More MLS Musings!

MLS Musings!

3 minute read

September 24, 2021

I suppose if you really wanted to be amused with the hilarious and often tragic happenings in my industry, you’d have simply read Monday and Wednesday’s blog posts and been done with it!

But stories only tell part of the tale.  A picture paints a thousand words, or in this case, a picture of the MLS listing paints a thousand-and-one.

Here we go…

I’ve seen some pretty crazy sale-to-list ratios lately, but nothing like this one.

140% of list, 150% of list, even 160% of list.

But 1,119% of list?

That’s amazing!

Of course, 1,119% of list is nothing when you’re seeing properties sell for 9,859% of list.

How about this one?

want to believe it’s a typo, but at least with the ones above, you can see where they were going.  How in the world does this make sense?

Let’s say you spent $13 on a gourmet coffee from your favourite bean place.

Let’s say I like my $2.38 extra-large Tim Horton’s.

That’s an example of choice in a marketplace, right?

Okay, how about you own a $60,000 car but you put a $30,000 piece of art in the trunk.  Does that make your car “worth” $90,000?

I laugh when I see listings like this where the sellers are trying to recapture money they spent on features they like and they value…

Furniture depreciates as soon as you take it out of the store.  But more to the point, does this seller not understand that not every buyer won’t necessarily have the same style and taste as he does?

A blog reader reached out last week and asked me to look into her house sale from January of 2020.

She asked if she’d “left money on the table.”

That’s really impossible to answer though.

I mean, unless the property was resold as an assignment, on MLS, by the new owners three weeks later…

You know how much I despise the bastardization of our public school system, right?

No “late marks” anymore, but also no deducted marks for saying “UR” instead of “you are” on a university paper because the students make the rules now.

But then how can we expect people to understand that a house can’t “leave no stone unturned,” but rather the owners of the house can or can’t, right?

No big deal, right?

Who cares, you ask?

I don’t know, maybe this guy…

I would love to hear the phone calls that this listing agent is getting:

To be a fly on the wall and hear him try to explain this to buyer agents, oh boy.

Then again, try explaining this to the buyers

Anybody hungry?

Looks like there’s some food down in the parking garage…

Where’s Chris Farley when you need him?

“air quotes” on the right word…

You own a house worth upwards of two million dollars.

You hired a real estate agent to sell it.

You’ve put your faith and trust in this agent.

And when it came time to “market” this property for sale, the agent knew that the curb appeal of the house was important.

Soo….

…he didn’t hire a photographer, or even visit the house to take a photo with his iPhone.

He screen-captured Google Street View.

Yeah.  62,000 agents are licensed by TRREB.

Never a dull moment…

What is this photo?

I can’t figure it out.

Did they do that on purpose?

Is it blurry because it’s supposed to be something cool, probably some fad that I don’t know about?

I have absolutely no idea…

I also have no clue what “Cloud Cuckoo Land” means:

What is a “Cabinet In The Woods?”

I’m picturing an IKEA medicine cabinet, nailed to a tree, filled with first-aid items in case of scrapes and cuts…

This probably isn’t the best way to agents to a listing…

This is something I have never, ever seen before:

I can’t make sense of it, even if I try.

What kind of a condo is this?

Is property management running a rooming house?

Last, but not least, no red underlines are needed in this next one, because the entire caption is worth reading:

That’s it for me, folks!

I’ve got a huge weekend ahead of me.

Just got a snappy new piece of technology so I’m gonna try it out with some blog videos, some family videos, and who knows what else.

Eat your heart out, but beware: this will be sold out by the time you get urge to splurge…

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

Find Out More About David Read More Posts

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7 Comments

  1. Graham

    at 7:55 am

    Re: Cloud cuckoo land.

    I don’t think the agent understood the meaning either, or maybe they did, and it is 2 smrt and deep for me (most likely the correct answer).

    From the #1 source on the internet, Wikipedia: “Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdly, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. Someone who is said to “live in cloud cuckoo land” is a person who thinks that things that are completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. It also hints that the person referred to is naïve, unaware of realities or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.”

    Wikipedia Friday fun fact: Newt Gingrich referred to Barack Obama’s claim that algae could be used as a fuel source as cloud cuckoo land.

    1. Mxyzptlk

      at 10:03 am

      Well, Newt would have been intimately familiar with cloud cuckoo land.

    2. Condodweller

      at 11:10 am

      Sounds like a term David should get familiar with because he could have used it frequently in the past!

  2. Ed

    at 8:20 am

    Have a Super Duper weekend. Don’t snooze or U lose.

    1. Ed

      at 9:00 am

      or as the kids say. U zzz, U loose

  3. David

    at 4:40 pm

    Wow…you own a property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions, wanting to rent it out professionally, but not willing to part with 4% of the annual rent (after taxes it probably works out to a savings of 2%).

    Can you imagine what it will be like if the place needs a repair?

  4. Go1Mr

    at 8:55 am

    I will never ready for these kind of things.

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