Everybody’s Got A Price……..Or Do They?

Opinion

9 minute read

January 14, 2022

Do you remember Ted Dibiase?

I do.

But I was born in 1980, and as a child of the 1980’s, I was the lucky beneficiary of that incredible spectacle we all knew as WWF wrestling.

I was a huge fan of Bret “The Hitman” Hart, and that’s before I knew he was Canadian.  I think I just really liked pink as a child.  Or long hair on men.  Or cool sunglasses.  But I find it ironic, looking back, that I was a fan of “The British Bulldogs” tag-team (I had their pajamas when I was 6-years-old), and then of Bret Hart, but I never knew that they were all family.

If you don’t know about The Hart Family, oh man, I don’t think I have the time to educate you on this right now.  They’re a Canadian institution, to say the least.  Stu Hart is a legend, if not a somewhat overbearing father, but all his boys wrestled, and all his girls married wrestlers.  The family’s story is torturous at times.  It’s hard to imagine so much tragedy happening to one clan.

A few months ago, I watched a biography of Bret Hart on A&E on an otherwise uneventful Saturday night.  I don’t know if the two drinks were a factor, but the two-hour show was just ending as my wife came down, and I started to weep a little bit.  She looked at me like, “What the….” and I actually started to cry.

This was a trip down memory lane for me.  Like a timeline of my childhood, teenage years, and into my young adulthood.  And to see my one-time hero, Bret Hart, now an old man, recovering from a stroke that almost killed him, well, if that doesn’t move you, then you’re not human.

Around the same time that Bret Hart was rising to prominence, there was a wrestling bad-guy, or “heel,” named Ted Dibiase.  He went by the moniker, “The Million Dollar Man.”

He was a total piece of shit.  An arrogant, pompous, obnoxious ass whose entire persona (most of it contrived, of course) was about how great he was, how rich he was, and how he could buy anybody.

The Million Dollar Man, Ted Dibiase, wore a gold-studded suit and a jacket made of dollar-signs.  His tagline was: “Everybody’s got a price.”

He would be accompanied to the ring with vignettes on the jumbotron of him buying and bribing people, like paying the concierge at a luxury hotel to kick a couple out of the Honeymoon suite so he could move in.

After every victory in the ring, he stuffed a $100-bill into the mouth of his defeated opponent.

He used to bring fans to the ring to humiliate them (also likely actors).  I remember him bringing a kid into the ring and saying, “If you can bounce this ball ten times, I’ll give you $500,” and on the ninth bounce, he swatted the ball away.

That was his whole gimmick; throwing money at people.

And he used to smile and look into the camera, saying, “Everybody’s got a price.”

I suppose, in theory, everybody does have a price, but it’s not always monetary.  People have limits.  People have breaking points.  But there are, however, those who simply wouldn’t act on a request, no matter the monetary compensation.

Last year, we talked a lot here on TRB about the lack of supply in our real estate market.  At times, we analyzed the data, both Toronto-centric and Canada-wide, and then there were times when we talked more broadly about how skyrocketing prices are more a product of the deficit between supply and demand.  We seemed, by and large, to agree that even artificial demand caused by low interest rates is less of a factor in rising prices than the dearth of supply.

Perhaps a question we never asked once last year would be prudent at this juncture: why do people sell?

It’s the most basic question and yet it’s one we never discussed.

Let’s brainstorm for a moment.  Why do people sell?

1) They’re moving up.  They’ve already bought, or are selling to buy.
2) They’re downsizing.  Sell first, or buy first, doesn’t matter, as with the above.
3) They own multiple properties and are moving to a different one, choosing not to keep this one.
4) They’re moving out of the city, province or country.  Could be for work, or for a new life.
5) The property is an investment and they’re taking their profits.
6) They have fallen on hard times and ‘need’ to sell.

I think this just about covers the main reasons.

And the one theme within those six points is that all these people effectively “need” to sell.  Or at the very least, they are actively looking to sell.

So in a market starved for listings and inventory, how hard is it to motivate a person to sell who doesn’t fall into the six categories above?

Everybody’s got a price.

Or do they?

Over the Christmas holidays, my phone rang and I saw the name and number displayed, and I immediately thought, “Oh boy, what’s wrong?”

I’m not a pessimist, but a call over holidays from a client who purchased his home two years ago couldn’t be a good call, could it?

I was expecting a sump pump explosion at best; a roof implosion at worst.

In the end, it was neither.  It was just a social call!  Imagine that?

“Jake,” as we’ll call him, had purchased his home in the fall of 2019.  His purchase and his home falls into the “luxury” category since he paid $4,000,000 for it, and at this stage in his life cycle, it’s close to a “forever home.”  Jake is a suit-wearing, downtown-working professional, as is his wife.  They have three children and have made very good use of this house so far!

