Sometimes, I forget that I was once a child too.

Questioning how in the world my daughter can watch Frozen every single weekend, I almost forget how many times I watched and re-watched the same movies and television shows as a child.

Growing up in the 1980’s, we conveniently owned both VHS and Beta, but because my Auntie Ellie worked at TV Ontario, we were constantly being gifted used Beta-Max cassettes.  So my mother, smart, frugal, and caring as she was, would always check the TV Guide to see what movies were on that week, and would record or “tape” every movie she could on one of these Beta-Max cassettes.

Our basement at 128 Parkhurst Boulevard was littered with these things.  When we ran out of space on the shelves, we just stacked them on the floor.

My mother would even edit out the television commercials that constantly interrupted these films.  How awesome was that?

The top-watched movies, on TV-taped Beta, at 128 Parkhurst boulevard in the 1980’s and early-1990’s:

Sixteen Candles
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Pretty In Pink
Back To The Future
Big
Adventures In Babysitting
Rock And Roll High School
Can’t Buy Me Love
Dance Till Dawn
Porky’s (not appropriate for kids but my parents were liberal)
Weird Science
Just One Of The Guys
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

If you’re noticing that most of these are teen-angst, rom-com’s, it’s because my older sister controlled what we watched.

Now aside from movies, we also watched the same television shows over and over.

I’ve seen every episode of Who’s The Boss about a dozen times.  Ditto with Growing Pains.

So who am I to suggest that my daughter should “try something else” instead of watching Frozen for the hundredth time?

Or Frozen II, which she does on occasion?

The last movie I saw in the theatre was Frozen II.

This seems like an eternity ago:

That was January 1st, 2020.

Pre-pandemic.  What was that even like?

My daughter’s first movie.  And first extra-large bag of popcorn…

Since then, she’s probably seen Frozen II as many times as Frozen.

And how many times have I heard her sing “Into the Unknown?”

I know the lyrics by heart, I really do.  And that opening – such a powerful hook!  Idina Menzel is amazing!

Into the unknown.

It has a certain ring to it.

And as we turn the corner here and move toward mid-February, the phrase speaks volumes about the Toronto real estate market.

Into the unknown.

It’s where so many of us are going.  The agents, the buyers, the sellers.

Into the unknown.

Short-term, medium-term, long-term.

Into the unknown.

House, condos.  Low-end, high-end.

Into the unknown.

It’s what I say, tongue-in-cheek, as I head out on showings every single day.

Many of you don’t to hear this, but in red-hot markets like this, we agents often joke about just how hot the market is, and how little a handle we have on it.  One of my favourite jokes, which again, you may not find funny, is when a colleague comes into my office with an MLS listing, hands it to me, and says, “What do you think this is worth?”

I put on my glasses, hold the listing out, stroke my chin, and then hand it back to him and say, “How would I know?  I’m just a real estate agent…”

You’ve gotta have a sense of humour in these times.  It often takes a fortune-teller to predict what a given property is going to sell for, and that creates a danger for both buyer and seller.

We all know the dangers for buyers.  You run the danger of getting emotionally involved, you run the danger of embarrassing yourself with a pointless offer, and you run the danger of over-paying.  But today, I want to talk about the danger for sellers when they’re heading out into the unknown.

On Monday, I talked about how some condo listings are coming out with no offer date and “offers any time,” and how this can work out well if the property receives multiple offers and sells for a crazy number, but the other side of that coin says that luck might not be in your favour.  In fact, if you believe that there is no such thing as luck, and/or that we create our own luck, then a listing strategy is essential in this market.

So let’s discuss four major points, which I’ll phrase as questions, for the sellers out there.  These questions are more geared towards the condo market, since the freehold market was hot last year and continues to be hot this year, whereas the condo market is only now making a huge comeback.

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1) What are you taking into consideration before we look at price and offers?

This was going to be my last point until I realized that these considerations will affect the following three points.

If you’re a condo seller and you have “30/TBA” in the possession remarks field on MLS, what are you doing to your buyer pool?

I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here – all of my listings, for which I hold back offers, say “60/TBA.”  That’s because I want every buyer in the city to look at the property.  If my clients want a 95-day close, or they want a specific date, I’m not going to post that on MLS.  It’s not until a buyer agent calls me on offer night and says, “Do your clients have a preferred closing date?” that I’ll tell them we want May 9th.

Call me an asshole if you want and tell me I’m wasting people’s time.  But I’m doing my job.  And also, get real.

So if a potential home-seller is divulging on MLS that they want a 30-day closing, they have to realize that they’re pushing away every single potential buyer for that home who has a condo to sell.  There are a lot of move-up buyers in this market; people who own a condo and want to buy a house, and with most people buying before they sell, it means they have to look at a 60-day closing on the purchase to allow themselves time to list and sell the condo.

I have home-buyers right now who have condos to sell, and if the owner/seller of a house that we like is looking for a 30-day closing, we can’t buy it.  It’s just that simple.

Now, consider that all terms and conditions of an offer are negotiable, so we could offer that seller 65-days, but most of the time, there are a slew of other buyers who are willing to offer the seller the closing they need, and probably match on price.  So while I’m not saying it’s a fool’s errand, I’m saying that being successful is unlikely.

So again, if you’re a would-be seller in this market, will you plan accordingly?  Will you try to get out onto the market sooner so you can accommodate closer to a 60-day closing?  Many buyers aren’t doing this, and it’s a huge mistake.

Now, consider pandemic showing protocols.

Are you allowing double-bookings for showings?  Are you doing 15-minute intervals, or will you allow 60-minutes?

