When you’re browsing MLS listings, and you see an incomplete listing, do you think:

a) these people are lazy
b) these people are hiding something

Chances are – it’s the former.  But for a lot of real estate buyers, they figure, “There must be something wrong with this property,” and many buyers immediately discount the property, or forget about it altogether.

A complete listing, no matter what you’re showing the world, is always better than a bare bones listing that leaves much to be desired…

“Disclose, disclose, disclose.”

You’ve all heard that before, right?  About a thousand-and-one times?

It’s as often-spoken as “location, location, location” when it comes to real estate these days, and while some sellers and/or listing agents might think it’s worthwhile to hold back information when listing a property for sale, the majority believe in full disclosure.

The market is so hot, and has been so long, that more often than not, you can just attach a “Schedule B” to the MLS listing, and write in whatever clauses you want.

“Buyer hereby agrees not to hold seller liable for bla, bla, bla…”

“Buyer acknowledges that there are ghosts in the house, many of which are the ‘bad ghosts’ and not in any way friendly like Casper, or any of the ghosts from the original Scooby-Doo Movie.”

If you want it, write it in!

If there are nine offers on a house, most buyers have no choice but to sign the Schedule B, or risk losing the property.

But today, let’s talk about listings that lack information, rather than those that provide full disclosure.

And more specifically, let’s talk about listings where there is essential information missing; information that would help a buyer make an informed decision as to whether to actually view the unit in the first place!

As I said at the onset, sometimes a listing is incomplete because the listing agent is lazy, or sloppy.  But a lot of the time, the agent is deliberately holding back information, and I can’t possibly understand why.

Here are the most common incidents we see:

1) Seller’s Name

By law, the seller’s name must clearly displayed on the MLS listing as it appears on title.

The public doesn’t have access to this information, due to Privacy Act regulations (although the Competition Bureau has made noise about wanting this readily available), but it appears as follows on MLS:

As I’ve noted on here before, when former head of the Competition Bureau, Melanie Aitken, listed her house for sale, her full name did not appear on the listing.  HOW IRONIC!

The debate is a topic for another day, but bottom line: why wouldn’t an agent include this information?  It’s like a seller wants to think they’re in some way “special,” and sometimes we see “Seller: Speak To Listing Agent,” and I have to wonder why?

It makes people question what’s really going on.

And it makes it tough to type up an offer…

2) Square Footage

Do you know how easy it is to look up the square footage of any condo?

Very easy.  Trust me.

There’s a link on our TorontoMLS website that says “Public Records,” and it takes us to MPAC, where we can get the square footage of any condo in a matter of seconds.

So this begs the question: why don’t all agents do it automatically, since it’s free?

I can’t stand when I see that silly square footage “range” that TREB took five years to make mandatory, instead of an actual number.  Saying “600-699” instead of “642 square feet as per builder’s floor plan” makes a massive difference to a buyer trying to value the property.

Is the seller trying to hide the square footage?

It’s not like a buyer-agent can’t look it up, or find the same unit listed for sale in the MLS archives where the listing does show the exact square footage.

Why not just put it out there?

3) Photos

The first two were just teasers, folks.

This one is the real meat.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why all listings don’t come with TWENTY photos, since we’re now allowed 20 photos, up from nine, (thank you, TREB, that only took ten years…)

But as we know, many MLS listings have zero photos, as shown below:

And then, we have listings where just the front photo of the building appears, in case you didn’t know what a building looked like.

Quite often, we’ll see a listing with the exterior of the building, and then 1-2 stock photos of the gym, the artist’s rendering of a patio, or another amenity that was shot by a photographer for a different listing, but that the listing agent has stolen and placed online, like here:

Then, we have my absolute favourite: a listing where the agent went way out of his/her way not to show the inside of the unit.

It’s one thing to not take ANY photos; that’s just lazy and ignorant, and in my honest opinion – it’s borderline neglectful and unbecoming of an agent.

It’s another thing to take a photo of the building, and a couple photos of the amenities.

But it’s another thing altogether to actually go inside the unit to take photos of the view (see below), and NOT put any photos of the interior unit – just the building, amenities, and view from the balcony:

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but this listing makes it look like the owner has something to hide.

See the 5th photo there – the one in the middle, on the bottom row?  That photo is of the balcony of this building, and the view.  Which means the agent took the photo while standing inside the condo.

So where are the rest of the photos?

Where’s the bedroom, kitchen, living room, and dining room?

What are the sellers hiding?

Truth be told, they’re not hiding anything at all.  The agent just didn’t do his or her job.

And before you beat me to it, and say, “David, what if the unit is tenanted, and the tenants don’t want their personal property being photographed?” just consider that:

1) Somewhere, the seller/owner has photos of this unit from the pre-delivery inspection, or from occupancy, or from the initial listing

2) Most people don’t care about tenants’ rights, and I have never come across a person who actually said, “I would like to get photos of my condo, but my tenants are exercising their right to not have their personal belongings photographed for commercial use.”

Wouldn’t it be a lovely world if it worked like that?

Not having any photos on MLS is the #1 item that scares buyers away, and makes them think there’s something wrong with the property, or that the sellers are hiding something.

There’s no better way to lower the potential sale price of your property than to have zero photos of the property you’re trying to sell.

Do you think McDonald’s would sell a lot of burgers if they only showed the bottom part of the bun in their ads?

(yes, I photo-shopped that in paint, and I’m damn proud of the job I did…)

4) Legal Description of Property

Every property listed for sale on MLS has a “legal description,” which in my honest opinion, isn’t worth much.

The actual legal description of a property could be 1,000 characters, but alas, we are not permitted to put that many characters in the little MLS field.

We are, however, permitted to put in more than just “Plan 240, Pt Lot 84, Toronto,” which is what many listing agents feel is sufficient.

This might not be what appears in Land Registry, however, and I feel it fails the grade.

What if there’s an easement?

What if there’s a right of way?

What if there is something that drastically alters the value of the property (or future use for development), that isn’t disclosed on MLS?

This is how a complete legal description of a property might appear in Land Registry:

Once again, this can be very easily found with about forty seconds of effort.

So why not put this on the MLS listing?

What are the sellers hiding?

–

Pardon the extremely over-used cliché, but I feel that you catch more flies with honey.

An incomplete MLS listing makes it look like there’s something fishy going on, and while you might expect that a diligent buyer’s agent will look up a property in Land Registry to see if there are any issues with the title, the process might never get that far if you’re considering a condo with no photos.

Very rarely does a client of mine suggest, “There aren’t any photos online, and the listing reads like it was written by a computer on drugs, but let’s go see it anyways!”

Just as you should disclose, disclose, disclose, you should also detail, detail, detail everything possible on an MLS listing, or risk the buyer pool thinking you’re hiding something…