Jake called me in between Christmas and New Year’s and the first thing he said was, “I was just checking to see if you were in the office.”

I didn’t know if it was a trick question or not, but I was honest.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I told him.  “You?”

“Yup, just me and the cleaners,” he said jokingly.  I’m sure his office was busier than mine.  I was literally the only person in the building, aside from one part-time staff member at front desk.

“I got a story I thought you’d enjoy,” he told me, which made me think perhaps he was equally as busy as I was, which is to say that we were both in the office, looking for things to do, to convince ourselves we needed to be there…

Jake said that the day prior, there was a knock at his door and while he expected Christmas carollers, the Salvation Army, or a friendly neighbour dropping off cookies, he found the next best thing: a real estate agent.

She introduced herself and extended her hand, not to shake his hand but rather to offer him an envelope.

“This is from clients of mine,” she said.  “It’s a personal letter.”

This was three days after Christmas.  Love the solicitation or hate it, but you have to respect it.  The work ethic of that agent, knocking on doors at this time of year?  Good on her!

“We’re not selling,” Jake said.  “We have no intention of selling,” he added.

“Oh, I know, nobody is selling in this area,” she told him.  “That’s why I have to knock on doors, meet people, and try to dig up something that will never be on the market.”

Jake told her that he’d only been there for two years and that this was a forever-home.

“But everybody has a price,” she said.  “And my clients identified your house as one of a handful that they love and they would gladly overpay for,” she said.

Jake is in a line of work where a comment like this is going to intrigue him.  Knowing full well that this wasn’t going anywhere, he decided to engage.

“Like what?” he asked.

“What?  Like what….what?” she responded.

“Like what price?” he said.  “What’s ‘overpaying’ to you?” he asked.

She explained that she’d have to see the house in person, that the clients would have to walk through it, and that she’d be happy to set up a day and time, but Jake cut her off right then and there.

“Forget all that,” he said.  “Just humour me.  You’ve seen the photos from MLS and the virtual tour is still floating around on the internet, plus you know what we paid two years ago.  Give me a number and I won’t hold you to it,” he said.

This is where Jake told me, “David, you should have seen this woman’s reaction.  You know Mike Tyson’s famous quote?  ‘Everybody has a plan……until they get punched in the face.’  Well, this woman knocked on my door, told me her clients wanted to buy my house, and then when I asked her how much they’d pay, she had no clue what to say.  It was amazing.”

So what did Jake do?  He got more aggressive.

“Come on, throw some numbers out at me, don’t be shy,” he said, as the agent shied away.  “We paid $4,000,000 for this house two years ago, what’s the ballpark?” he asked.

“I would guess…..maybe…….maybe starting at five-million?” she said, as though it were a question.

Jake told me he laughed out loud at this.

“Amazing,” he said to her.  “You’re knocking on doors telling people your clients are going to overpay for houses but then you lowball them,” he said.

He explained that $4,000,000 two years ago is $5,000,000 today.  That’s twenty-five percent in two years, or 12.5% per year, which is actually well below the GTA average but call him conservative.

She was very polite and perhaps a bit sheepish by now, and she said, “I think my clients might be willing to pay that number, but I’d have to talk to them, I’d have to show them the house.”

This was where the breakdown in understanding really showed, and this is where, in my opinion, we can really demonstrate why it’s so hard to motivate people to sell in this market.

Jake said, “Yeah, but you’re talking about paying fair market value for my home.  I told you I’m not selling.  You told me that your clients would be happy to overpay and now you’re talking about ‘perhaps’ being interested in a number that I wouldn’t sell for.”

Then, Jake dropped the bomb:

“I wouldn’t sell this house for $6,000,000.”

He said her head literally shot back.  Then she smiled.  She thought he was posturing.  Maybe negotiating.

So Jake explained it.

“Let’s say my house is worth $5,000,000.  There could be somebody out there that would pay $5.2M or $5.3M for it.  Maybe $5.4M or $5.5M for it.  Now let’s say I sell for $6,000,000.  To buy a new house of the same value, I’ll have to pay $300,000 in land transfer tax.  Plus, I’d owe you $150,000 plus HST in commissions.  Then what about furniture for my new house?  What about painting it, and not necessarily renovating, but changing things to make this my house.  What about that?  Now how about the moving?  The packing?  The toll it takes on the kids and my family.  What’s the value there?”

Jake said that the agent was nodding along with a forced smile as she likely started to realize he was right.  But she surely wasn’t expecting what came next…

“Lady, I wouldn’t sell this house to you today for $7,000,000.”

