Last week, one of the best-known midtown real estate agents in Toronto sent me a text message:

Time for a chat?

“What in the world could this be about,” I wondered.

I called him, perhaps expecting that I was in trouble or something, and he laughed into the phone: “Dude, I’m watching your Pick5 video and it’s frickin’ hilarious!”

Apparently, I had made an offhand remark about him when I was describing one of the properties in Pick5, which he had listed, and his sellers were regular TRB readers who emailed him and told him to watch.

I’ll admit: I usually film Pick5 in the middle of the day, after two coffees, always in a rush, and it’s unscripted and chaotic at the best of times.  More often than not, I can’t remember a single thing I said in the half-hour video.

So on Friday, I actually sat down to watch my own video; something I haven’t done in about five or six years.  My first observation was that I’m getting really good at cutting my own hair!  Thirteen months now, right?  But secondly, I realized that I went on this rant about one of his properties, talking about what a professional he was.

Go figure!

Pick5 is a blur.  I close the door to my office, it’s hot, I’m uncomfortable, my phone is buzzing, I need to finish, and it’s never smooth.  But, it gets the job done.  And thankfully, I only said complimentary things about this agent!

There was a bee in my bonnet that day, you see.

I was frustrated with the liberties many listing agents are taking with their listings these days, especially when it comes to parking.

But this agent was a consumate professional, and did the following…

Take a look at this house and tell me how many cars you think would fit in the driveway:

How wide is a car?

How wide must a lot be in order to claim that two cars can fit?

I’ve always thought that it’s 10-feet per car, and yet we’re accustomed to seeing 18-foot properties on MLS listed for sale with “Two Car Garage” advertised as a feature.

For reference, that lot above is a twenty-five foot frontage.

So how many parking spaces were advertised?

One.

Because that’s how many legal spaces are listed with the City of Toronto.

Here’s the parking on the listing:

And here’s the listing itself with “Legal Parking” highlighted:

Here’s a link that you should all bookmark:

https://www.toronto.ca/data/transportation/residential_locations/residential_locations.pdf

That’s a list of every single license for residential off-street parking in Toronto, and I probably click that link at least once per day in my field of work.

So in the situation above, could the listing agent have advertised “Two Car Parking?”  Yes, probably.  But he’s a professional and he understands that putting the seller in a position to be sued in the future isn’t in their best interest, even if you might catch a few more eyes by advertising a second parking space.

If only all listing agents in the city worked like this.

I don’t recall if I’ve ever seen so many misleading listings when it comes to parking as I have so far in 2021.  It’s frustrating beyond belief, not just because I’m seeing properties that might meet my clients’ criteria, only to find that there’s no parking, but also because I can’t stand that agents get away with this.

A client of mine recently emailed about a listing that has been sitting on the market for quite some time.

He asked why a property that checked so many boxes wasn’t moving, and I looked into it.

Here’s the listing:

Three parking spaces?

Wow!

Indeed, I wondered why this property was sitting, and upon researching the property and the listing history, I looked up the old listings.

This property had been listed multiple times before at various prices, with different “strategies.”

But most notable was the fact that when it was listed before, with a different agent, there was no parking:

Huh.

So this property just……….grew parking?

It went from zero-car parking to three-car parking?

How was that possible?

Well, here’s what the listing said:

Front pad parking, eh?

Well, I went to that handy link that I provided above, looking for the house number, and since I’m trying to keep this ambiguous enough to adhere to RECO rules, let’s just say the house number falls somewhere between 186 and 196:

Huh.

Not listed, eh?

So there isn’t front pad parking then?

Forget about how to get two cars through that narrow driveway that the previous listing agent felt was impossible, thereby listing the property with zero parking spaces.  What about this “front pad?”

Oh, I see.  Maybe it’s an illegal front pad.

Can you advertise that?

Can you promote something that’s not really there, like “Four Bedroom House” and then note “Fourth Bedroom Not Present?”

Because you either have a front pad, or you don’t.

Then again, even if you did advertise “legal” front pad, it doesn’t mean anything in 2021.  Let me show you another example…

This is a house that came to my attention last week:

I had clients actively looking in this area and a semi-detached with a private driveway was exactly what we were looking for!

We had no choice but to pass on a couple of really great Davisville Village semi’s because they had no parking of any type, and while we would have been fine with a front parking pad, the private driveway here was a dream!

But then I noticed something else in the listing down below:

Huh.

How can a property have a private driveway and legal front pad parking?

They can’t.

I mean, in theory, a property could.  But why would somebody pave over their lawn, next to their private driveway, to put in a legal front parking pad?

The bigger problem, however, was that this property did NOT have a private driveway.  A quick look on Google Maps shows a mutual driveway running between the two properties.  There was absolutely, positively, no way this could be confused with a private driveway.

What was going on here?

Was it possible that the listing agents didn’t know what they were doing?

Unfortunately, that was far from the case.

Here’s the previous listing:

The property was listed ten years ago with having a mutual driveway.

Why is this important, if not for the obvious reason?

Well, because the buyer agent ten years ago is the same agent on the listing side today.

So there’s a zero percent chance that the listing agent doesn’t know this property has a mutual driveway, since he or she is the same damn agent that sold it to the current owners!

Now, what about that “legal front parking pad” business?

Let me check with the city…

Huh.

It’s not listed!

Now why would that be?

Maybe because this property doesn’t have a private driveway or a legal front parking pad?

I couldn’t leave well-enough alone, so I emailed the listing agent:

What do you think the listing agents responded with?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s exactly what I had expected.

NOTHING!

No response at all.

Gee, I wonder why?

I followed up again, but alas, no response.

No update on the MLS listing either.  That screen shot is from this past weekend, which means they had a full week to digest my email, consider the ramifications of listing a property with a mutual driveway and no parking pad as having a private driveway with a “legal” front parking pad, and yet they chose to hold steady.

I’m pointing this out today not to draw further ire from the “real estate agents are the scum of the earth” crowd, but rather to ignore those folks and that attitude and speak to those who are active in the market right now and who are trying to educate themselves as best as they can.

I won’t make excuses for these actions or for this industry, but I will say that whatever product or service you’re considering, whether it’s a car, tennis lessons, a mountain bike, or legal representation, there’s going to be varying levels of service, representation, and professionalism.  Just as the products and services can be better or worse than advertised, so too can the individuals selling it.

If you’re a buyer in the 2021 Toronto market, take what I’ve just shown you to heart.

We’re all free to file a complaint with RECO or to “dis” this property by emailing dis@trebnet.com, but it won’t have an immediate impact, if it has an impact at all.

These two listings above are invitations for litigation, and I can’t see any reason why they won’t end up in legal chaos.

If a buyer purchases that second house described above, paying for a private driveway and a legal front parking pad, only to find out that neither exist, there’s a $150,000 lawsuit, plain and simple.

Buyers: do your homework.

Buyer agents: see above.