This can only be described as one of the worst experiences I’ve had so far this year.

I’ve had three listings in 2019 that were tough sells, but all were different property types, and didn’t sell for different reasons.

With the property in this story, our issue might have been price, to some extent, but I also think it had to do with an 800 square foot condo that lacked a parking space, when every buyer agent I spoke to said, “My clients would be interested if the unit had owned parking.”

Before you suggest that we should have found a solution, trust me when I say that we already had one.  A locked-in rental space, ready to go!  But the buyer pool turned up their noses at this, and alas, we were stuck trying to flog this unit, sans owned parking.

The story I want to tell today is about a character I call the “fun-seeking, non-buyer,” who many people think is an urban legend, but who really does exist.

In this case, perhaps I was partially to blame for not seeing this ahead of time, but I truly believed that, in this case, it was just part of the process.  Par for the course.  And part of the culture of this particular buyer.

We’re in a very strange place in 2019, and I have no idea what is socially acceptable anymore, and what isn’t.  So I’ll leave the blanks for you all to fill in on this one, regarding this agent and this buyer, and where they’re from, what their background is, etc.

Our property was listed at $729,900, down from $749,900.  As I said, the property was sitting, and while maybe it was a tad over-priced to begin with, the market was hot, the unit showed to perfection, and there was no reason to suspect this would be a “problem” listing.

An agent called me to say that it was perfect for her client, and that she would be showing it by week’s end.  This agent seemed pretty on-the-ball, but did something odd during our conversation: she complained about her client!  She said that the unit was for the client’s daughter, and that the client didn’t want to see “any of the units” until they were ready to buy.

I deal with parents of buyers all the time, both on the buy-side and the sell-side, so I made nothing of it.

My seller expressed to me that he would be happy to let the condo go for just under $700,000, since he was already contemplating another price reduction.

When the agent called me to say that she would be bringing an offer, I told her that my client was “flexible on the price,” and that he’d probably come down $10-$15K, “who knows.”  I was testing the waters, and while trying to get the condo sold for my client, I also obviously wanted to show him some value and exceed his target price.

We finally received their offer and it was for $690,000.

My seller told me, “I don’t want to dick around here, just get their final number and let’s sign it up.  I really, really don’t want to lose these people, so let’s not play games.”

I was willing.

I asked the buyer agent “Where do you see this going?” and she said, “I don’t know.  I don’t know my client.  She is crazy.”

Wow.  Not exactly the start I wanted, but I was ready for anything.

I told her, “My client would come down to $710,000, do you think we could make that work?”  She replied, “No, no, no, that’s too low.”

Too low?

Who was she working for here?

“You have to come back high.  That’s how this game is played,” she told me.  “My client wants to do many sign-backs.  She likes to negotiate!”

This is precisely what my seller did not want, but I understood that she had a tricky client, and she knew how best to proceed.

Perhaps some of you might not like hearing this, but often we as agents know what our clients want, and we know their objections, obstacles, and idiosyncracies.  If they want to buy a property, but they’re standing in their own way, we might try to help them through their issues to the end-goal.

And in this case, the buyer agent felt that her client liked to sign the offer back-and-forth, and that was the best way for her to proceed on the client’s behalf.

“Sign back at $725,000,” she told me, which was odd, since my client wanted to sign back at $705,000, and I wanted to sign back at $710,000!  “Sign back high, she will think you’re a tough negotiator, and she will feel better when she gets the price down,” the agent told me.

This was utterly ridiculous, but I had to work in the best interests of my seller, and that meant doing anything I could to sell the condo.  This property had been on the market already for two months, and we had no other leads.  So I had no choice but to play along in this charade.

We signed back at $725,000, and a full day later, they signed back at $695,000.

My client wanted to take the offer right then and there, but obviously I felt there was more money to be had.  He was incredibly nervous, and needed to move this unit along so he could close on another property, but took my advice, and we continued working on the offer.

I asked the agent, “Where is this going?  Is there a number at which we can tie this up?”

She said, “No, no, no, we need more sign-backs!  My client doesn’t want to feel like she’s winning easily.”

Really?  Because that’s a great feeling for most of us!

“Sign back at $720,000,” she said, and again, I felt this was just absurd.

So we signed back at $719,000, just because, psychologically, that number feels a bit lower, and the agent called me and flipped out!

“I told you to sign back at $720,000,” she said.  “This number is too low!  $719,000 is too low, what are you doing?”

I told her to work with it, and that while I respected her position, and her feel and understanding for her buyer-client’s mentality, my seller did not like this process.

They signed back at $698,000 a day later.

We came back at $714,000 within a couple of hours, and the agent called me to say that the sign-back was “too quick.”

It was bordering on insanity by now, but what was I supposed to do?  This was our first and only offer in two months, and I have no problem admitting when leverage isn’t on my side.  When I do have leverage, I’ll use it.  I will always be ethical, and respectful, but I have no problem letting the other side know who’s boss.

In this case, I knew I was the submissive.

A day after our $714,000 sign-back, they other side came back at $700,000, and my client wanted to take it.  So did I.

This is where the insanity went to a whole other level.  I don’t know what we could call that level, but it’s definitely above and beyond anything I could ever imagine.

