

Rookie mistake.

Had he submitted a full-price, $399,900 offer, with a midnight irrevocable, and had I worked the phones to draw up other interest, and come up empty, we’d have accepted that offer.

But instead, he submitted an offer under the asking price, and tried to sell it to us with an extended irrevocable as if to say, “Take your time, sleep on it, we’ll be here tomorrow.”

Of course, the next day, two more offers were registered, and this guy had cost his client a property.

The higher of the two offers was $425,000, unconditional, whereas the other two offers both had conditions.

Jake and Amanda were over the moon, and for good reason.

They had hoped to get $385,000 – $390,000 for the unit, and here we were, with three offers, and $25,000 over asking in a “cooling market.”

And that agent – the first one who submitted an offer, now had a buyer who saw she could have got a unit that sold for $425,000, for $399,900, if they had simply played the game correctly.

The sale set a new record for price per square foot in the building, and it confused the hell out of me about the market!

How in the world could the freehold market be cooling, but the condo market was still red-hot?

Entry-level-condos, that’s how.  There’s not a lot out there at $399,900, and this unit looked A+, as I always stage and market the hell out of my listings.  It was probably the nicest-looking 1-bedroom on the east side at that time, and a lot of buyers out there have already made their minds up by the time they browse through those twenty MLS photos.

By the end of Jake and Amanda’s real estate journey, they had likely purchased the best house out of the nine on which they had submitted offers, and they had sold their condo for a lot more than they’d expected.

They got every feature in a house that they wanted, and then some – the master ensuite bathroom was unexpected, as was the full 800 sqft basement with a rec-room, 4th bedroom, and bathroom.  They got parking, which half the other houses didn’t have, and the house was detached, which again, half the other houses were not.

It’s funny how these stories turn out sometimes.  You would think some folks in their position would eventually “settle,” or not find anything, or end up with an inferior home.  But for Jake and Amanda, the ninth time really was the charm.  Really, and truly.  Perhaps the semi in Keelsdale was larger; maybe it’s a tie, who knows.

But they sure didn’t feel the same way about that house as the one they ended up with, and being able to take their time, play one house off the next, submit an offer well under list, refuse to negotiate on the price, and conduct a home inspection, put the proverbial icing on the cake.

So ends their journey, and every day in my line of work, another begins.

The TREB numbers are coming out this week, and I’m sure we’ll have lots to discuss on Wednesday and beyond…

The post Tao Of The 2017 Buyer (Part IV) appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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I had three very interesting experiences last week, all with agents who didn’t quite have a full grasp of what they were doing.

One of the agents told me, “That’s such a minor detail,” in response to his complete and utter understanding of basic contract law.

But if an agent can make a mistake like this (let alone three of them…) then perhaps a buyer can too.  So let me tell you these three stories, and hopefully you’ll avoid making the same “minor” mistakes…

1) Registering an offer does not stop another offer from being accepted.

Here’s an interesting one…

I listed a condominium for sale last week and implemented the “offers any time” strategy.

What I mean by that, is instead of pricing low, at, say, $449,900, and “holding back” offers until October 31st at 7pm, hoping to get multiple offers, we over-priced the unit at $539,000, thinking that perhaps the first buyer through the door might throw the boat at the place, and make a full-priced offer.

It worked.

On the second day of the listing, we received an offer for the full list-price (actually rounded up to $540,000), with a huge 10% deposit, my seller’s desired closing date, and get this – no conditions.

That didn’t use to be a big deal, when every condo was selling in multiple offers, with no conditions, back in the spring.  This fall, it’s been an impressive feat, and I was quite pleased with the offer.

We received the offer on Friday morning, with an irrevocable of 9:30pm on Friday night.

My seller jumped at the offer, and wanted to sign it right then and there, but I suggested we wait until 9:00pm, and see if any other offers come in.

I paged all the agents who had showed the property, to let them know that an offer was registered, and that it was irrevocable at 9:30pm.

I’d like to think this is common sense in the industry, but sadly, it’s not.

It’s a way to ensure that any interested buyers, who might make an offer to your seller, are informed.

Not only that, I make sure to include the irrevocable date – something agents don’t typically do, so that the buyers are aware they have time.

Mid-afternoon, my phone rang, and it was an agent.

“I’m registering an offer on XXX Property,” he told me.

“That’s great,” replied.  “Can you send me the signed Form 801?  And when can you send the offer?” I asked him.

“Sunday,” he said, “I’m gonna be sending it on Sunday.”

I told him that we had an offer that was irrevocable until Friday at 9:30pm, that was very good, and we were going to work with it.

“Oh, nuh-no, no,” he said, sounding extremely confident, “You don’t get it.  I’m showing the property on Sunday morning,” he explained, “My client’s gonna love it, and I’m gonna send you an offer on Sunday afternoon.”

I may be condescending on my blog, but when dealing with other agents, I’m always straight-forward.  I reiterated that we had a registered offer, it was acceptable to us, it was set to expire at 9:30pm that night, and we were going to accept the offer at 9:00pm if we didn’t have a superior offer at that time.

He sighed.

Loudly.

“No man,” he explained, “What I’m telling you is that I’m registering my offer.  Now you have TWO offers,” he said, “And you can’t sell this property until you have my offer.”

Again, this is when some agents would hang up the phone, but I was somewhat amused at this point, and professionally curious.  Because don’t forget, this was the person that a buyer out there in the market had chosen to represent his or her interests in the biggest purchase of their life!  This guy, who had no clue what he was doing.

“Do you have a signed offer?” I asked him.

He said that he did not…….yet.

“Can you email me a signed Form 801?” I asked him.

Amazingly, he blamed me for being condescending, and said, “You know that I don’t.”

“Have you shown the property?” I asked him.

Again, he insinuated that I was being rude, and said, “You already know this – I’m showing it on Sunday.”

I then explained to him that he doesn’t have a signed offer, and thus he can’t register an offer.  I reiterated that we had an offer, irrevocable at 9:30pm, and that we intended to work with it.

Then came the best part!  He told me, “Yeah but don’t you see what I’m doing?  I’m sticking my foot in the door!  If I register an offer, then you can’t sell the property out from under me!”

I could just picture him pointing his index finger to his head and saying, “….because I’m smart like ‘dat!”

I went over the situation one more time with him just for good measure, and then I said, “I have to go now.  If you have any issue with this, call your broker, and feel free to call mine.”

I’m sure he worked for a chop-shop that had no manager, broker, or photocopier, but the point was made.

In the end, no other agents came forward with buyers, and we accepted the offer in hand.

–

2) You cannot sign the “Confirmation of Acceptance” and then make changes to the offer.

This one was just unbelievable, but then again, not everybody is an “expert” in contract law…

I was working on a sign-back with an agent; I was representing the buyer, he was representing the seller, and we had gone back-and-forth three times.

We were primarily negotiating the price, but this agent and the seller seemed to be the type to want those little “moral” victories.

Case in point, the “visitation clause” in our Schedule A.  You guys are familiar with this one, right?  You usually include a clause that says, “The Buyer and Seller hereby agree that the buyer shall be allowed three (3) visits to the property, at mutually convenient times, before the closing date.”

This allows the buyer to go back to take measurements, get quotes from contractors, show family, etc.

When a seller changes the “3” visits to “2” visits, you know he’s being ridiculous.

That’s negotiating for the sake of negotiating, and while I’m sure there’s a situation (ie. an elderly woman living alone?) where the visitations do matter, it’s so incredibly insignificant, that to change the number of visits from three to two just shows you want to win something.

In any event, we had negotiated the price, the deposit, the conditional period and the closing date, and it felt like we were just about finished.

The listing agent called me and said, “My guy has accepted, congrats, we have a deal!” and I waited by the laptop for the paperwork to arrive in my inbox.

But when I received the completed Agreement of Purchase & Sale, and opened it up to look it over, I actually laughed when I saw what he had done.

In the “Chattels Included” section, his client had struck out “outdoor patio table and six chairs, gas barbecue, two lounge chairs,” and yet he signed the Confirmation of Acceptance.

Do you see the problem here?

If you are going to accept an offer that was presented to you, whether it’s the first offer, or a sign-back, you cannot change anything on that offer, otherwise you would be signing back to the buyer.

In this case, the seller had accepted our offer, but removed about $3,000 worth of chattels.

If the seller wanted to remove the $3,000 in chattels, he would have to do so, initial the change, and send it back to us as a sign-back.

Any change, no matter how big or small, renders the previous offer null and void.

I called the agent to ask if this was an oversight, and he said, “No, why?”

I told him that legally, if he wanted to make these changes, he’d have to sign it back to us.  Or, he could have accepted the offer as it was.

He told me, “No, look, we’re okay with this deal, we’re accepting.  But we’re taking out the furniture.”

It was like he didn’t listen to what I’d just said.

I once again explained the basics of contract law, and he said, “That’s such a minor detail!  If I were accepting the offer and increasing the price twenty grand, I can see how you’d have an issue.”

Clearly, he thought that if you mixed black and white together, you always got grey.

But unfortunately, no matter if the change is “minor” or if it’s major, a change is still a change, and the original offer is void.

Incredibly, he didn’t want to back down!  He told me, “But my guy has accepted it!  It’s done!”

I actually began to worry that this was going to become an issue.  The agent had no clue what he was doing, and those agents are dangerous.  It’s not just what they’re doing in front of you, it’s what you’re doing that you can’t see, what they’re telling their clients, etc.

Once again, I explained the two options that he had:

1) Remove the chattels, initial the document, sign it back to us.
2) Sign the Confirmation of Acceptance as is.

Problem being, of course, he had already done both, and sent it back to us.  So as far as I was concerned, we had to start all over again since he had figuratively puked all over the offer, and we could no longer read it.

So before he could come up with any more bright ideas, I re-drafted a new, fresh offer, with the terms and conditions as they were during our last sign-back, with the chattels included, and sent it to him.  I wanted to tell him, “You can either accept this, as is, or delete the chattels and sign it back to us.  But you can’t do both,” since I really wanted this to be a teachable moment, but I didn’t want to give him the option.  I told him take it or leave it, it was our final offer, and I didn’t trust him any longer so I would advise my client not to work with his sign back.

They accepted (without making any changes), and it was a done deal.

While this was the first time I’ve ever experienced an agent trying to make changes to an offer and accept it at the same time, a quick poll of my colleagues shows this incident was far from unique.

–

3) Two business days is two business days, it’s not complicated.

Here was a case of simple math if you ask me.

When you purchase a condominium that’s conditional on a lawyer’s satisfactory review of the condominium corporation’s Status Certificate (financial statements, budget, reserve fund study, rules and regulations, etc), you include a certain number of days for that review.

It’s usually 2-3 days, and my standard condition has two days.

I submitted an offer last Tuesday night that was accepted on Wednesday morning.

Our condition was, as I mentioned, two business days.

The listing agent, upon sending me the accepted copy of the Agreement of Purchase & Sale, wrote, “I look forward to receiving the Notice of Fulfillment of Condition on Thursday.”

Huh?

Come again?

The deal was struck on Wednesday morning.  One day to take us to Thursday, one day to take us to Friday.  What was I missing?

I asked her if this was a typo, and she said, “No,” and then gave me this amazing explanation.

Around midnight on Tuesday, she had emailed me the Status Certificate.

Her contention was that the two business days is from receipt of the Status Certificate, which, to be fair, is often how these clauses read.

But receipt doesn’t really matter if you don’t even have a completed deal yet!

By her logic (as I later explained to her), she could have sent me the Status Certificate the previous Thursday and the Waiver or Notice of Fulfillment would have been due the day before we made the offer!

She said, “But I emailed you the Status Certificate on Tuesday, so two days means the Waiver is due Thursday.”

Forget that it was well past the end of business day on Tuesday, or that I could have been asleep when it hit my inbox.

Just use some logic here.

We did the deal on Wednesday.

Plus two days = Friday.

I’ve sold fifty condos this year, and this is the very first time this has become an issue.

In fact, I’ve sold hundreds of condos in the last thirteen years, and yes, this is the very first time I have ever had this conversation with another agent.

Amazingly, after she accepted the situation, she wanted to draw up an Amendment to explain the idea behind a “business day.”

The first situation I described had to do with the offer process, and the second was with contract law, but this was just simple math.

–

I understand the market can be dynamic, fast-paced, and that not every buyer out there knows the ins and outs of the market.

So hopefully a few of you read this, gained some insight, and can use it in your journey moving forward.

As for the agents in my stories, there’s just no excuse.

Be careful out there, folks.  And I’m not just talking about driving on Halloween!

The post “Minor” Details Can Have Major Consequences! appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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Call me soppy and a little naive, but perhaps a “feel-good” story from the real estate trenches will cure what ails you on an otherwise ugly November day.

This past week, I worked on two transactions with two agents who couldn’t have possibly been more different.

One did everything he could to help me and my clients, and the other offered absolutely zero assistance, and got in his own way when it came to potentially completing a deal.

Do unto others, or something.  Right?

I sold a property on Wednesday night, and it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

It was a property that I’d had listed off and on since the spring; a very complicated sale, in a complicated market – for this housing type.

I had been diligently working away over the past two weeks with a cooperating agent who I’ve dealt with before, and with whom I have a mutual respect.

My clients were adamant about obtaining an unconditional offer, and his seller was adamant about knowing that he could get insurance on the property, so we ended up in a stalemate.

The offer on-paper fizzled out long ago, and we were left that a seller that essentially said, “I’ll accept those terms if and when you submit the offer without any conditions,” and a buyer who was basically telling us, “I’m not submitting the offer until I have confirmation of insurance, so you’ll just have to wait.”

And wait, we did.

This property has been listed (this time around) since the day after Labour Day, and what are the odds that on the very day that the cooperating agent calls to tell me his client was able to obtain insurance, another offer was submitted on the house?

Murphy’s Law.

We ended up taking the “other” offer, which was higher, also without conditions, and my colleague from a cooperating brokerage was left spurned.

I felt pretty salty about the whole thing.  He worked his tail off, did everything that was expected of him, and came up empty.

When I called him to deliver the bad news, he told me, “David, it was really a pleasure working with you, and that’s not hollow – that’s the truth.  You’re a consummate professional, and that’s saying something, considering who’s we’re out there trying to do deals with these days.”

It meant a lot, and I felt the exact same way.  It’s part of the reason I felt so bad about him not getting the deal.

There are all kinds of agents in this business, and if you’re a regular reader of Toronto Realty Blog, you know I’m not afraid to describe the various “types.”  I’m also not afraid to call a spade a spade, and detail bad behaviour when I see it.

This past week, I had two completely different experiences, with two different agents, one day after the next.

The first underscores all that’s wrong with our industry, and the second highlights a true “professional” who has been in the business for two decades, and hasn’t changed his approach to customer service one iota.

I showed a condo last weekend in a slightly older building last weekend, and my clients were pretty keen on it.

The price per square foot was fantastic compared to newer comparable resale units, the fees weren’t as high as you would think, for a building of that age, and the renovations needed to the unit were minimal.

One question we did have was with respect to the parking, since there were two parking spaces, but Land Registry was not clear on whether it was one space for two cars, but also about whether or not these spaces were owned, or exclusive use.

In older buildings, many times the parking is “exclusive use,” meaning is common elements by definition, and isn’t owned, per se, by the unit owner.  It’s like your balcony or terrace – this is “exclusive use, common elements,” which means only you can use it, but you don’t legally own it.

I had gone through previous listings in the building, and hadn’t received the clarity I needed on the ownership situation, so I called the property manager.  Unfortunately, the property manager wouldn’t speak with me unless I was a unit owner, so I turned to the listing agent for help.

I called the listing agent – somebody who has been in the business for a while, but who (and I know from looking him up in IMS) is far from a high-volume producer.  6-8 transactions per year, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t build villages.  And in my opinion, it’s agents like this that need to sell condos in order to put money in their pockets, and who do anything, to anybody, to close a deal.

The agent had a rough demeanour from the minute I picked up the phone, and I just had that “feeling” of how this conversation was going to go.

“I showed your unit at XXX Street on the weekend….” I told him.

“Great, where’s my offer?” he asked, interrupting me in mid-thought.

“Right,” I said.  “Well here’s my question: do you know if the two parking spaces are separate??  Because there’s only one actual spot-number painted on the column, and I’m also not sure if the parking is owned or if it’s exclusive use.”

I was just cracking the lid on my morning coffee, so I was in no way prepared for his response.

“What the f*ck do I care?” he asked me.

And then I waited for a follow-up.

“Oh…..kay,” I offered to break the silence.

“Come on, I’m just breaking your balls a bit,” he said, as I hoped he was just being funny.  “But nah, seriously man, I mean what the hell do I care about parking?  There’s two cars down in the garage, right?  A Beamer and a Land Rover to boot, right, so they fit good, and you’re buying this place from good company, because let me tell you, these guys are well off.”

While I’ll concede that mentioning two large cars fit in the spaces is value-add, telling me how rich his clients are, and insinuating that buying from “good company” is of any importance, didn’t really strike a chord with me.

“Well,” I explained, “My clients only have one car, and they want to know if they can sell one space,” I told him.  “I also think there’s something to be said for owning the spaces, versus just having exclusive use, as we’re trying to value this unit versus one in another building.”