Many sellers don’t realize that they have to take this into consideration when strategizing on price, offers, etc.

Pre-pandemic, you could have seven different agents book a showing at 5:30pm on Thursday night.  That meant maximum exposure for the property.  So if you’re under-pricing to solicit a slew of offers, or if you’re open to pre-emptive offers, you had no concerns about access to the property to ensure exposure.

But what about now?

What about a market where there are no double-bookings, and only a handful of buyers can get in each night?

These questions all play into the next three points…

2) Where do you price?

Do you list low?

Do you list high?

What’s your listing and pricing strategy?

Last year, I had a listing for a very popular house on the east side, and an agent called me and asked that question that drives all of us listing agents nuts: “What comparable sales did you use to come up with the list price?”

You might think that’s a fair question, but you’re not on my side of the field.  In my mind, the only response to this question is, “Screw off, don’t ask me to do your job for you.”

This time around, I decided to be hilariously-honest, and I said, “I didn’t use any comparable sales.  I didn’t do a market evaluation.  The market is insane in this price point, so we picked a random number that’s well under market value, and we’ll see what offers come in on the house.”

A little facetious, a little tongue-in-cheek, but honest.

The property was probably worth $1.3 Million, but I know that based on experience.  I don’t need “comparable sales” like this new agent, because I have my gut.  And a $1,099,900 list price is strategic in nature, so ultimately asking me what comparable sales I used to come up with the list price shows me that this agent is asking the wrong question.

“What is the property going to sell for,” is the right question, although I wouldn’t answer that either.

In the downtown condo market today, agents don’t understand that when they list a condo for sale, they’re truly walking their sellers into the unknown.  They have absolutely, positively, no idea where the property is going to sell.

And that is what makes pricing and strategy so essential!

The upside in this market is exciting, but the potential money left on the table is downright scary.

One of the guys on my team ran out to show a new listing last night, priced at $639,900, and had an offer signed and emailed to the seller the moment they left the condo.  The agent said, “This looks great, I’ll get in touch with my client.”  Only within three hours, there were four offers, and the property sold for $685,000, which was way more than our buyer could afford.

But isn’t that scary?

The fact that this listing agent was ready to advise his seller to accept $639,900?

I said this on Monday: agents who aren’t working in this market every single day, all day, and into the night, are going to be caught off-guard in this market.  And it’s their clients who suffer, even though many of those clients will never know.

Which leads to ask..

3) Do you hold back offers?

This borders on arrogance, considering where we were in December when we could barely get showings on condo listings, and now we’re seeing the holdback making a comeback.

But, if the shoe fits, and all that…

On Wednesday, I told you about my colleague who listed a property for $699,900, which I told her she might have been able to sell for $665,000 in November/December, that ended up getting 16 showings and multiple offers.

That property sold for $755,000.

She had no “offer date” but was able to think on her feet and get the most money possible for that property.

However, as I told her while this was all unraveling in front of her, “You need to have a strategy here.”

Should she have set an offer date from the start?

Should she have insisted on a 24-hour irrevocable on any offers, aka a “soft holdback?”

When the first offer came in at the full-list price I told her, “Go get a ‘Seller Direction’ signed from your client and update MLS to ask for a 24-hour irrevocable.”  But she said that her client wanted to sell the property that night, and that she was going to email all the agents who had booked showings and tell them that offers would be reviewed at 8:00pm.

In the end, she got a stupid price for the property.  Just ridiculous.

But the moral of the story is this: you simply must have a listing strategy in place BEFORE you go to market.

If you’re listing with “offers anytime,” you have to know, depending on the property, that you may get multiple offers that first day and night, and you have to book off the time to deal with them, make sure the sellers are available and have the condo’s status certificate ready in advance (most agents do this) so that you can get an unconditional offer.

If you’re listing with a 24-hour irrevocable, make sure you have the “Seller Direction” signed, otherwise agents won’t adhere to it.

And if you’re holding back offers, make sure you’re not overplaying your hand.

This also begs the question…

4) Do you look at pre-emptive offers?

Pop Quiz: what does this mean:

“Offers Reviewed On Thursday, February 11th @ 7:00pm.  Seller Reserves The Right To Consider Pre-Emptive Offers.”

Any insights?

It means there’s a very good chance this property sells before February 11th.

On Wednesday night at 4:00pm, a listing hit MLS and I sent it to my client.  We saw it at 6pm.  She had her offer in by 9pm.  We had an accepted agreement in place by Thursday afternoon.

How many other buyers and buyer agents out there saw the “offer date” in the listing and assumed they could see the property on the weekend?

If a listing shows that the seller might consider a pre-emptive offer, then in this market, there’s a high percentage chance that the property ends up with a pre-emptive offer.  Or two.  Or, as we saw with Nairn Avenue this week, seven.

So where does this leave you as a seller?

This should go without saying, but many sellers are guilty of this – make sure you either note on the listing that you WILL or WON’T consider pre-emptive offers.  It plays into your strategy!

But common sense aside, you have to look at the overall strategy of where and how to price, whether you will do “offers any time,” or a 24-48 hour irrevocable, or a full 7-8 day holdback for an “offer night,” and if you do choose the latter path, you really have to decide in advance whether you want to strategically look for a bully/pre-emptive offer, or whether you are completely set on going to offer night.

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Phew!

That’s a mouthful!

And some deep thinking for a Friday.  What happened to MLS Musings, for God’s sake?

Have a great weekend, everybody!  Spring is just around the corner, right? 🙂