Jake said that this time, there was no expression on her face.

“I could probably get $5.5M for my house on the open market even though it’s only ‘worth’ $5M.  I’d have $500K in fees, and then I’d have to relocate my family.  For what?  A million bucks?  Not a chance.”

But before the agent could interject, Jake said, “If my best bet to buying back into this area is hiring a real estate agent to go around, knocking on doors, and offering people $7 Million for their $5 Million houses, without any hope of success, then why in the world would I sell my home?”

The agent was speechless.

Jake wished her a nice day, and went back in his home.

Jake told me, “David, the minute I closed that door, I started going over this story in my head because I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

I laughed, and told him he could write a guest blog, but he declined.

Either way, it gives me a great blog topic and a fantastic story to demonstrate why it’s so hard to buy a house in Toronto.

Now, the cynics are going to look at the prices and the numbers thrown around above and say, “Oh, poor Jake, won’t sell for $3 Million more than he paid,” but if you do that, you’re missing the point.

Transacting in real estate is expensive to begin with.  Land transfer tax, real estate fees, legal fees, moving/packing/storage costs, relocating during the sale process, re-furnishing your new home and putting on your personal touches – these costs add up!

Now, factor in the mental toll of uprooting your family if you did not plan on selling, and there has to be a value.

In Jake’s case, the numbers made no sense.  And he was right – there’s nothing for sale in his neighbourood.  Ever.  So rare are houses in this area, in fact, that agents are knocking on doors!  So for Jake to buy back in, he’d have to put himself in a position just like the buyer who hired that agent to knock on doors, and that was a position that made no sense to enter willingly, even for a million bucks.

So let’s look at a lower price point.

Let’s say you paid $1,350,000 for a semi-detached house in Leaside in 2019.  And let’s say this house is worth $1,650,000 today.  Let’s say somebody knocks on your door and offers you $1,900,000 for the house.

Do you sell?

That’s $250,000 more than your house is worth!

Could you sell this house, then buy a different house in the area for $1,650,000?

Maybe.

But factor in the costs, and it doesn’t make sense.

Why invite that chaos into your life, and the lives of your family?  Especially if potential options to purchase aren’t in abundance.

This is the problem in Toronto!

The only people who are selling are those that need to sell, either because they’ve bought another property to upsize/downsize, or they’re moving out of the city, or perhaps it’s an estate sale, or maybe the sale of an investment property.

But if the idea of using money to motivate home-owners to sell in Toronto is a non-starter, then that speaks volumes about our market.

What would this guy say?

He would say, “Everybody’s got a price.”

He’s not wrong.

But in Toronto, unless somebody is going to give you $1,400,000 for your $1,000,000 house, you’re probably not motivated to sell unless you were already planning to do so…

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

Find Out More About David Read More Posts

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20 Comments

  1. Average Joe

    at 7:37 am

    It’s gridlock. The musical chairs game is paused until we see a positive supply shock. Building takes forever so really it won’t happen unless there’s an investor dump.

  2. musicload

    at 9:28 am

    A great post, enjoyed reading your story David.
    It totally makes sense – if you’re not planning to move, and would rather stay in the area… why uproot your entire life for 10-15% net gain (if.. at all).

  3. Appraiser

    at 9:42 am

    Let’s not forget that while listing inventories are historically low at present, last year saw an all-time record number of sales on TRREB of 121,712 , up 7.7% from the previous high of 113,040, back in 2016.

    Also new listings last year were actually 6.2% ahead of 2020. Demand continues to overwhelm supply.

  4. Sirgruper

    at 9:42 am

    Divorce and death are the biggies but that’s under “have to sell”. Article makes perfect sense. I don’t know many people who regretted a purchase but a slew that regretted a sale. I have a property that gets cold calls at least ten times a year. My answer is always “thanks but no interest”. Agents will often say, don’t you want to know the price? I simply say no and say thanks for your efforts. If you sell you are just moving one asset that is growing to a stagnant asset called money. So there is no point in selling and paying your taxes on a gain unless you have a much better use for it which is not easy. And for a family home, the reasons are doubled.

    Great blog. Thanks.

  5. Joel

    at 10:02 am

    Something very similar happened to us this week as ell. We bought 6 months ago for $2 million and a developer bought the house next door and came by with an offer of $2.6 for our house.

    We bought the house for the lot and when we were considering the offer realized there were only a couple of other comprable lots in the area and I’m sure to get them to sell we would have to overpay. Factor in a reno of the new place and the delays and overall it wasn’t worth it.

    Unless you are moving out of the city or planning to move up or down, it doesn’t make sense for a lateral move or even +20%.