He barely let me finish before he interjected, “Nah, nah man, you’re all wrong, right.  None of that matters.  What matters is two cars.  Two cars, man.  That’s it.”

I didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere, so I asked, “Would your seller be able to speak to property management, and allow me to speak with the manager, to get some clarification?  They won’t speak to me unless I’m an owner.”

“Why the f*ck would I do that?” he asked.

There was a long pause as I tried to process things, and he then offered, “I mean, why am I doing you a favour?  What’s in this for us?  You wanna know what’s behind the curtain; what my clients have in their closet.  Why would we offer that kind of information?”

The whole conversation made no sense, so I simply said, “Because I need to know what you’re offering for sale, so my clients can decide what to buy.”

“Nah, nah, nah.  Nope.  It’s not like that,” he said.

We parted ways, and I suggested to my buyer that she call property management, and say that she was looking to buy a condo in the building, and she had a few questions.  Coming from a buyer – and an older, retired lady, nonetheless, perhaps it would be better received.

My buyer called me back shortly thereafter, and told me that the property manager still wouldn’t answer specific questions, but if she wanted to request a status certificate for the unit, she could.

The whole situation was frustrating to say the least, but even more frustrating was the call I got an hour later – from the listing agent.

Unleashing a barrage of curse-words that I haven’t used since high school, he asked, “how dare you call and try to trade on my clients’ names?”

I didn’t even know what that meant, and not much of the rest of the conversation made any sense.

Folks, I know some of you might try to see the “other side” of this, and suggest that, I don’t know, we should make an offer, conditional, and then they can show us whether there’s two parking spaces, and whether they’re owned or exclusive use?

But that doesn’t make any sense.

“Is there a locker with this unit?”

“Yes, there is.”

“Thanks.”

I don’t see how our situation is any different from that.

We ended up looking at a couple more units this past week, one of which we’re in sign-back on as we speak.

It’s too bad.  But perhaps that’s why the other unit has been on the market for 57 days…

The very next day, I was looking at two townhouses with clients who are moving from Mississauga to the downtown core, so they can be closer to work, and so their daughter can attend a speciality school here in the city.

The entire reason for this move was to make life easier, mainly by avoiding a 45-minute daily commute to-and-from work, without losing the comforts of a large house on a wide lot in a family neighbourhood.

We were looking at two townhouses – one downtown, one uptown, and we were really stuck on the parking.

My clients have a 5-car private driveway in Mississauga, and while they’re not crazy about the idea of having ONE parking space here in the central core, they could make it work.

One of my clients would store her car at the Bay/Adelaide centre, because she really only drives the car for client meetings, and on business trips, and doesn’t need the car at home.

My other client would store his car in the garage at the townhouse.

And their older kids would have to use street parking if and when they came home to visit from university.

The townhouse uptown had underground parking, and we measured the opening of the garage, which was 10′ 2″.

The garage itself was probably 16-feet wide, or what real estate agents like to call “one and a half car garage,” but overall, the 10-foot entrance would fit just about any car my clients or their kids would be driving.

The townhouse downtown had a garage, and it looked really tight.

From the first day we visited this property (and we saw it four times!), we kept coming back to the parking space.

Would her car fit?  Would his?

Last week, she tried to do an 14-point turn and manoever her car into the garage, but she wasn’t able.

I told her, “I’ll bet you your kid’s next violin lesson I can get your car in that garage,” to which, she accepted the challenge.

Maybe it was the stick-shift on this luxury automobile, or maybe it was the fact that I felt like I was driving Batman’s car, but I barely got the car out of “Park” before I gave up.

So this past week, we returned to the townhouse, with her husband’s car, to see if he could fit his car in the garage.

But guess what?

When we arrived, we saw the seller’s car in the garage!

And to complicate matters, there was an offer on the property.

We wanted to offer an unconditional offer, but we couldn’t in good conscience make an offer without knowing if a car would fit in the garage.

We measured the entrance at an even 8″ on the nose, which was 2’2″ less than the garage at the uptown-townhouse.

The husband told me, “I can fit the car, no problem,” and the wife said, “I’d have to see it, I really would.”

I can’t say I blame her, and as he hit up Google to compare the turning radius, length, and width of the Toyota Corolla that was currently in the garage, and the Mazda SUV that he owned, I called the listing agent to see what could be done.

As our bad luck would provide for, the sellers had just left for a three-week vacation, and thus they weren’t able to come and move their car.

I begged the listing agent to find a solution, and he spent the better part of an hour speaking with the sellers, their cousin, and their cleaning lady.

After 90 minutes in the property, I left to go to my next appointment, and my buyers headed back to work.

My phone rang, and it was the listing agent.

“I found a key to the car,” he said.  “I’m game to try this thing, if you are.”

I thanked him profusely, and called my clients to see if they could come back to the property.

A half-hour later, the listing agent was moving the sellers’ car, with the cleaning lady’s key, and parking it on the street so my client could test-out the garage.

We watched as he worked the stick-shift like Jacques Villeneuve, and worked the car back-and-forth, back-and-forth, until the car was safely in the garage.

“Got it!” my client exclaimed, after getting out of of the car, smiling, and pounding on the hood of the car.

“But I’ll be damned if I’m going to do this every single morning, for the rest of my life,” he said, as our hopes of making this work came crashing down.

I walked out to the street with the listing agent as he got back in the sellers’ car, and told him how much I appreciated his efforts.

“Well, it’s not like we want this family to buy a house only to find out they don’t like a major feature of it, do we?”

I was amazed.

The listing agent’s actions – helping us with our query, might have cost him an offer, but it underscored the length he would go to work on his seller’s behalf.

And in the end, he wanted to make sure the buyer was happy too.

I can’t think of a time when I’ve had two more different experiences, ironically with the same feature of a piece of real estate (parking), in such a short time period.

It was Ying & Yang.

Night and Day.

Opposite-day, in the world of Toronto real estate.

I’m sorry, folks.  But you catch more flies with honey in this business.  I’m sure you can poke holes in each of these stories if you try really hard, but trust me when I say that there’s only one way to work in this business, if you’re looking for a lengthy, successful career with satisfied clients, repeat business, and no lawsuits…

The post Help vs. Hinder: A Tale Of Two Agents appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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How do they get to that point?

What must transpire for a seller to do something that crazy?

Folks, this story is hot off the presses.  I can still smell the shwarma on my fingertips as they type away on this keyboard (I’ll explain the shwarma later…)

Let me regale you with my latest experience, literally hours old, and explain how a seller goes from one list price, to a higher one, overnight…

My poor clients, honestly

Right when they think they’ve finally caught a break, it all comes crashing down on them.

Don’t worry – I prepared them for the eventual outcome, which you already know, having read the title line.

Yes, we made an offer on a house on Tuesday night, only to see it be rejected, and the seller is going to instead re-list at a higher price this week, or next.

But it’s not the conclusion to the story that’s of interest this time around.

It’s how we got there.

I’ve written quite a lot in the past about how many sellers out there will list their homes for sale at a given price, receive a fewer-than-expected number of offers (or no offers at all…) and decide to raise the price.

We saw this quite a bit in the spring.

When the market changed, and those $799,900 listings, which had been generating 10-12 offers in February and March, and selling for $1,100,000, started to get significantly less interest, we started to see those list prices increased from $799,900, to $1,089,000 the day after a failed “offer night.”

It became an epidemic.

So much so, in fact, that I hypothesized that it skewed the TREB data, and “New Listings” were substantially higher as a result of so many properties being counted twice.

In the spring, we knew that a lot of sellers, not to mention agents and buyers, were having trouble figuring out the changing market.  As a result, it took a lot longer than expected for sellers and their listing agents to change strategies, and list at or near fair market value, with offers any time, rather than hysterically under-list at a price often 70% of fair market value, hold back offers, and set an offer date.

In the fall market, we’re seeing houses listed a lot closer to fair market value (those with “offer nights”), but also seeing houses listed with “offers any time.”

We’re also seeing far fewer homes being re-listed at a higher price, as we did in the spring.

But if you’re wondering in those cases where the seller does re-list higher, how do they get there?  Well, I have a story for you…

I have made two offers with Andrew & Marion this fall.

We lost the first bid by a little, and the second bid by a lot!

I’m not going to tell you in what area they’re looking, since I want to keep the listing in this story positively unidentifiable, but let’s just say that it’s a high-demand area (what area isn’t?), and listings have really slowed down over the last two weeks.

Last week, a new listing hit the market, and I figured it would sell for well over our budget, which was very close to the list price.

The house was detached, in an area where the semi-detached vs. detached ratio is about 50/50, but it had a rare private driveway, and it was steps from the subway.

We had bid on houses that were much further from the subway, houses with no parking, and houses that were semi-detached.  But they were all really polished, and we were willing to compromise on location/parking/semi in exchange for a beautiful, turnkey house.

The house on which we bid on Tuesday night was not in good shape.  Structurally, it was sound.  But aesthetically, in today’s market of pristine, staged, magazine-worthy houses and condos, it just didn’t compete.

We didn’t really know if we were going to submit a bid, since we had expected competition, but it became clear by 5pm that offers weren’t pouring in.  There were zero offers registered at that point, and the listing agent, probably trying to encourage any offer, told me that he honestly didn’t expect anybody to come in.

Andrea & Marion went to the bank and got a certified cheque for $70,000, and we met for the handoff, and signed the offer.

We were submitting an offer of the listing price – $1,298,000, with the $70,000 deposit cheque ‘herewith,’ and no conditions.

Offers were being presented at the listing brokerage at 7:00pm, but by 6:00pm, the listing agent called to say he didn’t know when offers would be, or where.

Something was off, but I had yet to really realize it.

I was in the area early, so I had to kill time waiting for him to call me.

Have you ever gone into Subway Sandwiches, and seen one “Sandwich Artist” slowly working on a 6-incher as though it were a 12-foot novelty sub, while four other people waited in line?

I have no patience for that.

I just can’t do it.  I physically can’t watch the world go by at 20 KM/H when my mind is constantly running at 120.

I found a shwarma place down the street, and my God did these guys have a spread!

As much as I wanted to gain seven pounds last night, I managed to exhibit some self-control, and just go for the standard chicken shwarma.

Then I went out to my car, like every lonely real estate agent does, and ate a shwarma in the front seat, while trying desperately to avoid dripping garlic sauce on my winter coat, and receiving curious looks from passer-byers.

I pulled up in front of the house at 8:00pm, since rather than meet at the office at 7:00pm, we would meet at the house an hour later.

I went inside, and met the two agents – Peter and Cathy, and the seller, who sat with arms-folded, in a cheap, ugly, kitchen chair.

It bears mentioning at this point – there were two sellers of this property, and yet only one was present.

And thus, sadly, this offer presentation was over before it even began.

I exchanged pleasantries with the listing agents, and then extended my hand to the seller and said, “Hello, I’m David Fleming from Bosley Real Estate, great to meet you,” to which all I received in return was “hi.”

Maybe it was a language barrier, or maybe it was a sign of things to come.

But I carried on, laying out three copies of the Agreement of Purchase & Sale, with the “lead” copy featuring our $70,000 bank draft and one of my business cards paper-clipped to the offer.

I told the three of them a little bit about my clients, as is usually the custom, even though the vibe at the table didn’t warrant it.

Something was “off” in the room, and I figured there had been a discussion before I’d arrived.  You know when you walk into a room, and the people in the room are quiet, and you ask, “Were you guys just talking about me?”  You just have that feeling.  And the feeling I had, was like that.

I always let the listing agents do the presentation; there’s nothing worse than a buyer agent who decides he or she is going to take control of the table.

When I had finished my spiel about my clients, not a word of which was listened to by the seller, I handed the three copies of the offer over, and said, “Peter, Cathy, please proceed.”

The seller took one look at the first page of the offer, and we lost her.  It was done, even though it was already finished before it had begun.

There was no sigh, no grunt, and it’s not like she ripped the offer up.  But part of my job is to read body language and non-verbal cues, and it’s something I’m very good at.

You know when somebody is less than happy, but they don’t want to show it, so rather than open their mouth and let out a sigh, they catch themselves and sort of roll their tongue through their cheek?  Add in a blank stare, a shift of the bodyweight from one side of the chair to the other, and I think the point is made.

The listing agent, for some odd reason, read the offer out of order.  He skipped through to the Schedule A, perhaps to highlight there were no conditions, but took his time reading every word, of every clause, even though it was all pointless.

The seller had stopped listening.

The four of us sat there, each of us knowing this was merely an exercise, each of us acting like we didn’t want the others to know.

When I present an offer, I place my hands together on the table, and I don’t move.  I literally turn into a statue.

The seller sat with her arms crossed, not looking at her copy of the offer and not following along, shifting her gaze from one end of the table to the other.

The other listing agent was looking at my eyes, then the sellers eyes, then the offer, then back, and forth, all over again.

And the listing agent with the offer in his hands continued to read through the offer, maybe hoping for divine intervention.

I had all I needed by this point, and stopped reading body language.

I began to think about that shwarma….

“….Fridge, Stove, Microwave, Dishwasher,” the listing agent read.

“What is that green stuff they put in the pita?” I wondered.  “What’s that called?  I know there’s a name for it.”

“No fixtures excluded, no rental items included in Section 6 of the offer…”

“I’m pretty sure the pinkish stuff is radish, but what’s in the chopped veggies other than cucumber?”

“Title search date is the requisition date for lawyers; you don’t need to concern yourself with that…”

“No, wait, it’s not a radish – it’s turnip!  What the hell was I thinking?  Who puts radish in a shwarma?”

“The Schedule B is our own brokerage’s clauses, about interest on deposit, it’s Prime minus 2.75%……”

“Pickles!  They were missing pickles!  Isn’t a shwarma supposed to have pickles?”

“The rest of the agreement is boiler-plate, just standard clauses that appear in every offer…”

“I would go back there for sure.  I don’t know how many calories were in that thing, but it was worth it.  I shouldn’t have chased it with the gum, however.  My mouth feels horrible.”

This is basically how we spent five minutes together, and the other agents felt the same way.

The agent reading the offer was jumping around from section to section, I’m not sure why.

The agent sitting next to him didn’t know whether to hold a smile, or look reserved, but the back-and-forth made her look crazy.

When the agent said, “The closing date is January 31st, is this what you wanted?” and the seller replied, “I don’t know.  I haven’t thought about it.  I’d really have to think about it,” I was a little perturbed.  It was clear she didn’t care about any of this, she was unprepared, and the listing agent had to bear some of the blame for that.

For the rental items section, I wrote “None” and the agent asked the seller, “Is the hot water tank a rental, or is it owned?”  The seller said, “I have no idea.”  The agent told me, “You should have put ‘Hot Water Tank – If Rental,’ because we don’t know if it’s owned or not,” like somehow, that was my fault.

When the charade was finished, I graciously shook all their hands, smiled, thanked them for their time, and walked toward the front door.

One of the agents followed me, and walked me out.

Knowing full-well that this house was going to be re-listed $150,000 higher the next day, I simply asked the listing agent, “What are we doing here?”

He asked me what I meant.

“This.  This entire process,” I said.  “That seller isn’t going to sell, you know that.”

He nodded.

“I’m here with an unconditional, full-price offer in hand, my clients went to get a deposit cheque.  I know it’s not the price she’s expecting, but all I ask for is a little respect.”

He nodded again.

“She didn’t listen to the terms of the offer, she didn’t look me in the eye once, the husband didn’t even bother showing up.”

He agreed.

“The husband stayed late at the office,” the agent explained.  “When he found out there was only one offer, he basically decided they weren’t going to sell the house tonight.”

“And yet, here I am,” I mused.

The agent was a nice guy, and I think the sellers really threw him for a loop.

“What can you do when your client wants more money?” he rhetorically asked.

“They don’t deserve it,” I told him.  “The house doesn’t show well, they put zero effort into the listing.  The paint colours are brutal, their furniture is the cheapest, ugliest crap I’ve ever seen, they didn’t stage it, didn’t fix anything in the house, they didn’t lift a finger, or spend a penny, and there are shit stains in the downstairs toilet.  What did they expect?”

What did they expect?  Seriously?

Had they put $10,000 into this listing, maybe they’d have gotten the $1.45 Million they clearly wanted.

But they didn’t.

They felt entitled, they misread the market, they misunderstood the market, and the market responded in kind.

So next week, we’ll probably see this little $1,298,000 house come back out at $1,449,000, and there, it will sit.

Just like many before it.  And just like many sellers before them, they’ll lament the market, and in keeping in line with Monday’s theme – not take any responsibility.

For Andrew and Marion, it was certainly worth a shot.

And for me, I enjoyed the experience (despite the cynicsm above), got an idea for a blog post, and had one hell of a chicken shwarma…

The post What Makes A Seller Want To Re-List HIGHER? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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With new legislation continuing to favour tenants over landlords, a landlord has to make very sure that he or she wants to effectively be “partners” in a real estate investment, since a tenant is very hard to remove once the lease is signed and the key is in the door.

I’ve always been extremely diligent when evaluating candidacy for my investor-clients.

Last month, I received an offer on a rental property with a very mysterious tenant.

Let me tell the whole story, and you decide whether or not you’d have this person as your tenant…

Okay, maybe that photo is a bit overboard.

