I could have also called this post “the lesser of two evil’s,” but I don’t want to suggest that selling real estate is in any way, evil.

Plus, the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” saying completely sums up the plight of many of today’s listing agents who are blamed for whatever course of action they take, when it comes to competitive offer situations.

Hold back offers, and you’re greedy.  Accept offers any time, and you’re lazy, and aren’t working for your seller.

How do you win this argument?

“The lesser of two evils.”

I remember where I was the very first time I heard that saying.

It was 1999, I was in second-year university, and our Marketing instructor informed us that our mid-term exam would be written on a Friday night at 7:00pm.

The class absolutely freaked out.  I was livid.

I mean, I was a 19-year-old student – life wasn’t easy!  I had to go to class 15 hours per week, live unsupervised on my own, doing whatever I wanted, all the time.  I had real-life, adult problems, like choosing between pepperoni and salami on a pizza.

I couldn’t believe that the school had the audacity to infringe upon my well-deserved weekend, which I only experienced 32 times per year, you know – before having four entire months off in the summer….

The instructor said, “The university doesn’t have enough exam time slots and physical locations to accommodate every faculty, and every class, during the week.”

She then added, “It was either Friday night at 7:00pm, or Saturday at 12:00pm.  We figured that Friday night represented the lesser of two evils.”

I actually stopped and thought about that saying.

An exam on a Friday night at 7:00pm was unjust, in my mind.  But Saturday at 12pm would have been cruel and unfair.

It was through that saying, “the lesser of two evils,” that I actually accepted their decision as the right thing to do, before I went home and surfed the “Internet” on my brand new 56.0 KB modem all night…

The saying, “the lesser of two evils” rings true in several areas of organized real estate, but one in particular that I want to examine today.

Carolyn Ireland wrote a great article in the Globe & Mail on Friday, which you can read HERE.

The take-away, in two words: sour grapes.

Real estate is a tough business, no doubt about it.  And people are the variable, since it’s still a market of buyers and sellers, and listing agents and buyer agents.

Every agent can handle the process of a purchase or sale differently, and when something doesn’t go an agent’s way, that agent always seems to complain.

Hence, sour grapes.

The Globe & Mail article dealt with the increase in multiple offers on condominiums, and how agents that lose out feel the process was “unfair,” in hindsight, of course.  I mean, I’ve never known a losing party to complain…

In the article, Ms. Ireland tells the story of a Toronto agent who received an offer on a condominium listing within six hours of the unit hitting the market, and overwhelmed with the level of interest, he set a “deadline” for 10:00pm that night, after which he sold the unit, and cancelled all other showings set for the next day.

The agent in the article is Christopher Bibby of Sutton Group, who is one of the top agents in the city of Toronto, and all around great-guy.

And while I’m reading the article thinking that Chris did the right thing, every agent who was on the losing end of this process did not agree.

Ms. Ireland writes, “Some of those agents who missed out on Bleeker Street were complaining that Mr. Bibby hadn’t held back offers for a week.”

Of course they complained.  Sore losers always complain, whereas top Realtors look inwards, blame themselves, and in this case might say, “I should have acted sooner.  Perhaps I could have picked my client up at lunch and shown them the unit; or maybe had a colleague take them.”

So this is where we get to the classic saying: you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Had Mr. Bibby held back offers on this condo, people would complain that “we’re not in that kind of market for condos,” and that “the damn sellers are being greedy – looking to get over asking for ‘just’ a condo.”

Had Mr. Bibby not held back offers, as was the case, he’d end up with a slew of frustrated, and unsatisfied buyer agents who would say, “You didn’t even give me a chance to get in to see it!  How can you sell the condo only six hours after it hits the market?”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

It’s a tough position to be in.

So what is the “right” way to list properties in this market?

Or better yet: what is the lesser of two evils?

Let’s take a step back here, and think about what happens when you list a condo, with no set offer date, and receive an offer after six hours like the situation in the Globe & Mail article.

The way I see it, there are four ways you can proceed:

1) Accept the offer.