The agent told me, “You must sign this back again!  If you accept their $700,000, she will not accept.”

I said, “What do you mean if we accept, she won’t accept?  What is she not accepting.”

“Your acceptance,” the agent told me.  “She won’t bring you the cheque.  She’ll feel like something is wrong.”

This was nuts, but my client was basically being told to get more money for his condo, so we signed back at $708,000.

A day later, they came back at $702,000.

And we accepted.

It was a Friday night, I was holding my daughter while looking out the window; I can remember everything about that moment.  My client was so happy, and it wasn’t just because he told me he was happy.  I could genuinely hear it in his voice.  He was having people over that night, and this was the perfect way to celebrate!

I sent the accepted offer back to the other agent, and she immediately called me in a panic.

“David!  What are you doing?” she asked.  “What is this?”

“This is the end of the road,” I said.  “It’s been five days and we’ve had like ten sign-backs.  My client is really, really happy with the price, and he’s tired.  He wants this to end, and he’s just ended it.”

This was all true!  He absolutely hated this experience.  He told me over and over that he would have happily taken less, several days ago!  But he knew what I knew, which was that we had an oddball buyer on the hook, and we had to play her game.

“The seller is going to worry!” the agent told me.  “She will think there is something wrong with the condo!”

That made no sense to me, but nothing about this process made any sense!  Did this buyer want to sign it back until we were going $100 at a time?

“I don’t accept this acceptance,” she said.  “Sign-back one more time, David.  Please!  One more time at $705,000, then I will sign back at $704,000, and then you accept.  Otherwise she will feel like she didn’t bargain hard enough, and she will change her mind.  She will think there’s something wrong with the unit.  She will think you are fooling her!”

The irony wasn’t lost on me here.  The buyer’s agent was fighting to make the buyer pay more money, all in an attempt to get the buyer to actually purchase something!  The buyer was essentially paying a fee for entertainment, and it was a steep one!  They could have bought this place for less money several days ago, but then they also could have gone on a cruise with that money, but instead, they wanted to use it to play this game.

I told the buyer’s agent that my client had signed the Confirmation of Acceptance and that it was a deal, and I expected the deposit cheque the next day.

The buyer agent said, “I still worry.  Oh, I worry!”

But the next day, the cheque came in.  I thought we had nothing to worry about, except that our deal was conditional on financing and inspection, and we still had five business days to worry.

You’ve heard this story before from me, but just as a refresher – the way that a condition is typically written in a real estate transaction, the buyer doesn’t need to “do” anything to get out of a deal, but rather the deal automatically terminates if the five days goes by.  So if a buyer has a condition on financing, they don’t need to show the seller’s agent that they didn’t obtain financing, but rather just let the time lapse, and send over a mutual release.

In this case, the buyer had booked their “inspection” for Friday, which was the day the condition was up.  It was frustrating, since we completed this deal the previous Friday, but so long as we received a waiver of their condition in the end, it would all be worth it.

I have no idea what they actually inspected in there.  I have done two “home inspections” for condos in fifteen years, but to each, their own, I suppose.

As the day went on, I got more and more anxious.

Noon gave way to 1pm, and then as it typically does, 1pm became 2pm.

In fact, it wasn’t until 4:30pm, on a Friday, with a deal hanging in the balance and set to expire at 5:00pm, that the buyer’s agent called me.

“She’s not going through with the deal,” she told me.

My heart immediately sank.  I felt like throwing up, and I collapsed on the couch in my office.

“She is crazy,” the agent went on.  “She just likes negotiating!”

It was so strange to hear this from the client’s own agent, but I respect her honesty!

“But what happened today at the inspection?” I asked her.  “How did it go?  Did she like the unit?  Were there any issues? I pleaded.

“She was upset that there was no door-man,” the agent told me.  “She had to open the front door to the building herself, and she was not happy!”

What the?  Really?

How many condos in downtown Toronto have a goddam door-man?!?!  Was this really happening?

“She is crazy,” the agent went on.  “She is looking for something that doesn’t exist.”

And then she said, “I wonder if you had signed back at $704,000 if we would have a deal.”

The agent kept texting me for hours, saying things like, “She hurt me!  I work so hard!”  And then “I am drinking!”

This wasn’t her game, for those of you that thought perhaps she was a negotiating genius when this blog post began, but rather she was just a pawn in this game, as was I, as was my seller, and probably as was the buyer’s daughter, who just wanted to get into a condo.

My client was crushed.  This was another Friday night, and again, he had people over.  But this time around, he would have to drown his sorrows instead of celebrate, and know that we would be back on the market on Monday.

The condo did sell eventually, but not for another month, and not for the same price.

And as is the theme on this blog, once again, I said to myself, “Just when I thought I’d experienced everything in this business…”

This buyer really was off her rocker, and really, truly did seem to just want to negotiate for fun.  Her own agent said she was crazy, and told me she would drop her as a client too.

Looking back, there wasn’t anything I could have, or should have done differently.  I was in a completely submissive position, based on the market’s response to our listing, and the lack of activity.  But perhaps the lesson learned here can be transferred to any of you who will find yourselves as sellers, or as seller-agent’s in the near future: there are people out there with more money than sense, who get their kicks F’ing with other people.

Beware: the fun-seeking, non-buyer of real estate…