It’s not like we didn’t see the tenant’s face in the story I’m about to tell.

But even when you do meet the tenant, and even when he or she is nice, pleasant, says all the right things, and seems trustworthy, it can blow up in your face.

Last month, there was a story about a “professional scammer” in Liberty Village who had duped at least twelve landlords and/or roommates.  Read the story HERE.

I’m also reminded of another story, this one from 2016, which is a classic “don’t judge a book by its cover” lesson.

As this article reads, a “well-dressed, professional-tenant” had been duping landlords in Yorkville, and gaming the system designed to protect both landlords and tenants.  A 62-year-old man, seemingly-normal, wearing a suit, with tales of his career as a professional, had been moving into expensive condos, not paying the rent, and then forcing the landlords to chase him through the courts for eviction.

As I tell my investor-clients, the professional scammers usually stick to online ads, and don’t look to MLS for their prey.  If they do, they’re looking for an absentee-landlord, with an absent-minded agent, and if and when they’re pressed on personal info, they’ll simply flee, and move on to an easier target.

Nonetheless, I try to be very diligent when looking for tenants for my investor-clients, while trying to avoid doing anything that could be construed as “discrimination.”

What actually is discrimination can change like the direction of the wind, and as the word gets softer, and a lot weirder as we wind down 2017, I think a lot of people would cry “discrimination” if they could.

This is why when rejecting a candidate, you simply say, “We’re going in another direction,” and not answer any follow-up questions, as was the case last month when my investor clients turned aside a rather mysterious tenant.

Mysterious might not be the right word, as I alluded to above.

But “sketchy” is fair.  And I’m sure we could think up some other words to describe her.

But in the end, we just didn’t think she passed the “sniff test,” which is a very inexact science, but one that is often the most useful, nonetheless.

As is the case with many of my stories, I’m going to change some of the details to try to protect anonymity…

I had a listing for a 1-bed, 1-bath condo in the west end, up for lease for $1,995/month.

Surprisingly, it didn’t lease in the first 12 hours like most places in this red-hot Toronto rental market, and it actually sat for a full week!

On the eighth day of the listing, I received a phone call from a rather young agent who said he would be submitting an offer on behalf of his client, and that the client was a “Triple-A tenant with great income.”

He wasn’t wrong, on the latter part – at least not at face value.

Upon receiving the offer shortly thereafter, I scanned through the supporting documents.  Those documents, for those of you that don’t know, are usually the following:

1) Rental Application (OREA document – name, DOB, address, last two places of residence, occupation, present and prior employment, financial obligations, personal references, etc).

2) Credit Check (I always ask for Equifax, full version, with the “FICO Score” and all debt as well as credit inquiries).

3) Employment Letter

Beyond these, however, I insist upon “proof” of employment, such as recent pay stubs, or a screenshot of a bank account showing deposits from the employer.

I also look up the tenant on LinkedIn (any business professional without LinkedIn is suspicious), Facebook (see how they act in their spare time), Instagram, Pinterest, and anything else I can find online.

So upon receiving these supporting documents, the first one I looked at was the employment letter.

That was the first red flag.

Wait, that’s not exactly true.  The very first red flag was the very first thing you’d see on any rental application or offer: the tenant’s name.

Ruby Starr

Yes, this tenant’s name was Ruby Starr.

Now, I don’t think you have to be a regular visitor to websites that would crash your hard-drive to think that perhaps a name like “Ruby Starr” might be one you’d find in the world of adult entertainment.

The name was a bit odd, but I moved along regardless.

I got to the employment letter, and that’s when my spidey-sense really started tingling.

Ms. Ruby Starr, apparently, made $95,000 per year working at a sandwich shop.

But it wasn’t just any sandwich shop; it was one in Niagara Falls.

It really didn’t make any sense to me.

And the letter was on a blank, white, standard, 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, typed in Times New Roman, and signed by a guy whose name was something out of The Sopranos.

I looked up the sandwich shop, and they did indeed exist.  Not only that, they were quite well-known, with five locations in Niagara Falls.

The employment letter said that Ruby Starr was going to head up the expansion plan of this “family company” that sells sandwiches in Niagara Falls, as they look to open two locations in Toronto.

I called the gentleman who signed the letter, and he sounded somewhat legit.  He said that Ms. Starr would be driving around to different suppliers, managing the new locations, overseeing the construction, etc., and it all sounded good until he sort of trailed off, like he was focused on something else but still trying to speak into the phone, and he just started muttering random words like, “direct suppliers…….bakery buns…….you know, cold cuts………like two locations………it’s all good……..salads too.”

I can’t quite explain it, but I felt as though the person I was speaking to wasn’t really all there on our phone call.

I followed up with the cooperating agent and asked for a few recent pay stubs, and he emailed them to me within five minutes.

That was either very helpful, and convenient, or it was suspicious – as in why didn’t he send these over with all the other supporting documentation before?

The “pay stubs” weren’t really stubs of any sort.  They were basically two PDF’s, which contained deposit amounts and looked as though they were typed in Excel.

Anybody could have typed those up, clicked “Save as PDF,” and called them stubs.

But even more suspicious now was the fact that the address on the pay stubs didn’t match the address on the rental application, which upon further research, didn’t match the address on the driver’s license.

And I’m not sure if this matters, but that driver’s license had expired.

So we had three different mailing addresses, and none of them were in Niagara Falls where Ms. Starr apparently had worked for the past six months – according to her rental application.

Oh, wait, one more thing – the guy from The Sopranos said she had been working for him for over a year.

It was all pretty messy, if you ask me.

This girl made $90,000+ working for a family sandwich-chain, in Niagara Falls, having never lived there, and she had three different addresses.

And her name was Ruby Starr…

I looked her up online, and she had no LinkedIn profile.

I found her on Facebook, and she looked……..well……

….well, I asked one of the younger guys in my office, “Hey, what does this girl look like to you?”

He smiled, as though it were a trick question, and said, “I dunno, an escort?”

I asked him, “Come on, be serious.  What do you think when you see this photo?”

He said, “I think that girl is probably at that club (in the photo) to meet rich men.”

He identified the club as Cabana from the background, and then we went through four or five other photos of her at clubs, which he identified.

I felt somewhat guilty, simply judging or labelling this girl because of how she looked.  But the name!  I couldn’t get over the name!  The $95,000 salary too!  It didn’t add up.

I discussed the situation with my landlord-clients, and they said they wanted to meet Ms. Starr.

So I told the cooperating agent that my landlord would be at the condo on Saturday, and she could drop by and say “hello.”

My clients Brad and Allison, called me after the meeting, and they were pretty coy.

“We’re not quite sure what to say,” Brad told me.  “Something was…….off.”

“Yeah, something was off.  That’s a good way to put it,” Allison said.  “The girl just seemed so spaced out, and nervous!  Oh my word, was she nervous!  She wouldn’t look us in the eye, she kept staring at the floor, and she kept fidgeting.”

I asked for them to tell me a little more about her, and they said things like, “She was nice,” and “She seemed pleasant,” but it wasn’t really what I was getting at.

So I said, “Brad, I’m going to ask Allison this question so you don’t get in trouble.  Allison, was this girl attractive?”

Allison said, “Yes.”

I asked, “Very?”

And Allison said, “She was a rocket, David!  A rocket!”

Brad laughed, and said, “Yeah, look, I don’t know what she does for a living, and maybe part of me doesn’t care, but something seems off here.”

Brad then asked if her boss told me what she was doing, and I said yes, that he said she’d be driving around to different suppliers, the various locations they were opening, etc.

There was a pause, and then Allison said, “David that’s so odd, because we asked her if she wanted to see the parking space, and she said she didn’t have a car!”

That was strange.

But even stranger was when Ms. Starr also said she hadn’t seen the condo!  She said, “My agent just made this offer for me; I haven’t seen this place yet.”

Everything that this girl said raised another red flag.

At one point, she said she didn’t know where the two new sandwich shop locations were going to be, and when pressed, she said, “I can’t tell you, we’re not telling people.”

Then somehow or other, her background came up, and she said, “I’m from Russia, but I was adopted by a very wealthy family.”

When asked about the three addresses she provided, she said that she had just broken up with her boyfriend, and the address on her pay stubs were from his place, but she was staying with her parents (the second address), and she simply “forgot” what she was doing when filling out the rental application with the third address, because she was “rushed.”

It didn’t add up.

She made almost $100K per year working for a sandwich shop in Niagara Falls, but had never lived in Niagara Falls.

She provided us with three different addresses.

Her only piece of ID was an expired driver’s license.

She had never seen the condo when the offer was made on her behalf.

Her employment letter was typed on a blank piece of paper, and her pay stubs were just PDF’s from Excel.

She had no car, but her boss said her job involved driving around.

She said she had worked at the sandwich shop for six months, but her boss said over a year.

Her boss was just as sketchy as she was.

She was apparently from Russia, but adopted by a “wealthy Canadian family.”

Her Facebook photos were all of her, very dressed up, at nightclubs.

And her name, was Ruby Starr.

It was just all way too convoluted, and there was no reason for the landlords to take the risk that this wasn’t some sort of scam.

I’m sorry, this girl could end up being the nicest human on the planet.  I could be totally wrong in all of this.  There could be logical explanations for every single red flag I’ve raised above.  But in the end, there is always another renter out there, and with vacancy rates in Toronto at less than 1%, there’s no reason to work with this prospective tenant.

Of course, it helped that later that night – after the meeting between Ruby Starr and my clients, we received another offer on the condo.

This offer was from a 27-year-old who worked for RBC, and had 400 connections on his LinkedIn profile, with a dozen recommendations.  He made $80,000 per year, had a credit score over 800, virtually no debt other than a small credit card balance, and was living in a condo on Fort York Boulevard that his landlord was selling.

He checked out, with ease.  He was the very definition of a “Triple-A” tenant.

The final decision was up to my clients, of course.  But I told them I’d advise them to reject the offer from Ruby Starr, and lease the condo to the young man who worked at RBC.

And that’s what they did.

They felt bad, as did I.

It sucks to have to “judge” somebody, but that’s what we’re doing when “evaluating candidacy.”

Real estate scams are not just something you read about in the newspaper – they’re very common, and I’ve seen agents in my own office lease to people who turned out not to be who they claimed.

I’ve seen friends and colleagues scammed as well.

So when you’re dealing with your own investment property, that you worked hard to purchase, and you’re working harder to look after, there’s nothing wrong with being diligent.

And if your “spidey-sense” is tingling with respect to a certain candidate, move on.

As I said, there’s always another prospective tenant waiting…

The post Would You Lease To This Mystery-Tenant? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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There were virtually no new listings last week, and it’s still too early to a have an identifiable “market” just yet.  So this week, I want to take the time to talk about debt, and tie this into a conversation about the new mortgage regulations.

Over the Christmas holidays, I thought a lot about the new rules, and I just couldn’t figure out why the government was going after this “kind” of debt, when other, far worse debt, still reigns supreme.

Today, I’m going to tell you two stories this week about simple, every-day interactions I had over the break, both which highlight how many people in society approach debt, and how people refuse to gain a better understanding of the value of a dollar, and interest rates…

One late-December day during my every-day-blends-together “break” from work, I found myself in Canadian Tire, diligently shopping for a snow brush.  I know, right?  What a life!

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see “that guy” approaching.  You know the one.  He’s got a clipboard, and a smile, and he wants you to sign up for some low-end credit card that very few people possess.

As he approached, he launched into character and said, “Nice!  That’s a great brush!  And you’re going to pay for that today on your Canadian Tire Mastercard?”

He was good.  That was a decent opening, and you can take this from a guy who used to approach girls in bars and say, “I just hate conforming to accepted social norms, don’t you?”

I looked up, and he was just a kid!  Barely old enough to grow stubble on his chin, but it didn’t stop him from trying.

“I’m not your guy,” I told him plainly, hoping he’d tell me to have a great day and back off.

“Oh I certainly don’t want to intrude on your holiday shopping” he said, perhaps thinking that once you’re married, a snow-brush is the most coveted of Christmas gifts.  “But I just wanted to know, if you don’t already have a Canadian Tire Mastercard, then what’s stopping you from signing up today?”

He asked.

So I answered.

“Well, I came here to buy a snow-brush, not apply for a credit card.  I have a credit card already, from my bank.  If I needed more credit, I’d increase the limit on my existing card.”

He nodded, and motioned his clipboard toward me.

“But you can have a second card today to supplement your existing card,” he said, and with a smile, added, “And I just know from looking at you, you’ll qualify.”

Not a bad sales pitch, I suppose.  Telling me I’d “qualify” for something that I don’t want, don’t need, and that everybody on the planet would “qualify” for.  I get it; act like I won something, and maybe I’ll feel special.

“I don’t want to sound repetitive,” I told him.  “But I’m not in the market for a credit card.  You could tell me I ‘qualify’ for a deal on a truck being sold in the parking lot, but if I’m not in the market for a truck, then what good is it to me?”

I turned my attention back to two particular snow-brushes that had made my short-list; a grey one, and a red one.

“Okay, okay,” the young man told me.  “I’ll tell you what – I know you’re not going to sign up for one of these cards today, but can I tell you why you should?”

I explained, “There’s no reason why a person “should” impulsively sign up for a credit card that two minutes ago, they had no idea existed, which will lower their FICO score, and put a massive red mark on their credit report, when they could walk into any of the Big-5 banks and get recognized credit card.  But sure, what the hell, go for it.”

He smiled, and proudly said, “Because if you sign up now, you get eight percent cash back of the value of the goods you purchase, today.”

“I don’t follow,” I told him.

“Whatever you buy today, you get eight percent back!” he reiterated.

“No, I get that,” I told him, “But you said that there’s a reason to sign up for this card.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “Eight percent, cash back!”

I held up the snow-brush I was settling on – the grey one, and said, “This costs twenty dollars.  What’s eight percent of twenty dollars?”

I didn’t give him a chance to crunch the numbers; “A dollar, sixty,” I told him.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“A dollar and sixty cents.  That’s what I’d get, today, for signing up for a credit card, that I don’t want, which would lower my credit rating.  Is it worth it?”

He tried to come up with another ‘reason,’ but since we were just two guys, having fun, I said, “How about this: what if I purchased, say, $1,000 worth of goods today.  Would I get 8% of that in cash back?”

He smiled, and said, “Yes!  You would!”

I said, “Okay.  So in order to get eight percent, $80 back, I’d need to purchase $1,000 worth of stuff that, only five minutes ago, I didn’t really need.  I would find it hard to believe that I could actually find a thousand dollars worth of wares, in here, today, that I would value at the sticker price, and actually utilize.”

At this point, I actually felt bad.  I didn’t know if he realized I was trying to be helpful, or if he just thought I was an asshole – the way some of you, reading this, might assume.

I asked him how old he was, and he said he was nineteen.

I asked him where he went to school, and he said Seneca College.

“What’s the interest rate on that credit card,” I asked him.

He said he didn’t know, but he could ask a manager and find out.

“Have you ever looked up your credit score before?” I asked him.

He said he didn’t know what that was.

“Equifax, Trans Union – have you heard of these?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

So I thought, since he was still standing there listening to me, I’d give him a few thoughts he could take home with him.  I explained the basics of “credit” and “debt.”  I explained what interest rates were, and then went on to describe how credit scores work, and how they affect what an individual can borrow.

“Go home, go to www.equifax.ca, pay the thirty bucks,” I told him, “And find out what your credit score is.”

“Thirty dollars?” he exclaimed.  “Just to find out your score?”

I asked him if that was a lot, and he said, “Hell yeah!”

“Says the guy that just wanted me to sign up for a credit card with a $10,000 limit and a 30% interest rate so I could save $1.60 on my snow-brush…”

He threw his head back in laughter.

“You got me!” he said.

“I want you to go home, and download a movie called ‘Maxed Out,'” I told him.  “It’s from 07-08, or somewhere around then.”

“07-08?” he asked.  “Where’s that?”

“The year,” I told him.

“Oh, right.  2007-2008!  That’s what you mean!  Okay.  Right.  Well, I was like ten-years-old, he told me.”

“Okay, just download the movie,” I told him.  “Whatever torrent, Pirate-Bay, rip, MPEG, Napster-thingee you kids are using today,” I said, channelling my inner old-man.  “The movie is about predatory lending practices in the United States, and the impact it can have on a person’s life.  It also showcases, I’m sorry to say, how naive, uninformed, and stupid the average borrower is.  Watch that movie.  You’ll learn more than you learned in school.”

“They’ve never mentioned any of this in school,” he told me.

And I just about puked in Aisle 7 as I thought, once again, about how the public school system has been bastardized and watered-down, but I digress…

“You know what I’m gonna do tonight?” the young man asked me.

“Go home and watch videos of other people playing video games in this insane thing your generation calls E-Sports?” I asked, as matter-of-fact as possible.

“No,” he said, “I play Call of Duty,” he said, to which I nodded in agreement.

“I’m gonna watch that movie, man.  Seriously, I will.  But like, I still have to sell these cards.”

He had a job to do, and that, I understood.  “How many have you sold today?” I asked him.

He suddenly regained his confidence, smiled and said, “Three, man.  Three of ’em.  And nobody asked about the, what did you say, the rate?”

“The interest rate,” I told him.

“Yeah.  So whatever.  They got their 8% cash-back, right?”