What’s wrong with this?

First horse to the trough gets to eat, right?

Nobody will ever use the word “fair” to describe the real estate market, but I don’t think there’s anything unfair about listing your property for sale, receiving a satisfactory offer, and accepting it.

If other agents and buyers complain that they weren’t able to make it to the property in time, then so be it.  It’s not the responsibility of the listing agent to ensure that 3,000,000 people in Toronto are able to get through the door.

2) Set a deadline.

This is an easy solution.

If you list the property at 9:00am, and receive an offer at 4:00pm, with an 11:59pm irrevocable date, then simply tell all other interested parties, “You have until 11:59pm to bring an offer, after which we will work with the offer in hand.”

That’s totally fair, to both the party that made the offer, and the parties that have expressed an interest in the property.

Now what is a “party that has expressed interest in the property?”  It’s a good question, since this is where many other buyer agents get frustrated, without any right.

If you’re a buyer agent, and you’ve either shown the property, or booked an appointment to show the property, then it’s fair to say you have “expressed interest.”  So a good listing agent (as Mr. Bibby did in the story from the Globe & Mail), will call those agents and let them know there’s an offer on the table, and when it expires.

As for the other agents out there – that complain AFTER the property has sold, that they “weren’t even able to get their clients in,” well, I guess it was up to the listing agent to simply read their minds?

3) Request 48 hours.

This is a bit of a cop-out, to be honest.

A lot of agents will be overwhelmed by the response on the first day of a listing, and upon receiving an email or a page that there is a registered offer, call the buyer agent with the registered offer and say, “You have to give me 48 hours on the offer.”

This is usually accompanied by some line of BS like, “One of my sellers is in India and he won’t be back at the hotel until the day after tomorrow.”

If this works, and the buyer agent provides a 48-hour irrevocable on the offer, then the listing agent has two days to shop that offer to anybody who either goes through the property, or books a showing.

It’s a stall tactic, plain and simple.

4) Set an offer date.

This is the very definition of a “Plan-B.”

I can’t tell you how many times I see a new listing come onto the market, show it to my client that night, and then view the listing that night or the next morning to see it has been updated with, “Offers Graciously Reviewed Tuesday, March 16th at 7:00pm.”

That definitely wasn’t on the listing this morning!

No, but when 18 showings were booked on the very first day of the listing, and two agents called to say, “I’m probably going to bring you an offer,” the listing agent often panics, thinks he or she screwed up, and then sets an offer date to avoid under-selling the property.

Sometimes, it backfires, and buyers who don’t want to compete for “just a condo” won’t even view the property.  They’ll wait to see if it sells on the new “offer night” instead.

But sometimes, buyers and buyer agents who didn’t even view the MLS listings until the day after the property was listed, will never know that the “offer date” was thrown in there after the fact.

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So having read the four options, which is the lesser evil?

I know many of you will simply say, “The seller should accept the offer in hand, and not be greedy.”

Seriously, though?

Isn’t that naivety and frustration talking?

If your listing agent said, “We have an offer here for the list price, but two other agents might bring us offers tonight for well above the list price,” would YOU be the leader of the new-age real estate revolution who would say, “You know what?  I’m going to take this offer right here, right now, and hope that others follow my lead”?

The condo market is heading up, folks.  Despite what you might want to believe, or might read in the papers, or see on TV.

I’ve lost out on condos in multiple offers three times this year already, and I’ve won in multiple offers five times.  That’s EIGHT times I’ve been in multiple offers on condos, and it’s only March.

The listing agents are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t……….hold back offers, that is.

Buyers and buyer agents suggest it’s “greedy” when a listing agent holds back offers on a condo, but complain when the condo sold before they could get into it, and ask why no offer date was set.

Catch-22?

Double-edged sword?

Whatever you want to call it – it’s the new reality of the 2015 Toronto condo market.

So if you’re a buyer, and you tell your agent, “Let’s see the property on the weekend,” don’t blame the seller and the listing agent if it’s gone by then…