Good for him.  A hard-working kid, paying his way through college.

A fool and their money are soon parted.  His job is to sell those cards, not to educate people about the associated interest rates and credit risks.

But who’s job, if anybody, is that?

–

As many of the long-time readers know, my mother lives in Scarborough, and has since around 2000 when she moved out of ‘the big house’ in Leaside.

Over the Christmas holidays, our family gathered there for a very informal dinner, as she likes to call it.  I swear, I could wear a tank-top at the dinner table, and she would just smile.

Upon arriving at the house, my wife informed me that we forgot our daughter’s bag – the one with the diapers, baby-wipes, creams, sippie-cup, et al.

My solution, being a typical man, was to “just wing it.”  Deal with problems as they arise.  But with the entire family looking at me, and with my 7-year-old brainiac niece saying, “You need to go get some diapers,” I got back in the car, and headed out to Shoppers Drug Mart.

At Kingston Road & Midland, I found a Shoppers, and although it goes against my frugality, I paid the sticker price for small packs of everything we have at home in bulk.

I got to the cashier, and the woman in front of me was checking out.

The cashier said to the woman, “That’s $80.72, in total.”

And then she added something that drew my attention: “If you spend $100 today, you get 300 bonus Shoppers Optimum Points.”

Now I’m paraphrasing here, because I don’t know how many points it was, or what they were called – but I believe it’s “Optimum.”

So in my mind, I’m thinking, “There’s no way somebody is going to spend another $20 here to “achieve” a bunch of virtual points.  This isn’t exactly Bitcoin they’re getting.”

But the woman in front of me said, “Oh, awesome, okay,” and then looked around her.

Looked around, where?

At the cash.  You know, where they keep all the items referred to as impulse buys.

Rather than walking through the store and picking up a 36-pack of toilet paper that’s on sale, she merely looked around, and grabbed the first thing she saw.

“Pot of Gold,” she said, as she placed a box on the counter.

The cashier rang it through, looked at her screen, and said, “$88.15, I think it’s on sale.”

The woman laughed.  “Damn sale!  Ha!  Okay, what else, what else,” and began looking around.

She grabbed about 3-4 small bags of Doritos, placed them on the counter, and said, “Somebody in the house will eat these!”

“We’re up to…..let’s see,” the cashier said, as she waited for a new total.  “$94.84.”

“Oh Lord,” the woman said.

She picked up three packs of gum, placed them on the counter, and the cashier rang them through.

“$98.55,” the cashier said.  “Almost there!”

Exhausted, the woman then picked up a high-end lip-balm, and smacked it on the counter.  “This oughta do!” she said.

The cashier rang the item through, and smiled.  “$106.22,” she said.  “We made it!”

I couldn’t believe what I had witnessed.

I don’t know how many “points” this woman scored, or what their cash value is.

But I’m willing to bet those points aren’t more than $1-2 of cash value, and my mother – a frequent Shopper’s customer, tells me that’s being optimistic.  On $100, you’re not getting more than 1-2% from Shoppers, even with their “bonus-days” or other promotions.  The banks pay you less than one-percent on your savings.  The best VISA’s out there offer 1.5% in cash-back, travel, etc.  So what was this woman really getting back via the Optimum points?

She just spent $26.22 on crap she didn’t need.

Pot of Gold chocolates, Doritos, Trident gum, and lip balm.  She didn’t want any of that stuff when she went inside, and yet she exited the store with it – much like those who sign up for credit cards when promoted at Home Depot or Canadian Tire.

And at no point was this woman able to do the math: that she spent $26.22 to achieve maybe $1.00 in redemption points.

Allow me to jump to a conclusion here and suggest that maybe this woman couldn’t do the math, because she didn’t understand it.

Maybe she can’t figure out that $26.22 in after-tax dollars takes her $34 in gross income to generate, which could be two hours of work for her.

And not everybody does understand this.  Not everybody’s strong suit is math, taxation, interest rates, or personal finance.

So the take-away from these two stories then, is what?

That I’m a jerk for writing them?

Or I’m pointing out that (gasp!) some people in society don’t possess the education or understanding to make decisions regarding their own personal finances, especially when it comes to debt.

A government’s role is to serve and protect the people.

And often they enact legislation to protect people from themselves, like making it the law to wear a seatbelt in a car.

But while credit card companies offer frisbees and hackey-sacks on college campuses to kids who sign up for MBNA Mastercards, and the Money Marts, Payday Loans, and Cash Moneys of the world are allowed to prey on the most susceptible members of society, the government has done……what?

They’ve made it more difficult for people who have scrimped and saved a 20% down payment to purchase a home?

It makes no sense to me.

Not when there are so many other areas of the lending world that are predatory, and where annualized interest rates top 7,000% (that’s not an exaggeration – we’ll talk about that on Wednesday).

So while today’s two stories merely demonstrate what goes on in the world of lending/borrowing, debt, and interest on a daily basis, on Wednesday, I’d like to come back to this theme and differentiate between “good debt” and “bad debt,” and discuss how and where the government should focus their efforts…

The post What Is The Government Doing To Tackle Consumer Debt? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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It’s a trick question, folks.  There’s no real answer here.

Ask one hundred people, and get one hundred different answers.

It call comes down to expectations, once again, since some naive buyers out there expect absolute perfection, and others understand the world is not a warm and fuzzy place.

Let me show you two recent emails from agents closing on transactions, and you tell me if you think their complaints are legit…

I suppose I’m opening myself up for criticism here.

As I said, it all comes down to expectations, and if some of the readers find themselves in the same camp as those in the stories below, then I might get some backlash.

I’m a realist, by nature.

And when it comes to expectations, I’m not saying you need to “set them low so you’ll never be disappointed,” but I am saying that to expect perfection in everyone, and everything, at all times in life, is setting yourself up for failure.

There’s also something to be said for “not sweating the small stuff” as well.

You know lady at your office who always comes flying out of the bathroom yelling, “Who left the seat up?”  That’s what I’m talking about.  A seat being left up is not life or death, and in the grand scheme of things, or even in the context of your day, it’s not a big deal.

You know the guy that always comes flying out of the kitchen saying, “Who took the last cup of coffee – and didn’t put on another pot?”  He’s probably at home telling his 16-month old to stop going to the bathroom in his diaper.

Again, it’s about expectations, in life.

People are not perfect, and to expect them to be, is naive.

When it comes to closing real estate transactions, this is one of those areas where perhaps setting a low expectation will ensure you’re not disappointed.  And, might I add, ensure that any positive experience is amplified ten-fold.

I’ve told this story before many times, but I’ll tell it again.  When I moved into my current condo, there was a hand-written note from the listing agent, who in addition to explaining that he had the entire condo professionally cleaned, at his cost, asked that if there were any issues, to “get in touch.”  There was also a bottle of champagne in the fridge, with a ribbon.

That, unfortunately, is setting the bar VERY high in our industry.

I’ve had true “nightmare” closings before.  I can’t dig up the blog, but I recall one house that closed back in 2008, when the market dipped for three short months, where my buyers got an incredible deal, and where the sellers were clearly pissed off, so they basically painted liquid butter all through the kitchen.

Yeah.  Exaggerating, right?

Not so.  The entire kitchen was covered in ants, and it was sticky from the floors, to the cabinets, to the walls.  They had an exterminator in, who told them that there was “liquid food product” everywhere.  We figured it was probably a bottle of Pam sprayed throughout, but either way, it was not a mistake.

While many of my clients will go out of their way to have their property cleaned before closing, it’s not something that’s in any way mandated, or even “understood.”

When it comes to closing a house or condo, if it’s not in writing, you shouldn’t expect it.

And thus the idea of what constitutes a legitimate complaint is risen.

I would say that probably half of all of my closings have some sort of very, very minor issue in the days leading up to, or shortly after, the closing.  Both on the buy side, and sell side, and most issues are rectified.

But some issues, aren’t rectified, and shouldn’t be.

Some buyers, as I noted above, have absurd expectations, and I believe it should fall on the shoulders of their buyer-agent to speak up and say “you’re being ridiculous,” but we know most agents are merely yes-men.

Here’s an email that I received last December in relation to a condo listing I had:

Hi David,

Please forward to the Seller for the followings minor issues:

1). Balcony and its windows is quite dirty as attached pic shown, needs cleaning.

2). Master ensuit shower end cap is faulty not sealed, as pic attached.

3). Master ensuit vanity faucet’s top trim is broken , need to tighten, as video attached in separate email.

Thanks to coordinate.

–

The email contained two photos, and a video.

Here’s the “dirty windows” noted in the email:

Here’s the “faulty” shower-head:

And incredibly, here’s a video that the agent shot and emailed to me of the “broken” faucet:

I know, you’re thinking, “Did I really just spend 14 seconds watching somebody jiggle a faucet?”

So here’s the part where you might say, “David, these really are legitimate complaints.”  Or you might say, “David, you’re in a service business, and you should strive to adhere to the standards of the buyer.”

I disagree.

Resale condominiums and houses are not sold in the same way as pre-construction condos.

With a pre-construction condo, the buyer does what’s called a “Pre-Delivery Inspection,” or PDI.  In that inspection, the buyer outlines any and all issues with the property which should, in theory (I won’t get started on how TARION plays middle-man between the developer and the buyer, and nothing ever gets fixed), be rectified before closing, as is that buyer’s right.

But with a resale condo, you don’t have that right.  You don’t have that same PDI.

The dirty balcony?  That’s a shame.  The box and the bag were removed, but the seller doesn’t have to clean common elements, especially if it’s not written into Schedule A of the Agreement of Purchase & Sale.

The shower-head?  It’s in the exact same condition that it was when the buyer saw the condo, and if they wanted it fixed, they could have written a clause to that effect.  They could have included a condition on inspection, but they didn’t.

The faucet?  It “jiggles” a bit, I know.

But keep in mind, this is a resale condo!  This condo will not be delivered in perfect shape!

A “legitimate” complaint on closing is not something petty, and it is, above all, not something that wasn’t in the Agreement of Purchase & Sale.

In the example above, forget about the fact that the “jiggly faucet” can be fixed by tightening one screw.  Think about the mindset of the buyer who thinks this is an “issue.”  Worse, is when the buyer brings this up to their lawyer, and their lawyer contacts the seller’s lawyer.

Another condo I closed late last year came with two “complaints” from the buyer-agent, and these were just off the hook.

The first one was this:

What is it, you ask?

What could be the “complaint?”

That missing 2-inch piece of quarter-round, wedged between the shower and the cabinet.  I don’t know how somebody even noticed that, unless they tripped on the bath mat, and found themselves staring at the floor.

The second “complaint” is by far, the single-worst complaint I have ever received.

Folks, this one is just absurd.

A picture paints a thousand words, so let me demonstrate:

Yes.  You’re seeing that correctly.

That, is a very small hole in the wall from a nail.

And that is a photo of the small nail-hole, taken by the buyer-agent, and sent to me (along with the photo of the missing 2-inch piece of quarter-round), with the subject line “Problems In Condo.”

But I’ve saved the best part for last.  This wasn’t the sale of a condo.  It was a LEASE!

Imagine the tenants who took issue with the nail-hole?

Folks, if there’s one thing I pride myself upon while working in this business, it’s never blowing up.

Tensions run high, as do emotions, and with varying levels of success and failure – often unpredictable, many agents in this business will do and say things that they shouldn’t.

I don’t blow up.  You might think I do, based on how I write on this blog, but everything I say on here is calculated.  Writing a blog is completely one-sided, don’t forget, so I can take my time and think things through, with nobody to rattle my cage.

When it comes to how I interact with other agents, I always ask myself, “After I click ‘send,’ or hang up the phone, will I regret what I’ve said?”  I slow things down in my mind, and evaluate the consequences.

So when I received the photo of the quarter-round and nail-hole, I sat down, and patiently sent the following email:

Hi (Name),

I’m honestly not sure what you expect the outcome would be from this.

Your clients are tenants; this is not a pre-delivery inspection for a pre-construction condominium buyer.

A 3mm nail-hole in the wall?

A 2-inch piece of missing quarter-round?

Please tell me they do not seriously expect these items to be “fixed”?

This is one of the cleanest, best looked-after rental properties you’ll ever find.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen something so petty in my 14 years in this business as a tenant asking for a 3-mm nail hole in the wall to be fixed. I do believe this is a new low-point for me.

David.

–

Naturally, the agent replied and said it was her client’s fault, and she didn’t want to send the email.

Remember what I said about expectations?

If you are a true “professional” in this business, and your client says, “I don’t like that there’s a nail-hole in the wall.  I want you to take a photo, send it to the listing agent, and get the owner to fix it,” then you should have the knowledge, experience, confidence, and guts to say, “That’s ridiculous,” and explain why.

But many agents don’t.  And it’s why we get photos of nail holes before closing.

I have other stories, and other examples, but these ones were recent – and had photos!

So what does constitute a legitimate complaint before closing?  Anything contrary to the terms of the Agreement of Purchase & Sale.

Many sellers, as I mentioned, will hire a cleaner to come in before closing, out of pocket.  But there’s no guarantee.  If you want a guarantee, then put a clause in your offer.

If you want the giant hole in the wall from the removal of the television wall-mount to be repaired, then put a clause in your offer.  While many people think the hole “should” be patched, there’s only one way to make certain it will be!

If you have a “chattels and fixtures in good working order” clause in your Agreement, and you find that the fridge doesn’t work upon closing, then you have a legitimate complaint.

If there is a set of old winter tires sitting in the living room, and they weren’t included in the “Chattels” section of the Agreement, then you have a legitimate complaint.

If the condo maintenance fees in the offer specified they were $561.80 per month, and you find out they were actually $661.80 per month, oh boy – do you have a legitimate complaint.  I’d ask why this wasn’t caught by your lawyer, but that’s besides the point.

The biggest source of, and reason for, petty pre-closing complaints – like nail-holes, dirty windows, and jiggly faucets, is that the buyers’ expectations are too high.  It just shows a lack of common sense, and perhaps that can’t be taught.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and we should all expect perfection.

If society in 2018 is any indication, it seems that perfection is indeed, everybody’s expectation…

The post What Constitutes A “Legitimate” Complaint Upon Closing? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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Delivered, right?  That’s how the saying (and the song…) goes?

But what if that which is signed, and that which is sealed, is not delivered?  Then what?

Believe it or not, this is a question that’s raised from time to time in real estate, and it always presents a challenge…

Have you watched “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” yet?

I had high hopes for it.

Through one episode, however, I’m a little disappointed.

I heard great things about “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” although I haven’t watched it yet.  I know the whole world loves streaming, but there’s something so unsatisfying about hooking up my laptop to the TV with an HDMI.  I’m old-school; I like the remote in my hand.  I like to be able to pause, stop, rewind, all without having to get up off the couch, lean over the laptop, and constantly close pop-up browsers with ads for Russian brides…

So, yeah.  Until the O.J. series hits Netflix, or Rogers on Demand, I’ll just have to listen to other people talk about it.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace was a bit underwhelming.

It was slow, there was too much character development, and it really just didn’t strike a chord with me.

One scene, however, did.

Although it wasn’t because I liked the show, or what was happening in the scene, but rather because it gave me an idea for a blog post.

I never know where my ideas will come from.  After ten years, 2,200+ posts, and a thorough examination of just about every topic you can think of, it’s not like I have a laundry list of topics, ready to be written.

So when I get an idea, I go with it.

And that first episode of The Assassination was so boring that I told my wife “….I’m still listening,” and sat down to write a blog.

The scene in question was after Versace was murdered, and his sister, Donatella, was sitting at a table with a group of lawyers and other figure-heads in the family business.

In front of them were folders of signed paperwork, which Versace had signed “a week earlier,” in Donatella’s words, with the intention of taking the company public.

Even though those documents were signed, and even though Gianni Versace had signed them with the intent on submitting them, the deal never moved forward.  Signed documents, and intent, are nothing without follow-through.

And it made me think of a recent experience I had selling a condo, as well as a great “urban legend” real estate story that I’ve probably told on this blog several times.  Why don’t we start with that…

For those of you who have submitted an unsuccessful offer on a property, in a competitive situation, you property didn’t find out what the property sold for until the next morning.

Maybe, just maybe, your agent sent you a text message before you went to bed, with the price.  It happens from time to time.

But more often than not, the listing agent will wait until the next morning.

Why?

This urban legend, of course…

About ten years ago, an agent in my office had a property listed, and there were a dozen offers presented on the “offer night.”

The twelve buyer agents came through and presented, one-by-one, to the listing agent and the sellers, and while I can’t recall the exact details about whether or not there were multiple rounds of bidding, or how many offers were sent back for improvement, let’s just say that eventually, there was a winner.

The listing agent told the buyer agent with the highest offer that his offer would be accepted, and to sit tight, while they signed everything up.

The listing agent then told the other eleven buyer agents something to the effect of, “Thanks for your offer, but we’re going with another.”

One of the buyer agents who lost, approached the listing agent and said, “So it’s done then?  Over?” to which the listing agent replied, “Indeed.  Thanks for your offer, but we’re going with somebody else.”

The buyer agent nodded, and said, “Okay, alright then.  So what did it go for?”

The listing agent, unaware that he was about to be the poster child for “why agents don’t give out the sale price until the next morning,” turned to the buyer agent and said, “$870,000.”

The buyer agent nodded, and then left.  But he didn’t go far.

The listing agent, back in the conference room with his clients, put the Agreement of Purchase & Sale in front of them, and they signed.  He had them sign two copies, and was just about to neatly paper-clip them together, when suddenly the door to the conference room swung open, and it was the buyer agent.

“Eight-hundred-eighty thousand,” he said, as he proudly slammed a revised copy of his offer down on the table.

It seems that after being told the “accepted” offer was $870,000, the buyer agent wasn’t willing to accept that the offer was signed, sealed, and delivered, as the phrase goes.  So he went outside to his car, where his buyer-clients were waiting, told them to put a new price and a set of initials on the offer, and then came back inside the building (this was before we had locks on the front doors), made his way up to the conference room, and threw the whole system out of whack.

Having told this story before on my blog, you might recall where this is going.

The listing agent said, “The papers are signed, and we’ve already told the other agent his offer is being accepted.  This is over.”

But the sellers, looking at another $10,000 for their home, spoke up and said, “Not yet, it’s not.”

Yes, the listing agent had already verbally communicated acceptance to the buyer agent who had submitted the “winning” bid of $870,000.

Yes, the sellers had already signed two copies of the Agreement of Purchase & Sale, confirming the acceptance.

But the offer had yet to be delivered to the buyer agent.  So while it was signed, and there was intent, there was no legally-binding deal just yet.

I honestly can’t recall how this story ended.  Perhaps the listing agent offered the original “winning” buyer-agent an opportunity to match.  Perhaps he threw that other agent out the window.  I don’t remember.  But the point is that a deal is never done until all parties are holding copies of the completed, accepted, and executed agreement.

Last week, I submitted an offer on a condo for my buyer-clients, and even though it was in the $1.6 Million range, of course we ended up in competition!

The property was on the market for one day!  Just our luck, right?

I could delve into another lesson per se, this time about how being professional, courteous, and respectful when dealing with fellow agents, can go a long way to getting you a deal.  But then I’ll run off on one of my patented tangents, and we’ll be here all night.

Let’s just say that the listing agent and I got along swimmingly, and she was not a fan of the agent competing with me.

But like him or not, she still had to work in the best interests of her seller, and get the most money for the property.

When she reviewed the two offers, mine was lower.  But as I said, we got along.  And thus she asked me to simply match the other offer, and we’d have a deal.

She was honest with me – she said she gave the other agent every opportunity to better his offer.  My offer was unconditional, his was not.  He refused to remove the condition, and refused to come up in price.  So she said, “Match his offer, and the property is yours.”  And we did.  And it was.

But not without incident, of course.

My phone rang, and she said, “David, you’ll never believe…” and that was all I needed to hear to think I just got screwed.

Like I said, a verbal acceptance is meaningless without paperwork.  A promise, a guarantee, a congratulations – nothing matters except the accepted APS.

But she continued, “David, you’ll never believe what just happened, but don’t worry, of course, we accepted your offer.”

Phew!  And as she said that, I saw the offer come through my inbox, and now was able to relax and listen to her story.

“We had already signed your offer,” she said.  “It was accepted, and we were ready to send it over, but I called the other agent first for some reason, I dunno, just to get it out of the way.  So all of a sudden, he’s had a change of heart, and he wants to remove his condition, and add $10,000 to the price!”

At this point, I was scrolling through the accepted APS to ensure that it was fully signed, and that this story was just some fodder for the night.  I didn’t like where the story was going.

“I had to tell my clients,” she told me.  “I didn’t like his game; I didn’t like him at all,” she said, with a laugh.  “But we hadn’t sent the accepted offer to you yet, so I had to tell them.”

How in the world did this turn out in my favour, I wondered?

“I told my clients, and they chewed on it.” she began to explain to me.

She continued, “They said, ‘Didn’t you tell us that he wouldn’t remove his condition, and his price was firm?’  I told them that was correct.  And then they said, ‘So it’s only now, after you told him that we had accepted another offer, that he said he would revise his offer?’  I told them again this was correct.  So to my amazement, my client said, ‘I don’t like it.  I don’t like the game he’s playing.  We made a deal.  Let’s honour it.’ ”

Wow.  Did I run into the nicest, most honourable agent and seller, or what?

Perhaps another topic, for another day, would be how different cultures negotiate in real estate.  There are certain cultures where they refuse to accept “no” as an answer, and you could literally show them the accepted APS, and they’d just smile and say, “Okay, so how much do you want?”  It’s not until they’ve already lost the deal, that they want to start playing.

In any event, this is what I was up against with my $1,650,000 condo last week, and I was lucky that the sellers didn’t like the agent’s “game.”

The seller went with our offer, the listing agent sent me the paperwork, and the deal was done.

But they had every right to accept the other offer, with another $10,000, even after they had already accepted my offer, and signed the paperwork.

“Signed, Sealed, & Delivered,” the phrase goes.

The absence of one, may as well be all three…

The post Signed, Sealed, &…………..Then What? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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I was literally writing this blog post in my head as the scene unfolded.

This story is about two things:

1) Good agents versus bad agents
2) Getting emotional when you can least afford it

Not everybody will agree with everything in this story, but what can I say?  Toronto real estate is not for the faint of heart…

How can I tell people not to get emotional in the Toronto real estate market?  It’s like telling me not to hurt myself at the gym as soon as I get back from whatever injury I was previously nursing.

It’s just going to happen.

But when you do get emotional, at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons, you need to snap out of it quickly, or risk making a mistake.

And most importantly, your real estate agent need to be the one to spearhead that process.

As I said in the introduction, this story is about both emotion, and the idea of a “good agent” versus a bad one.  I could have lead with a title referring to either, but in the following story, the emotion was the precursor to the agent’s bad decision, and the whole scene was overshadowed by a competing agent’s good decision.

A listing of mine, for which I’ll change all the details in the following story, sold the other night.

This was not a brand-new listing, it was not under-listed, and there was no “offer night.”  That’s important to note, as it explains some of what went down.

On Wednesday afternoon, I received a call from a buyer’s agent saying she would likely be bringing an offer on the property.  We had been chatting back-and-forth, she was asking “the right questions,” and I knew that her client had been at the open house on both Saturday and Sunday, with her father, taking measurements and mapping out where she would put her furniture.

The offer came in around 3:00pm, and it had an 8:00pm irrevocable.

The irrevocable was very short, and so I told the agent, “I won’t be able to get back to you before 8:00pm, my client works late, and it’s just too quick.  But based on your offer, you know we’re signing this back, right?  So the ‘deadline’ doesn’t mean much here; I’ll get back to you around 10pm.”

All that was true, and it was fair.  Some deals happen faster than others, but there was no reason to give us a 5-hour irrevocable, on what wasn’t a fantastic offer.  If your offer is exceptional, and likely to at least meet the seller’s expectations, and hopefully exceed them, then by all means.  But in this case, it was odd, so I was up front about my time commitments, and that of the seller.

Around 6:30pm, another agent sent me a message saying she might have an offer as well.  I knew this agent, and I had worked with her before in the past, so when she said, “I’m probably going to have an offer,” I didn’t take it the same way as I do these days when a rookie agent has a good showing, gets all excited, calls to say he’ll have an offer, and then falls off the face of the earth.

I called my client and left a message, saying that we had an offer, and might have a second, and to call me when he was free at work.

At 7:30pm, the second agent registered her offer, and I called her to chat.

Her offer was around the same price as the first offer; neither were fantastic, and both really represented “starting prices.”

She was skiing in Mount Tremblant, but had the can-do attitude, and was ready to work.

I told her, “Your offer looks like a starting point, and that would be fine, if we weren’t in multiple offers.”

“I know,” she said.  “My client wanted to start out with this, and there’s room on the price, no doubt.  She loves the property, and she wants it.  How are you going to handle the offers?”

How are you going to handle the offers.  That’s a great question, and that’s key.

If you’re a new agent, take note.  You need to ask the question, and you need to listen to the answer.

“We have two offers,” I told her.  “Both represent starting offers, and I’d have done the same if I were in your position, and there weren’t multiple offers.  But we are where we are, now.  So let’s be fair.  Let’s have both agents to back to the two buyers, and ask them to put their best terms on paper.”

“That’s great, David,” she said.  “I’m so happy you’re on the other end of this deal.”

It’s not hyperbole, folks.  This is verbatim.  It sounds familiar to Monday’s blog post, and that’s not intentional here.  To echo some of the comments from Monday’s blog, this really is a relationship business.

“It won’t take me long to get back to you,” the agent said.  “My clients are out to dinner in Toronto, waiting patiently for my call.  I’m on my hotel-bed in Tremblant, with the laptop out.  Let me see what I can do about the price, the deposit, the closing date – I’ll get back to you.”

And that was that.

I got on the phone and called the second agent, exchanged pleasantries, and basically told her the same thing.

“So we have two offers now,” I said, “And I think the fairest way to handle this is to simply have both buyers put their best terms on paper, and we’ll reconvene shortly.  I’m not here to grind anybody; I’m a fair guy, and I feel bad that only one buyer can be succesful tonight, but that’s the way it goes.”

And I waited.

I waited for a response.

But there was an almost-deliberate-feeling pause, before she spoke up and said, “Our offer has expired.”

And folks, I knew exactly where this conversation was headed.

Didn’t I tell you at the onset that I was basically writing this blog in my head as it happened?

“Yes, I know,” I told her.  And again, I waited.

“Our offer…….you see……expired, at 8:00pm,” she explained.  “And it’s now 8:10pm,” she added.

“Yes, I know,” I told her.  “But I told you at 7:30pm that we had a second registered offer.”

“Whhell,” she said, with that overemphasis that stems from displeasure, “My client is a little hurt.”

Hurt?  Geez, I hope it wasn’t her signing-hand…

“She’s upset,” the agent explained.  “And she’s not prepared to do anything tonight.  We’re going to sleep on it, and we’ll come back to it tomorrow.”

Here’s where the emotion became quite apparent, but I speak not of just the buyer, but rather the agent too.

And as a result, I might add – immaturity, misguidance, and in my opinion, inexperience.

“I’m sorry she feels that way,” I told her.  “But we are where we are now – with two offers.  This house will be sold tonight, either to your buyer, or the competing agent’s buyer.”

Ignoring everything I just said, she asked, “Why didn’t we get a sign-back before the offer expired?”

“The offer expired at 8:00pm,” I told her.  “It was submitted after 3pm.  That was a short irrevocable, and I told you my client wouldn’t be able to work with the deadline, and not only that, the deadline was meaningless given you expected a sign-back.”

She then told me that I never communicated this to her, so I asked her to hold on, I went into my Outlook, and forwarded her an email:

3:29pm: “Hi Jane, my seller is teaching until 9:30pm and home thereafter.  We won’t be able to respond before 8:00pm, but I’ll do my best to get back to you tonight.  David.”

Once again, completely ignoring what I had just said, she told me, “My client is really sore.  She’s a first-time buyer, and this is certainly not what she expected.”

Expectations.  Wow.  If there’s one lesson to learn about expectations in the Toronto market – don’t have any.

“I can’t help that,” I told her.  “But what I can tell you is that we’re going to look at both the offers shortly, and the door is open for you to resubmit your offer.”

“Why would I do that?” she asked me.  “You didn’t choose to work with our offer the first time around!”

And this was when I began to realize that while some of the hurt was coming from the buyer, perhaps not all of it had originated there.

A good real estate agent checks his or her emotion at the door.  You can’t let the situation, or another agent, rattle your cage.

I can’t tell you how much sh!t I have to eat in a given week, when dealing with agents I don’t like, or who can’t do their job, or who are obnoxious for no reason.  But I keep calm, and I kill them with kindness.  You simply have to in this business, and in this market.

When a situation doesn’t go your way, you accept it – immediately.

And when your buyer, or seller, gets emotional, you calm them down.  You help them to see things the way they are, however they are.  The situation might not be what they want, but emotion causes buyers and sellers to make poor decisions.  An agent’s job is to keep them focused.

But here it seemed we had an agent that was encouraging, or fostering the emotional state that the buyer was in.

If I had to guess, I’d say they shared an equal amount of soreness at this point.

“I’m trying to help you here,” I told her.  “Your client was at the property, at both the Saturday open house, and the Sunday open house.  It seems like she really liked this place!”

“Oh she did!” she told me.  “She absolutely loves it.”

“Well then please go back to her, and see what she wants to do.” I said, since this was the only rational, logical thing for a buyer’s agent to do in this situation.

“I’ve already spoken to her,” she told me.  “And I know how she feels.”

She wouldn’t even make the call.  She wouldn’t even talk things over, with her emotional, confused, first-time buyer.  I couldn’t believe it.  I started to wonder who was making the decision here.

And then she added, “You could always sign our our offer back.”

Wow.  She was completely out to lunch.

An agent from Halton, 2-years into the business, running amuck in the Toronto market.  Go figure.

Remember when I said it was important to note that the other agent asked, “How are you going to be handling the offers?”

This is a buyer-agent recognizing the situation – that there are competing offers on the property, and that the listing agent is in the dominant position, with leverage, and asking how the listing agent is going to handle offers.

You, as the buyer agent, don’t try to dictate the process, as the Halton agent did by suggesting we “sign the offer back.”

The other agent resubmitted her offer, with better terms, and with a photo of her buyer-client, and a personal note.

She was a true professional, and she understood the situation.

And in the end, we accepted her offer.

Now some of the cynics reading this might suggest that it seems I simply want every agent to push, or force, or talk their buyer into offering a higher price, or that I’m arguing an agent must do anything to get the sale.

I can’t tell you how often I talk my buyers out of making offers.  An hour before the above story was going down, I had emailed one of my clients to tell her not to make an offer on a Mimico townhouse, because it seemed like she “wasn’t feeling it.”  Her heart wasn’t in it, she wasn’t all-in, and it seemed like she wanted to see what detached bungalows came up for sale.

So I told her that we should hold off making an offer, and if we found something we liked more – great!  If we didn’t, and the townhouse sat on the market for a month, perhaps the price would be lower, and it would be a more attractive buy.

The point of the preceding story is that we had a buyer who was in love with a property, was already mapping out her furniture, and who made an offer, only to find that the situation had changed – as it does all the time, in our market.  Either she, or her agent, or both of them, then decided that life had dealt them a terrible blow; an unfair one, and they were going to take their ball, and go home.

I understand the buyer being emotional, that’s a given.  But the agent?  It was embarrassing.

I honestly believe the agent cost her client a property that night, and I felt bad for the buyer.

The young buyer who actually did buy the house had a great agent, and one who, if the tables were turned, likely would have dealt with the circumstances as they arose, kept her head, and lead her buyer through it.

Think back to my story in Monday’s blog; the situation was almost identical.

We made an offer on a condo, and as our bad luck would have it, a second offer came in therafter.

What did I do?

Well, I didn’t stand around kicking imaginary pebbles, like a sad cartoon character, but rather I kept my buyer-client informed, guided them through the process, made the listing agent my new best friend, and got the deal done for my client.

The above story could be about emotion, or, it could be an advertisement for why not to hire an out-of-town agent with 2-years experience.  But I’ve seen experienced agents get emotional, and lose deals as a result too.

This market is a roller-coaster, and some people just don’t have the stomachs for it…

The post Check Your Emotions At The Front Door! appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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People.  Honestly.  They’re the worst.

I’m channelling my inner-Seinfeld with that quote, but seriously folks – I was just shocked by some of the people I met two weeks ago when I had a hot listing for sale, and I couldn’t believe how they approached both the price of the property, as well as the process surrounding the sale.

I’m constantly amazed at how a person can be so intelligent, yet have so little common sense.  And during the course of this listing, “those” people were lined up in droves.

You either “get it,” or you don’t.  And try explaining to somebody who doesn’t “get it,” and you’re wasting your time…

Remember the good old days of including a photo of your family, and a hand-written note with your offer?

Those days are almost gone, right?

Once upon a time, when prices were lower, and when the spread between the lowest and highest offers was smaller, those personal touches did have an effect.

I remember submitting an offer for a family member back in 2006, with a cute photo, and a note.  And although we weren’t the highest offer, we were in the top two – out of twelve.  And we were given a chance to improve our offer, and we won.

I’ll be the first person to suggest that no seller out there (save for the one that spawned a much-shared newspaper article a few years back) is going to take substantially less money for his or her home, because the buyers are nice.

But it certainly doesn’t hurt, and in some very unique cases, the home-owners might want to sell to you, and give you a second chance, or give your agent a push.

Whether those days have passed, or not, I don’t think a buyer should take the opposite approach, and go out of their way to be rude to everybody involved in the process.

The following story might be lost on some of you, but I see things through a different set of eyes: those of an agent.  I’m constantly amazed by buyers who are completely out of touch with market reality, whether it’s the price of real estate in 2018, or the process, and who fail to accept current market conditions for what they are.

Two weeks ago, I had a listing in North Toronto where the sellers were 90-years-old, and had been in the home for almost a half-century.

The sellers were going to be home for every showing, which ordinarily, as you know from reading this blog, I would never suggest, or allow.  But as we had expected 30+ showings in a week, and with the age of the sellers, it just wasn’t feasible for them to leave the property for an hour, several times per day, and we didn’t want to restrict showings by asking for 4-hour’s notice.

In the end, the sellers being home became an asset, as “Gramma,” as we’ll call her in this story, bonded with just about every single set of buyers that came through the door.

I’ll be honest – the interest level was far higher than expected, and although I figured builders could be all over this property due to the age, most of the buyers looked at the home as a classic gem, and planned to do a modest renovation, or even move right in after some minor repairs.

This house was charming, historical, and full of character.  I know that real estate agents say that about just about every property in Toronto, but you’ll have to take my word for it here.  And as a result, almost every buyer through was looking for the history and character that a house like this could provide, and they loved meeting the owners, and exchanging stories.

For the owners, who had been here for 49 years, this was like a Broadway play being acted out in front of them all day, every day.

They loved it.

Perhaps it’s cliche to say “old people love to chat,” but in this case, it’s an understatement.

“Gramma” got the down-low on every person that came through, and for the most part, it was a two-way street.

I think the word was out pretty quickly that there would be action on this home.

I’ll spare you the surprise – we had nine offers, and we would have had more, but one rescinded right before offer presentation, and several others just didn’t want to get involved.

Suffice it to say, I think most buyers through the house figured, with the sellers present, they should try to make that personal connection that might help them on offer night.  As a result, every time I came by the house to do a showing, or check up on the property, I found the sellers engaged in the middle of a story-exchange with the buyers.

Wow, did they talk.  Talk, talk, talk, all week long.

But these buyers were savvy!  They knew it was a small city, and you’re bound to know some of the same people.

One set of buyers came back with their parents, and their grandparents!  And the grandparents lived in the same condo that the sellers would be moving to.

Another set of buyers had a connection to the same vacation complex that the sellers frequented.

Another set of buyers knew the sellers’ friends from bridge.

Over and over, buyers paraded through, and spent an equal amount of time looking at the house, as they did chatting up the sellers.

I showed up one night and saw “Gramma” holding both hands of one young buyer, facing eachother, in a heartfelt moment.

Just about every buyer through, “got it,” and knew how to play the game.

Just about, as the story goes…

I received a cold call on the property, and I had arranged to meet the buyers there at 7:00pm one night.

The house was a revolving door of action, all week.  7pm most nights, there were 3-4 groups through.

So by 7:25pm, when I sent a text message to the cold-caller to ask where he was, he responded, “In the basement.”

Unbeknownst to me, this young couple had waltzed through the front door, didn’t look for “the agent,” being me, and took it upon themselves to walk through at their convenience.

Upon meeting them, and introducing myself, I was asked, “So what can you tell me?” by the 40’ish young gentleman, with his wife in tow.

I gave him the rundown of the home, the pros and cons, and each time I finished a sentence, he responded by essentially putting words in my mouth.

“The house was built in 1936,” I said, to which he replied, “So it clearly isn’t in good shape, right?  That’s going to affect the price?”

“There’s a beautiful ravine lot in the back,” I said, to which he replied, “So a lot of buyers looking to put in a pool won’t like it, you mean?”

Over, and over, and over.  I know this “type,” and hey – whatever floats your boat.  But in this market, and for this property, the attitude made no sense to me whatsoever.

He constantly disagreed with me at every turn, and feigned a real estate expertice that just wasn’t there.

Things went a bit off the rails when I told him that we’d be reviewing offers the following Tuesday.

“Offer date?” he said, with a deliberate throw-back of his head.  “You have an offer date?  Why?  This house isn’t worth even close to the asking price.”

I’ve mentioned on occasion that I don’t blow up, I don’t take bait, I don’t fight back, and I always take the high road.  I wasn’t going to argue with him, but I did engage him.

“Well,” I began, “We’ve had over 40 showings so far, I’ve had agents ask about bully offers, and if I had to guess, I’d say we’ll get our asking price, who knows – maybe more.”

“But an offer date?” he said.  “Nobody is doing offer dates anymore.  That time has passed.”

“Actually, just about every freehold house in Toronto has an offer date,” I told him.  “The market is alive and well again.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, so matter-of-factly that your average Joe would be convinced.

Not wanting to belabour the point, I simply said, “Well, I’ll know if I’m wrong, next Tuesday.”

He shrugged, and walked away, and continued to point out issues with the home.

As I said, I know the type.  He figures he can create this scenario whereby what he wants, and what he believes, could come true.

Meanwhile, there was a young lady in the kitchen with “Gramma,” laughing and sharing photos of her children.  Gramma was one minute from going upstairs to get a photo album…

I walked to the front door with Mr. 40-something and his wife as we finished our tour, and he asked about offer night.  He then added, “We don’t have an agent,” to which I said, “I know, I had asked your wife that when we spoke two days ago,” and amazingly he said, “Well…..heh….I mean, we would get one.  We know a couple of guys that will do the offer for us and just refund their commission.”

Now the reason I ask cold callers, “Are you working with an agent?” isn’t because I’m trying to pick them up as buyers, and the issue has nothing to do with commission – at least not for me.  It’s about clear and identifiable representation, and I’m not going to show somebody else’s client a home, because it puts me in a position I don’t want to be in.  It’s a clear conflict of interest.

In any event, I told Mr. 40’ish, “Your wife had told me last week that you didn’t have an agent, that’s why I’m showing you the home.  I have to ask, why didn’t you get your agent to show you the home?”

He replied, with an aggressive undertone, “Well, I obviously didn’t waste his time.”

And here’s where I really fail to this guy’s “strategy.”  He’s snuck into the house, he’s already gone through the house and criticized it, he’s made no effort to speak to the sellers, and now he’s effectively telling the listing agent, “I want to waste your time.”

I wasn’t hurt, and I wasn’t fussed about the wasted time.  I would have lived in that listing if I had to, but I just couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t see the error of his ways.

He went on to explain, “I’m a lawyer, you see, and if I make an offer, I’m going to put some pretty complex language in my offer regarding commission, so I don’t want you to be caught off guard.”

So now he was telling me I’m a moron as well.

I could have told you this guy was a lawyer from the moment I met him, and I’m not knocking lawyers – my father just retired after a 40-year career as a criminal lawyer.  My uncle is a lawyer.  My aunt is a Supreme Court justice.  But I knew this guy was a lawyer, and perhaps it explained why he was trying to create his own narrative.

That following weekend, an agent called me from a brokerage I had never heard of, and said he would have an offer on Tuesday for the property.  He said, “My buyer wants to be in the presentation room though, is that okay with you?”

It was an odd request.  Sometimes buyers will accompany their agent to the brokerage, but to be in the presentation?  I’ve never see that.

I asked the agent simply, “To what end?” and he replied, “He wants to explain his offer, maybe chat with the sellers a little bit.”  Right.  I read that as, “He want’s to present his own offer.”

My spidey-sense was tingling, and I thought of Mr. 40’ish, so I asked the agent, “Is your client’s name John Smith?”

Of course it was!

This young lawyer, who’s occupation is to make arguments, wanted to come into the presentation room with the sellers, and berate them with reasons why his offer was the best, why they should sell to him, and probably why they should take less money too.

In any event, offer day came, and we had nine offers.  We were shocked by the response, as we really didn’t intend to under-price the home, but as is the problem with all of the city right now – there’s just nothing on the market.

The first agent came in to present his offer, and he had with him a letter written by the buyers, complete with a family photo.

I handed it to “Gramma” to read, and she immediately started to cry.

So then I started to read the letter, and as she gently sobbed away, and as “Grampa’s” lip began to quiver, I got emotional as well.

I eventually handed the letter to their grandson to read, which he did.  By the end of it, “Gramma” was wiping away tears.

She remembered the buyers from both of their visits to the house.  I recall she looked up at the lady at one point and said, “How come you’re so tall……..and I’m so damn short?” while sitting at the kitchen table, knitting away, with people pouring through her home.

They had a good laugh, she explained, “You know…..I used to be a lot taller,” as any old-lady would, and she got to see the whole family on the second viewing when the kids were running rampant through the home.

Their offer was certainly in the mix, but it helped that the sellers liked them.

We went through a few more offers, and eventually in walked an agent I had never heard of, from a company I had never heard of, in an Ontario suburb.

He had a letter of his own, but this one would be very, very different.

The offer, and the letter, was from Mr. 40’ish.  And it began with something to the extent of:

“I would have liked to be sitting with you in person right now to present our offer, but unfortunately, your agent advised us this wasn’t possible, so we will have to rely on our agent to present our offer instead.”

Great start.

As I’m the one reading this, and his letter is already taking a swipe at me, again, I couldn’t understand what he was thinking.

The letter went on to talk a whole lot about the buyers themselves, and less about the sellers and their home.

Then came the clincher:

“Rather get enter into a prolonged negotiation with you, we’ve instructed our agent to make an unconditional offer at your full list price.”

Do you see the problem here?

We had nine offers.

The property sold for a quarter-million over asking.

And his offer was the lowest of the nine offers.

Now at this point, I may have already lost some of you.

Some of you might think this was just a guy, trying to do what was best for his family, or that he didn’t “need” to “over-bid” for the property.

But I don’t see it that way.  I see things in black and white, and I live in the reality of our Toronto market.

This young man decided that he was smarter than everybody else, and that he was going to talk his way through the process, and win.  That’s his legal background working its way into his personal life, and the competitive world of Toronto real estate.

But honestly, folks, he made a mistake at every possible juncture.

He called the listing agent and said he didn’t have an agent, when he did.

He walked into the house when the front door was open, rather than calling the agent, or ringing the doorbell, and saw nothing wrong with doing so.

He made no effort to connect with the sellers, let alone, say hello to them.

He belittled the house.

He insulted the listing agent, on multiple occasions.

He “hired” a bum agent who was completely unprepared and unqualified to present his offer, because he thought he could save money.

He asked to present his offer in person, which is something I have never seen done before.

He wrote a “me, me, me” letter to the sellers, in which he threw the listing agent under the bus for not allowing him direct access to the sellers.

He offered the list price, and tried to use some sort of reverse psychology in saying “I don’t want to negotiate, so here’s your list price,” to try to sway them.

He did everything wrong, at every possible opportunity.

And in the end, the nice “tall lady” got the house.  Her family had the highest offer once the process was completed, and the sellers saved their personal note, along with two others that were just beautiful.

Mr. 40’ish’s letter went in the recycling.

I’m not faulting Mr. 40’ish for not wanting to bid higher; that’s not what this is about.  I’ve re-read this post twice now, trying to see it from the perspective of your typical Toronto buyer, to see how the view might differ from that of an agent, and the one thing perhaps you might see, that I didn’t, is that I’m somehow blaming a buyer for not having a crystal ball, or not wanting to spend past their budget.

But this wasn’t about the sale price.

This was about the buyer, who just didn’t “get it.”

From start to finish, there was no common sense.  And while I don’t want to turn this into an advertisement for hiring buyer-agents, certainly if this guy had a buyer agent who had two wits about him, the agent would have told him to be a little more courteous, and perhaps that the list price up against eight competing offers, wasn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

There are a lot of buyers in this market who just don’t “get it.”

Buyers who want to create their own narrative, and who hope, pray, wish, and dream about and for market conditions that don’t at all reflect reality.

We can all dream, but most of us snap out of it, and get back to our lives.

Many buyers don’t.  And they’re left in the false reality they’ve created, forever.

I have other stories from this listing, and from the last couple of weeks, that underscore this idea of “getting it,” or failing to live in market reality.  Perhaps I’ll come back to it on Thursday…

The post Either You “Get It,” Or You Don’t appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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I know what you’re thinking – that this is somehow metaphoric, or there’s a catch.

But honestly folks, last spring, I got socked hard right in the jaw by flesh and bone, as I was in the middle of a multiple offer process.

Maybe the perpetrator isn’t who you’re hoping it is – for a better story.  I suppose if the listing agent and I got into a fight, TMZ might pick up the story.

But on an otherwise uneventful Friday, I’m sure you’ll get a chuckle out of this one…

If I was being metaphoric, I’d probably have said “punched in the stomach.”

The good ‘ole real estate “gut punch” that occurs during a tough loss, a bad beat, or any experience providing you with that uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach.

But alas, I’m not being metaphoric, analaogous, symbolic, or even euphemistic.

Knuckles met my nose.

Flesh met my face.

Bone to the button; I was punched with a fist.

It was May of 2017, and I was presenting an offer on a west-end home, in person, at the brokerage.

The weather was nice, and we were past Daylight Saving’s Time, so I was sans-coat, walking freely in a suit on Bloor Street West.

Offer presentations were in person, and I believe there were four offers competing with mine.

The sellers were late arriving at the brokerage, so the other agents and myself waited in those under-sized, uncomfortable chairs that always adorn the foyer of a brokerage, where space is at a premium.

I presented second, and waited in my tiny chair for the other three agents to finish whispering the terms of their offer in a conference room with a sliding glass door, and no sound-proofing, before the listing agent came out and told us that they were “going to work with three offers.”

You all know what this means – we were being sent back to improve.

I try to put a positive spin on a situation like this by telling my clients that we went from having a 20% chance (1 in 5) to now having a 33% chance, as there were 3 offers left.  More to the point, my read wasn’t that we had the highest offer, so if anything, we were lucky to get this second chance.

I needed some space to call my client, partially because the brokerage had no sound-proofing, but also because it was such a nice May evening, so I went outside and dialed my clients.

Standing on the north side of Bloor Street West, I spoke to my buyers and told them where we stood.  There were five offers, now down to three, and I gave them my read on the situation.

I was slowly walking east, at what barely qualifies as a “pace,” as far as I knew, unassuming in nature.

Now, every area of the city has its riff-raff, but on Bloor Street West, you don’t see a lot of…..how would you call it…..rubbies?

Call me ignorant, and I don’t mean to group the homeless and the addicted into the same category, but often they go hand-in-hand.  I don’t like the term “bum,” but I also don’t know how to describe the man who I saw on the street as I stood out front of a real estate brokerage on Bloor West, as I quietly spoke on the phone with my clients.

Let’s just say the man was dirty, disheveled, drunk or high (or both), very unkept, uncoordinated and wobbly, loud, and out of his mind.

You all know the type; you’re just desperately trying not to think the worst.

But as I watched out of the corner of my eye, listening to my clients go over possible scenarios for the second bid they were about to submit, I saw people dodging this man like the plague.  A mother pushing a baby-stroller did a 90-degree turn to avoid his path and take the high part of the sidewalk.  A young couple coming out of Subway immediately threw their eyes to the ground as they passed him by.

That left me, alone, on the sidewalk with this gentleman, but I thought nothing of it.  I simply turned my back, and started slowly pacing as I spoke on the phone.

A few seconds later, I was startled as a loud, gurgling voice only feet away from me shouted, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!”

I turned towards the voice, and it was the man – now heading toward me, screaming, essentially for no reason, other than the fact that he was a fantastic mess.

My client asked, “What was that?” and I simply replied, “Oh, it’s nothing, somebody out here on the street.”

For some odd reason, one that I’ll never quite understand, the man began charging toward me, screaming and swearing.  And all the while, my clients were on the phone, talking about how much they wanted to increase their offer.

I took the phone away from my ear, and turned to the man to say, “Go!  Just Go!” and I started walking faster in the other direction.

But he changed course, from east-bearing to west, and followed me.  All the while still swearing.

He made a charge toward me, and instinctively, I pushed him away with my left hand, while my right hand was on my phone.

And the result was a full yard sale.

Remember that term?  “Yard sale?”

When we were skiing as kids, and sitting up on the chairlift, you’d yell “yard sale” when somebody fell, and their skis, poles, gloves, and hat went flying.  It looked like a yard sale: a person sitting on the ground, with all their belongings surrounding them.  Just like your typical garage sale, street sale, or yard sale.

Fun times!

This time – the one in my story, was not so fun.

The man flew backwards like a hockey player taking a dive, as I barely touched him.  He fell off the curb, into the street, and I believe the term is “ass over tea-kettle.”

His legs flew up in the air, and his shoes fell off.  As did his hat.  As did the brown paper bag with the bottle that he was carrying.

It was a full yard sale, and he was the sole proprietor.

I told my client rather abruptly, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up the phone.  I started to walk away from the mess of a man, and that’s when a young woman on a bike screeched up, yelling, “Oh my God!”

I know.  I could feel her shock and awe.

The situation was a bit scary, to be quite honest.

She got off her bike, and said, “Oh my!  Oh my God!  What happened?”

I was a bit shaken up, but I said to her, “Don’t worry, I’m okay.”

And to my absolute amazement, in what could only further my thoughts about where society is headed today, she said, “How could you do that to a poor old man?”

Yep.

I honestly can’t make this stuff up.

I was like a cartoon with my eyes popping out of my head.  I said, “Pardon me?”

She said, “I saw you push this old man into the street!”

I couldn’t believe it.  And I also couldn’t believe that she immediately pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, like it was a gun in a holster, and held it up and started filming me.

Another societal trend.

“Really?” I asked.  “Is this really mankind’s first instinct in 2017?  You have to get this on tape?”

“You just assaulted that man for no reason,” she told me, still filming.

“That old man is a whack-job who was chasing me,” I told her.  “He’s a bum!  He’s a random drunk who was running up and down the street swearing at people!  Look at him!”

“I saw you push him!” she said.  “You didn’t need to do that.  There was no reason to do that,” she said.

I know she clearly missed the seconds leading up to my push, not to mention the last five minutes of this guy’s erratic behaviour.  But she just looked like the type of person I’d disagree with on a regular basis.  I’m not suggesting that I want to be like those in the United States who feel you should be legally permitted to empty the full magazine of an AR-15 at anybody that opens the door to your back-gate, but I’d also like to think that as an upstanding, tax-paying citizen of this fine city, extending my arm and pushing away somebody that might be looking to do me harm, or at the very least is spitting on my suit as he screamed obscenities and chased me, is warranted in the situation.

The young lady on the bike clearly didn’t agree.

“You could have done something!  You could have run as fast as you could, the other way, and avoided a physical confrontation,” she pleaded.

I sighed so loudly, the neighbours probably heard it.

But before I could respond to her…

…yes, it was just like that.

The homeless guy punched me in the face.

Standing on Bloor Street West at 7:30pm on a warm May evening, in a full suit, a homeless drunk punched me in the face.

And I never saw it coming!

I was arguing with the girl on the bike, who was still filming me, and I never saw the man approaching.

I think it’s funny, otherwise I wouldn’t be sharing.

I have a black belt in Karate, I fought in competitive tournaments for five years, and I even spent a few weeks training in Japan once.

And a homeless man somehow got the drop on me; he snuck up on upon me, and punched me in the face.

It’s funny.  Really, I think it is.

And in that moment, I was so shocked, I started to laugh!

The young lady said, “Oh so that is funny to you too?”

And then she started to cry.

As the saying goes, “Sh!t got weird.”

She sat down on the pavement, leaned against the brick wall, and put her head in her hands.

Unsure of what she was going to do with her video, and unsure as to whether she was going to have a complete breakdown on the sidewalk, I talked her down.  I told her that I was a real estate agent, a father, and a husband, and that at 37-years-old, I wasn’t looking to get in street fights with homeless people.  I apologized for her having to witness something that made her uncomfortable, or sad.

She began to describe how confused she was about the world today, and how there was no good left in it.  She regaled me with her own ideologies and goals for mankind.  Then I wondered if she was going to punch me too…

With a giant red cheek, I walked back to the brokerage, stepped inside, and just prayed that nobody had witnessed what had just transpired only twelve feet from those tiny lobby chairs.

My client called me back to say he would increase his price, I presented our second bid, and eventually was told that we had finished in second-place.

Second place out five offers; that’s a punch to the gut.

And in actual fact, it was worse than the punch to the face.

Because at least the latter one gave me a story to tell, and when I told it for the first time – at a family dinner in front of my wife’s cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, one of them aptly told me when the hysterical laughter had died down, “This could only ever happen to you.”

My new real estate slogan:

David Fleming: An Agent Who Will Take a Punch To The Face For You

Have a great weekend, everybody!

The post The Friday Funny: That Time I Was Punched In The Face During Multiple Offers appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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I sat down tonight to write a blog, and all I could think about was this past week.

It was a busy one.  Busier than usual.  And it kept me on my toes, and tired me out.

So with no real dedicated topic on my mind, and the effect of the last week burning a hole in my head, I figured – hey, that’s a topic in itself!

Let me explain the week that was, which I figure will accurately snapshot the current marketplace…

People often ask me, “How do you consistently come up with three ideas per week for a blog post?”

The truth is, I don’t really have an answer.

The response I give, along with a shrug, is “I dunno; I just do.”

And that really is the truth.  Something always seems to come to mind.

Don’t get me wrong – every day, I ask myself, “Is this the day you finally run out of things to write about?”  After eleven years, and 2,300 blog posts, I feel like one day I’ll just hit a wall, and never be able to come up with another topic.

So I was kind of sitting here, going through a list of old topics (I keep a list, but the ‘hot’ ideas find a way to the blog, whereas the top of the list always contains the same seven or eight topics from last month, or last year, that I’ll never put to print), and all I could think about was how nuts this past week was.

I started to think about, yet again, how I disagree with the sentiments out there that the market is cooling.  I met with a group this past week in from New York, and they kept pointing to all this negative data – on sales, on price, on listings, and I regaled them all with stories “from the trenches,” and argued that at least in the core of the 416, the market is red-hot.

I started to think about how if I could explain, in detail, just one week of my activity in this market, how it could truly sum up what type of market we’re in.

And then, came the idea for the blog: write about THAT!

So while the last week’s events are not representative of every agent, or every buyer/seller, or every segment of the market, I figured it would give you all a real snapshot of what the activity is like out there, in different areas, price points, and housing types.

Monday was a busy day.

Sometimes in this business, you know when the day is going to be busy, and sometimes you don’t.

You can always plan for that buyer client who is absolutely jet-set on making an offer on a property with a scheduled “offer night,” but what about buyers that aren’t “all-in?”

What happens when several buyers, all who said, “We’ll see,” end up saying “We’re in” all at the same time?

On Monday morning, I knew I would be making an offer on behalf of one young couple who were eyeing a North Toronto home.  Offers were scheduled for 7pm, we had our deposit cheque ready, our offer was registered, and after seeing the house during one evening the week before, and again at the open house, we were just about as “all-in” as one can be.

But before I could get to 7pm; way before, in fact, I heard from another couple who wanted to make an offer on a small rowhouse that had been languishing on the market.

When was the last time you saw a freehold on the market for 111 days?

This property was unique to say the least.  It was charming, filled with character, and historical – dating back to the 1880’s.  But it was tiny, and it had previously been tenanted, hence why it didn’t sell.  It was also terribly over-priced, and the seller had already turned down several offers.

Listed at $799,900, we came in at $700,000, just because we could.

I had another client in the mix who had been active in the hottest part of the market: the small 1-bedroom, downtown condo market.

1-bedroom units in King West are routinely selling for over $1,000/sqft, and after seeing a unit at 11 Charlotte Street sell for $1,150/sqft a few weeks ago, I felt like anything under $1,000/sqft was reasonably-priced.

She and I had been actively looking for 500’ish square feet, around $1,000/sqft, in a new building, with a good layout.  And while that sounds simple, trust me – it’s not.  A good layout in 480 square feet is a misnomer.  I just came from a shoebox at 111 Bathurst Street that has such a bad layout, it’s a glorified kitchen with a couch and bed.

So throughout Monday afternoon, I was periodically checking on the number of offers registered on a condo we were eyeing at 101 Peter Street, and by late-afternoon, there were none.

While this is all confusing in nature, let me summarize.  Offer #1 was on the North Toronto property.  Offer #2 was on the old rowhouse.  Offer #3, yet to be decided on, would be the condo at 101 Peter Street.  And all the while I was still monitoring new listings as they became available, preparing for upcoming listings and smashing handfuls of my special Bulk Barn mix into my pie-hole.

While monitoring new listings on Monday afternoon, I saw a dynamite new listing for a property in Cedarvale, listed just under $3,000,000, that was p-e-r-f-e-c-t for buyers of mine that had been looking for about six months.

Every buyer has specific criteria, but to what extent, is always yet to be determined.

These buyers weren’t picky, and they weren’t unreasonable.  They just wanted a certain type of property, and we really hadn’t seen anything out there yet – in between work commitments, weekends out of town, and “life” that gets in the way of seeing every property listed for sale, that was worth pursuing.

So here in the middle of offer mayhem, I had to get these clients out asap to see this hot new listing.

I know it’s crazy to suggest that a house, priced at $2,899,900, would sell in a matter of hours.  But in this case, I figured if we didn’t tie it up within 18-24 hours, there would be multiple offers.  The same thing happened with a house down the street only weeks earlier.  They were listed at $2.5M with no “offer date,” and it sold within 24 hours for $200K over list.

I sent one of my colleagues out with the buyers, and waited to hear back.

By now, there were still zero offers on 101 Peter Street, so my client decided to proceed with an offer.

We were in sign-back on Offer #2 – the small rowhouse.

And by 7:00pm, Offer #1 had been submitted.  Listed at $1.5M, we were at $1.7M, and there were eight offers in total.

My clients for the Cedarvale home were absolutely in love, so that quickly became Offer #4, and we scurried to try to tie up the property.  We submitted an offer by 9pm, with a 12pm irrevocable the next day, even though the listing agent was demanding a 24-hour irrevocable.  We just didn’t want him to shop our offer, and didn’t want to allow time for other offers to come in.

Low-and-behold, the condo at 101 Peter Street ended up with nine offers.  We submitted our offer at 7pm when there were only three offers, but six more were submitted.

Offer #1 on the North Toronto house was lost.  Eight offers, and it sold for $350,000 over asking.  That was $150,000 more than our bid.

Offer #2 on the small rowhouse was in another sign back, and would wait until Tuesday.

Offer #3 on the 101 Peter Street condo went nowhere.  $449,900 list, our $500,000 bid didn’t hold up, although interestingly, they terminated the listing the next day.

Offer #4 on the Cedarvale home would also wait until Tuesday.

Tuesday.

Yes, bring on Tuesday.

On Tuesday afternoon at 2:00pm, offers were being reviewed on an east-end house in which another set of buyer-clients were interested.

That 2:00pm offer time was great, since I had another offer presentation at 7:00pm, and most properties follow the same timeline!

By noon, Offer #2 on the small rowhouse was accepted, and here I had the first purchase of 7% under the list price in about eight years.  As I said, it was over-priced, and on the market for 111 days, but it’s very rare to see that sold of sale-to-list ratio.

Offer #4 was still in play.  We extended our irrevocable until 6:00pm, from 12:00pm, not by choice, but out of necessity.  12pm had passed, and the seller hadn’t chosen to work with the offer.  We re-submitted, and hoped that no competing offers came in.

At 2:00pm, I presented Offer #5 for the east-end house.

Listed at $850,000, we were at $976,000, up against twelve other offers.

Who said the market was slow, right?

The 2:00pm presentation time was a gift from God, as the day was really heating up.

And low-and-behold, a buyer that I did not expect to hear from, with whom I had toured a west-end property with on the weekend, reached out to say, “After much discussion, we’ve decided we will proceed with an offer tonight.”

That would eventually become Offer #7, but it’s okay – offers were by email, and had to be reviewed by the estate’s lawyer overnight.

By 5:30pm, there was good news, and bad news.

The good news was, Offer #4 was accepted.  This house was worth every penny of the $2,899,900 list price, probably more.

“Probably more,” he says.  I know, I know.  What a salesman, right?

But honestly folks, I was fully expecting the phone to ring, and hear the listing agent say, “Soooo……we have another offer registered.”

I can’t possibly tell you how many times that happens, and I had already told my clients for this house, “Be prepared.”

It didn’t happen, however, and we bought a house.  A true “forever house” for these guys, and I couldn’t be happier.

So that was the good news, but the bad news is, my young buyer-couple who had bid on the east-end 3-bedroom semi had lost.

Offer #5 went down in a blaze of glory.  $850,000 list, $976,000 bid – the property sold for $1,020,000.  There were thirteen offers in total.

I skipped past offer #6, did I not?

That was the offer to be presented at 7:00pm, which was for a gorgeous Victorian rowhouse in need of some serious updating.

listed at $799,900, we bid $1,005,000, against eleven other offers.

The wait was not long.  I enjoy working with this agent, as he represents one of perhaps a dozen listing agents in the core that I like, and naively or not, trust.

Alas, we were not successful with Offer #6.

Who would have thought that $205,000 over list – 25%, would get “soundly beat” by not one, but two other offers?

I don’t know the sale price yet, but I’m assuming it’s around $1,040,000.

Tuesday nights hopes were resting on Offer #7, for the west-end home.

Listed at $879,900, in what we know is the most difficult segment of the freehold market (as Offer #5 and Offer #6 demonstrate), we bid $1,066,000, against ten other offers.

And we waited.

We waited, overnight, which is the worst feeling a buyer can have.

All offers were submitted via email, and to be reviewed by the estate’s lawyer.  A decision would be made on Wednesday morning.

And how did we do?

Did our offer of (gasp!) less than $200,000 over the list price prevail?

No.  No, it did not.

The property sold for $1,101,000, and we had no regrets.  It needed a lot of work, and as is always the case, we came into this thinking $1,000,000 “and change” was a good price, realized that we would have to pay far more based on the strength of the market – and the fact that nobody gets “a good price” for a house like this, and eventually settled at $1,066,000.

Sometimes you wake up the next morning feeling sick, and sometimes you laugh it off.

This one was a laugher.

I rounded out Wednesday by promptly losing Offer #8 for a fantastically unspectacular, cookie-cutter condo, up against four other offers.  Listed at $579,900, we bid $601,000, and the listing is currently sold conditionally (imagine that – accepting a conditional offer in competition??), so I don’t know the price yet.

So that’s it, folks.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – eight bids on eight properties.

Two were successful.

And I wouldn’t be writing about this so openly if I thought this was a blight on me.  It’s the nature of the market.  You need to be active to succeed.

I told a colleague, “I was 2 for 8” this week, and he said, “Not bad eh?”

You’d think 2 for 8 is a poor performance in just about anything, but in the Toronto real estate market, especially in this hot spring market, it’s decent.

As I write this – Thursday night, I have an offer in on a “luxury” condo, but they don’t sell in the same manner, and there’s no rush, risk, or anxiety.

And we haven’t even got to Friday yet.

So what’s the take-away here?  That I’m bragging about being busy like most agents, who aren’t?

No, it’s simply that in the face of Toronto Star readers who write letters to the editor, complaining about pumping the tires of the Toronto real estate market, and coming up with conspiracy theories about how the Toronto Real Estate Board pays the media to be positive, I wanted to demonstrate what one week is like during the current market cycle.

This isn’t representative of the whole of Toronto.  I’m talking about the core of the 416.  Strip away 905, trim the fat from the 416 – and that is the area that’s red-hot.

The six properties that had multiple offers this week had 8, 9, 13, 12, 11, and 5 offers respectively.

That is the market I see out there today.

Maybe it will change come April, when listings should be plentiful.  But better weather and more listings also brings more buyers, so it might just be more of the same.

Here’s looking forward to a busy weekend ahead, with a ton of east-end showings, a stop at the Shangri-La, a quick jaunt into Leaside, and a tour of everything between Keele & Jane just to cap it off.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

The post The Week That Was… appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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Sure, why not – let’s continue the theme from last week!

On Friday, I told you tales of “the week that was,” and how things are starting to get very busy again in the freehold market here in the central core.

Some readers suggested that the sales figures don’t live with the stories I tell, so I thought today, I’d double down.

Except today, I’ll be telling stories from this past weekend about journeys with buyers both inside the central core, and outside as well…

Let’s start today’s blog with a little survey, shall we?

Last week, we started to see a lot of new inventory in certain segments of the market, specifically those where product had previously been lacking.

Was this:

a) A sign of things to come
b) Double the inventory, since no seller in their right mind would list before a long-weekend?

You decide.

But no matter how you slice it, we saw a lot of new listings in the sub-$1M freehold market last week, and I might say, anecdotally, more than triple what we saw the week before.

I speak, of course, about the central core of the 416.  Last Friday’s blog post prompted a discussion by the readers with respect to where the market strength is, and where we’re seeing weakness.  It was also prudent to look at the sales figures (both price as well as units), and determine in which areas those massive red percentages can be applied.

So let me tell you about my weekend, and the interactions I had with three buyer-clients, and perhaps this will either settle the debate, or fan the flames.

My work-weekend started early, with a 5pm appointment on Friday night to check out two houses with one set of my young buyer-clients.

The first was a semi-detached, 2-bed, 2-bath, with parking, and a finished basement, priced at $739,000.

We didn’t “love” the house on paper, but it was in the location that my clients desired.

In this market, I find that buyers are either primarily motivated by location, or property type.  That is to say they’re either set on a location, and they seek the most for their money in that pocket, or they’re set on the size/type/style of home, and they’ll take it where they can get it, for what they can afford.

These clients were set on the location, and thus this house, at $739,000, with an $875,000 target sale price, made a lot of sense.  This would keep them well under their max of $1,000,000 even.

Unfortunately, there was almost nothing we liked about the house, other than the price.

The house backed onto an apartment building, and while that’s not a deal-breaker, it could be seen from the front of the house, the living room, the kitchen, and standing on the back-deck made you feel like you could hear a conversation from one of the balconies on the other side of the fence.

The house was really small, and it was felt in every room.  The living room had space for two fewer people, the dining table was a round 4-top, the kitchen was 2/3 the size of what we felt would be acceptable, and the upstairs bedrooms were tight.

It was a “pass” through-and-through, and we moved on to the second house.

The second house was fantastic!  A semi-detached bungalow, but a great footprint.  25-foot wide lot, and a huge 138 feet deep.  2-car parking behind the house, and an incredible deck and backyard.

But it was only 2-bedrooms, and where my clients were in life, it surely wasn’t a 10-15 year home.

Perhaps at the right price, this house would work, but what is the right price for a house you know you’ll be moving out of sooner than you had anticipated?

I called the listing agent, somebody I knew well, and talked shop.

As I spoke to her, my phone beeped, and it was a message about a bully offer being registered on the first house – the 2-bed, 2-bath semi-with the apartment in the backyard!  How ironic.

The agent for this house told me that 13 buyer agents had already asked for a copy of the home inspection (a good indication of interest), and that a few people had “thrown out” the price figure that I had asked her about.

It was a tough house to price.  The buyer pool would be unique, and I jokingly told my clients that the likely buyer would be a single old-lady who wants to downsize to the house so she can read books and work on her painting.

After less 48 hours on the market, there were already about 50 Realtor business cards on the counter.

This house was going to sell for a big number, no doubt about it.

Later that night, I saw the sale price for the “first house” on our tour.  Listed at $739,000, it sold for $954,000, which was a weeeeee bit more than my $875,000 target.  It’s funny, because we didn’t like it at $875,000, but somebody else must have loved it at $954,000…

On Saturday morning, I took out another young couple, but this time it would be more than just two houses.

It would be ten.

Ten houses are what we call a a “tour” in our business, and I honestly haven’t done a tour like this in probably five or six years.

But that is what’s so fascinating about this market!  We actually had TEN houses to look at!

The 3-bedroom semi-detached market, on the east side, exploded last week with new listings.

The two toughest markets right now, as I see it, are:

1) 500 square foot, 1-bedroom condos in C01/C08
2) 3-bedroom semi’s under $1,000,000

And it’s the latter that we toured on Saturday.

Touring ten houses in three hours isn’t easy, but it’s made easier with a little preparation.

I told my clients to wear slip-on shoes, and that we’d be driving around in my car – so to drop theirs off somewhere, and meet me at the first house.  I sent them a PDF with a map and the ten listings, and told them to bring a clipboard and a pen – which they did.

House #1 was overly-staged, showed worse in person than in the photos, and had a “finished” basement that was good – for two guys sharing a loveseat as they watch the game.  It had no parking, and most houses on the street had parking pads, so street parking was next to impossible.  It was a pass.

House #2 was charming and traditional, which gave a great first impression.  But as we started to consider functionality, we realized that it wasn’t going to work.  There was no second bathroom with a shower (the 2-piece bath that was 28-inches from the dining table must have made for some memorable dinner parties…), and the parking pad was illegal.  It was a pass.

House #3 was commanding a huge premium because of the private driveway, but it was on a corner, with the driveway access on a very busy street.  It had the best basement rec-room of any house we’d seen, but the rest of the house wasn’t what we were looking for.  It was a pass.

House #4 had sold the previous evening via bully offer.

House #5 was incredibly disappointing.  I had targeted this one as the best option of the bunch, assuming that the work needed was minimal, since I loved the street and the footprint of the house – with great width!  But the photos, oh the photos!  They didn’t show how much work was needed, and unlike some other houses we’d seen with wide mutual driveways that led to parking at the back of the lot, this mutual driveway could barely fit a Model-T Ford.  It was a pass.

House #6 was the lone detached house we were seeing, but I didn’t like it at all.  My clients’ friends, who are also my clients, told them to add it to the list.  The house itself was decent, but it was past our geographic “boundary,” if you will.  They were having an early open house, and it was absolutely slammed.  Listed at $699,900, what do you expect?  It was a pass.

House #7 was absolutely incredible.  Listed at $999,900, we couldn’t figure out why it was still on the market after 14 days.  I told my clients that while you might think a house on the market for 14 days, listed at $999,900, was actually available for $999,900, it just wasn’t possible.  We were in love.  More on this in a moment…

House #8 was also incredible, but we were thinking about house #7, and just blew through this place.  This would have been our best option, if not for House #8, and had we seen it first, we’d have been in love with it too.  It wasn’t a pass, but was on the back-burner.

House #9 was the third incredible house in a row, and my clients remarked, “What a change from the morning, eh?”  It was true.  The house was smaller, with no parking, and it had “everything done,” so there was zero way to add value.  But if we could get it under our budget (which I didn’t think we could – this was a late addition to the tour, in a “We may as well add it” kind of way), we’d be all over it.

House #10 was where I first spoke to the agent from House #7.  And that was the highlight of the home.  It was in an A+ location, but it was a gut.  It would make a great home for somebody, just not for us.

So what’s the take-away from the tour?

We ended up making an offer on House #7, which I might come back to in a later blog post.

House #4, as mentioned, sold via bully offer.

House #3 got a bully offer on Saturday night, and promptly sold.

House #9 got a bully offer on Sunday morning, and two more followed.  I believe this was sold too.

Ten houses, and three bully offers.

And if you subtract House #7, which was 14 days on the market, and not holding back offers, we have nine houses with offer dates, and three that sold via bully.

That’s 33% of houses selling via bully offer, in a sample size for essentially the same product – semi-detached, 3-bedroom homes in a tight geographic area (save for the one detached).

Perhaps that’s the takeaway from this story, and combine it with Friday night’s experience, where one of the two houses sold via bully offer, and I think it offers an accurate snapshot of this particular segment of the market.

So what next?

What of my tour outside the central core?

Well, it couldn’t have possibly been more different…

Out in a popular pocket of Mississauga, my clients were looking for a detached, 4-bedroom home, on a decent lot, under $1,400,000.

We saw six houses, and there were about 14-15 in this pocket, which

House #1 – $1,249,000 – 4-bed, 3-bath, 2008-built, 38 x 131 foot lot, on the market 45 days.

House #2 – $1,269,000 – 4-bed, 4-bath, 2008-built, 40 x 110 foot lot, on the market 3 days.

House #3 – $1,278,000 – 4-bed, 4-bath, 2013-built, 36 x 89 foot lot, on the market 2 days.

House #4 – $1,359,000 – 4-bed, 5-bath, 2004-built, 40 x 148 foot lot, on the market 58 days.

House #5 – $1,359,900 – 4-bed, 5-bath, 2008-built, 45 x 85 foot lot, on the market 66 days.

House #6 – $1,449,000 – 4-bed, 5-bath, 2004-built, 40 x 110 foot lot, on the market 19 days.

So look at those ‘days on market,’ aka DOM.

45, 3, 2, 58, 66, and 19.

But wait…

House #2, which had been on the market only three days, had previously been listed for $1,299,900, on the market 33 days.

And house #5 had been on the market previously for 44 days, just for good measure.

There were another four houses priced between $1.2M and $1.4M that we could have added to our tour as well.

And this geographic area isn’t large.  It’s like, if I had to guess, maybe half of South Leaside?

To be fair, this is essentially a sub-division, so many of the homes are similar in size, and thus much of what is for sale would be around the same price, give or take.

But that’s a lot of inventory, at one price point, for one area.

And that’s a lot of “DOM” for those homes.

Quite the difference from the central core, wouldn’t you say?

I feel like we can waltz in and make offers well under the list price on any of these homes if we want to, which, of course, we do.

And if one seller doesn’t feel like playing ball, we can go try his neighbour to the right, and then if need be, his neighbour to the left.

The market has changed since the peak in April of 2017, but as I continue to explain to those that are willing to listen, the market conditions vary dramatically from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.

So that was the weekend, bring on the week.

I expect this week to be slow in the freehold market, as few sellers want to list before a long weekend, and review offers after Easter Monday.  But beyond next week, I expect to see a lot more listings hitting the market as we move through spring and into summer…

The post The Weekend That Was… appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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Last Friday, when I offered another edition of “Photos of the Week,” a couple of readers mentioned that rather than sharing negative reviews of listings, photos, and seller/agent behaviour, I should provide some feel-good examples of listings done right.

So in the spirit of positivity, let me offer you a story for “Feelgood Friday.”

Perhaps I don’t often share enough of the good stories, and despite this chaotic market, there are many.

Last week, I sold a condo listing amid 13 offers, and the ending sent chills up my spine…

You’ve heard this from me before, but I honestly don’t enjoy working on the selling side on “offer night” during multiple offers.

Most listing agents love it.

I mean, what’s not to love?

Power?  Status?  Envy?

That’s not me, I’m sorry.

Call me dramatic, but when I receive 13 offers on a listing, I can’t help but think about the twelve buyers, and buyer agents, who go home disappointed.

Once the “winning” bid has been accepted, I personally call all the agents with unsuccessful offers to tell them that I appreciate their offer, and their efforts, and that I hope to see them again out there in the real estate trenches.

In today’s market, when you have 13 offers on a property, the person-to-person connection often goes out the window.  More to the point, the buyer-to-seller connection goes with it.

Some of my clients couldn’t possibly care less who buys their house or condo, and yet to some, it’s tremendously important.

The first property sale I ever witnessed was my childhood home, which I mentioned in my Pick5 video today, on Parkhurst Boulevard in Leaside.

It was the spring of 1992, and I was 12-years-old.

I remember my father telling me, as I was upset that we had sold the house and were moving that a “young couple” were going to buy the house, and “start a family.”

In my mind, this was our house.  I belonged to us, and no matter what happened, and who moved in, it would always be our house.

Once we had moved out of our home, and into our new one on Bessborough Drive, we went back to the vacant house on Parkhurst, God knows why.  I think my brother, sister, and myself wanted to say some sort of “goodbye” before the deal closed, and another family moved in.

I remember laying on the floor of my bedroom so vividly, I can almost smell the 80’s carpet fibres, which always seemed a little dirty, and a little greasy.  My mom was trying to round up her three kids to get going, and she walked by the doorway to my tiny room, saw me laying on the floor with my arms outstretched as though I were hugging my room, and said aloud, “Oh my God, I knew this was a mistake.”

When we moved to Bessborough, I still thought of Parkhurst as “my house.”

Our family jogging route took us from Bessborough Drive along the outskirts of Leaside – Bayview, Southvale, Laird, and then back up Parkhurst to Bayview again.  We jogged by our old home hundreds of times.

We moved to Parkhurst from a house around the corner on Airdrie Road shortly after I was born in 1980, and lived there until 1992 – a total of twelve years.

I remember in 2005, chatting with my sister, when she said, “Can you believe the family who moved into our old house on Parkhurst has now been there longer than us?”

It was crazy-talk to me.

Longer than us?  Really?  How could that be?

“Time flies,” and all that?  Twelve years?

I remember when I was coaching Bantam baseball from 2007 to 2013, at some point one of the kids mentioned a party at the house (why do parents leave they teenagers alone???), and my head popped up.  I gave them the address, and they said, “Yeah, you know it?”

Time flies, indeed.  It seemed that the non-existent child from the “young couple” who were “going to start a family” as my Dad told me back in 1992, was now a 17-year-old, throwing parties with the kids I coached.

Well, guess what?  That family is still there.

They’ve been there now for a whopping twenty-six years, by my count.

And I think it’s fair to say, that of all the people that have ever owned that particular property, the 26-year tenure really makes it their house.

I think if you took a quick poll, and perhaps we should do that, you’d find that the ratio of people who care, and don’t care, about who buys their home, is about 50/50.

When I received 13 offers on my condo listing last week, my sellers said they really wanted to know who was buying the property from them.

They’re a really nice couple, and I could tell from the first time I entered their condo, that they take an immense amount of pride in their home.  They also like to entertain, and left behind in that condo, as is the case with everybody who moves, are a slew of good memories, great times with friends and family, and a few years of their lives.

When we settled on the “winning” bid of the thirteen offers, I called the buyer agent to let her know.  She was a little surprised, as anybody would be in the midst of thirteen offers, and she said, “My client will not believe this!”

She told me again, “You will not believe how much this means to my client, just, wow.”

I’ve heard it before; emotions run high in these situations, and the reactions are often hyperbolic.

I emailed the accepted offer, and asked the agent where she was, and where I could get the certified bank draft for the deposit.

And then things started to get really interesting.

“She’s at King & Sherbourne,” the agent said.  “I’m in the west end; I could go meet her, then meet you, wherever you are.”

I told her that I actually live two blocks from King & Sherbourne, and provided she trusted me interacting with her buyer-client, I was happy to save her the trip at 9pm in the evening, and go meet the buyer myself.

She took me up on the offer, and was quite grateful.

“Let me give you the address,” she told me, and I said, “I already know.”

Creepy-sounding, but it wasn’t.  “230 King Street East?” I asked.

“Yes, wow, how did you know?”

“I lived there for five years,” I told her.  “When you said ‘King & Sherbourne,’ I had a feeling.”

Ironically, in hindsight, I realize it could have been 39 Sherbourne Street, aka “King Plus Condo,” which is directly across from King’s Court at 230 King Street.

But I just had a feeling it was my old stomping grounds, and I got in my car, and headed down.

I got to the condo, and walked in through the beautiful lobby (it’s an old bank where they’ve preserved the interior as it was in the 1900’s, and even have ‘before’ photos posted on the walls), then found a seat on the padded benches in a separate waiting area off the mailroom.

It was on that very bench, on the same side, in the very same spot, where I waited for a friend of mine to meet me, along with my mother, back in 2005 when I was looking at purchasing a condo in the building.  And here I was, years later, waiting for somebody else, who was looking to buy a condo.

Not exactly the same situation; this lady was looking to buy someplace else, but the coincidence wasn’t lost on me.

I met the woman, as she peeked around the corner and asked, “David?”

She was carrying with her a dog that, I swear – I actually did a double-take as I thought it was my dog.

The resemblance was uncanny.

“That’s my dog’s face,” I told her.  “The nose, the eyes, the little teeth – this is my dog!”

It was a half Maltese, half Yorkie, just like my dog.  Yet another coincidence.

She handed me the deposit cheque, and we chatted for a while.

She told me that the dog was a rescue, which was ironic, given I had literally just had a conversation with my wife about adopting a rescue dog.  Not any time soon, of course.  We have a dog, and a 17-month-old baby.  Another dog is not in the cards.  But my wife volunteers for a non-profit called “Save our Scruff,” which helps find owners for rescued and abused dogs, and she said if we ever get another dog, it’ll be a rescue.

As we chatted, I asked the new-buyer what the importance of her offer price was.

I realized as soon as the words came out of my mouth that it’s a far more personal question than it seems.

A buyer might offer $800,610, because they got married on June 10th.

I’ve seen all kinds of numbers, with all kinds of meanings.  Birthdays, anniversaries, lucky numbers in various cultures, favourite numbers, sports jersey numbers, number of children – anything you can think of.

Of course in this case, the lady said, “My Dad.”  And then added, “My Mum.”

“My dad died on that date,” she told me.  And as the lump in my throat started to grow, she said, “And my Mum on the other date.”

Oh boy.  Well, add “death date” to the list of potential numbers and meanings above.  I guess I didn’t think of that.

“I actually lost both my parents in a very short time,” she added.  “In the same month.”

Right.  I was so glad to bring that back up for her…

But you know what?  She wasn’t sad.  She was actually happy!

“My parents always wanted to help me buy a place,” she told me.  “And tonight, they did.”

Boy, was I ever caught off guard.

I have to be honest, maybe I’m not a deep enough person, but I never really thought of it that way.

We had 13 offers, and as is always the case, the bidding was close.

The dates of her parents’ passing were used in her offer price, and those numbers helped her win the property.

In essence, her parents did “help her buy a place.” as she put it.

It was heart-warming, and the coincidences were not lost on me.

But there was even more ahead.

She told me how she had been a tenant in the same unit for eight years, and how recently her landlord asked her to sign a new lease, at a much higher price than what was permitted by law.  When she respectfully declined, he sent her a Form N12 by email, with no subject line, and no text.  Just the form.

The form specified that a family member would be moving into the unit, specifically his son.  She added that she had known him for eight years as his tenant, and she was pretty sure he didn’t have a son…

Rather than dwell on her situation, she decided now would be the time to take the plunge into the housing market, and she started to look at condos.

I know a lot of buyers say this, so it sounds cliché, but she said, “As soon as I walked into the condo, I felt like I was home.”

“They had my stuff,” she said.  “Half the stuff I have, they have!”

They also had a dog, as did she, and she had always wanted a terrace for the pup.  This condo, by the way, happened to have a 300 square foot terrace.

The coincidences, similarities, and happenstance was just too much.  I stood there in the lobby of my old building, and smiled.

And then came the clincher.

She told me, “I just absolutely love that terrace!  I’ve always wanted one,” she said.  “I actually live above a huge terrace in my current unit.”

It made me think.

“Do you live above the units on the second floor – the ones with the 440 square foot terraces?” I asked.

“I do!” she said.

I knew these rather well, of course.  There are six units with 440 square foot terraces, as I used to own one.

“I used to live in one,” I said.  “Which unit are you in?” I asked her.

“Unit xx2,” she told me.

Go figure.

“Small world,” I said.  I used to live four floors below you.  Directly below you.  I’m was in Unit xy2.

We both laughed.

What are the odds?

She actually lived there, a few floors above me, for two years while I was there.

We shook hands, I went out to my car, and I went home feeling good.

This can often be a miserable business, and I’m sorry to say, but an overwhelming majority of interactions that you have with people, no matter what role they play, are negative.

So how good did I feel, meeting such a pleasant lady, with such a great story about bidding on and winning this condo, with all these incredible coincidences and personal connections?

That’s a rhetorical question.  And suffice it to say, you don’t have to guess how happy my sellers were to hear the following day what a great person they sold their beloved condo to.

Perhaps I’m being overly-sentimental, or maybe you caught me on an off day.

But most “tales from the trenches” don’t end well, so I’m glad I could provide you one on an otherwise feelgood-Friday…

The post Tall Tales From The Trenches On Feelgood Friday! appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.