  6. R

    at 10:40 am

    Not the same question as price, but related- When is it worth moving to go to the “next level”?

    Putting aside major life changes (kids, divorce, death, etc.) and assuming you have the leverage and there’s an option avaialble, I think (based on nothing), it’s only worth moving if you are doubling up. Double the size for almost the same price (ie. moving to Hamilton) or doubling the value/price (ie. moving from a condo to house).

    I never really understood someone selling a 1 bedroom condo to move to a 1+ bedroom condo and gain 100SF.

    My first sale/move was from one unit in a hard loft building to another in the same building when I saw it coming to market and was able to almost double the size (800SF to 1450SF) for a differential of 100K (back when a 1400SF loft was $560K). It was a no brainer.

    Now we are in a house (and have family), the move is a lot more tricky. Moving to the next level would be the forever home but at $4-5M might take forever to actually ever get the resources to do so! Incremental moves don’t really make sense.

    Transactional costs, hassle, stress etc. just isn’t worth it. If it were, I’d bet we would see a lot more market activity to get those marginal gains.

    1. GinaTO

      at 1:46 pm

      That’s pretty much what we ran into in Toronto. Our existing house was getting cramped with the kids growing up, but to get a slightly bigger house (one more bedroom, bigger living room) and not move to the burbs we would have had to spend over $2M. Had we stayed in TO, we would have remained in the house, but life circumstances made us move to Moncton, New Brunswick, where we could get the space we wanted for obviously a lot less… even in Ottawa (which we considered for a while), upsizing would have been costly.

    2. Bryan

      at 1:48 pm

      I think the larger the house/family, the trickier and more expensive it is to move. The move from a studio condo worth $400k to a 1+1 at $800k is really easy. Pack up the bed and couch and off you go! All you need to buy is a dining room table (if your’re lucky). The move from a 2000 sqft semi to a 4000 sqft house though? That’s very hard.

      To me, with the (absolute) smaller price of transacting at lower sizes and the lower the cost of moving and furnishing places with less stuff/space, I would say that for smaller spaces there may be a sanity benefit to doing a bit less than doubling if the place is small.

      The other side of the coin is rental income as well. I have heard of an awful lot of people doing that 1 bedroom to 1+ move, but keeping and renting out the initial 1 bedroom. I suppose that counts as doubling invested money though?

      It’s an interesting conversation that I imagine everyone has a slightly different answer for.

  7. Ed

    at 12:16 pm

    I think many who are considering selling because they want to move up in the market decide in the end to renovate or add on to their existing property. It’s too expensive to moving.
    Start with a typical 1.4M Etobicoke bungalow.
    Commission to sell- $79,100 including GST.
    LTT on new $2.1M house- $77,950

    That’s $157,000 before all the other fees.
    May as well renovate.

    1. Condodweller

      at 5:08 pm

      When I initially commented on how punitive transaction costs are becoming, years ago, I compared agent’s fees to minimum wages. Prices have increased to the point where well above-average family incomes are shaded by these costs.

      That’s definitely a bitter pill to swallow.

      1. Mike Stevenson

        at 8:11 pm

        I know it’s blasphemy here and no offense taken if this gets deleted. But do you really need an agent in a market where you open the front door and get hit in the face with money?

  8. JK007

    at 2:48 pm

    slightly different exp..with our condo in North York..we had never planned to keep it when we upsized to the burbs but had a great deal on the house we bought with a caveat to close in a month and this was 2016 fall so things were still a bit calmer..long story short couple of years back get a letter from a realtor asking if want to sell and if so he has clients ready to buy cash right away at above comparable prices…i gave him my price and next thing he wants me to sign a BRA first..even when i asekd him what he was offering he first wanted me to come to his office and sign documents..i said bbye

  9. House Guy

    at 3:38 pm

    This is a great article and really gets to the heart of the issue right now. Pick whatever reason you want for the housing crisis, but once it gets to this point everyone gets locked in. There will always be a base level of housing sales each year because people are going to continue to die and get divorced, but the standard condo->starter home->forever home treadmill is completely atrophying. At prices this high moving up involves such ridiculous transaction costs and new mortgage debt that you have to be really, really, motivated sell. Plus with townhouses going for $1 million in KITCHENER you can’t even leave the city anymore. Houses are going to be the MacGuffins of 21st century.

  10. Condodweller

    at 5:01 pm

    This is a great story though it’s not the best example of money can buy anything. In this case, Jack is probably the least motivated would-be seller in the area being one of the last, if not the last, person to buy. Therefore it would take more money to convince him to sell than anyone else in the neighbourhood.

    To motivate someone to sell, the price would have to be high enough for him to, net of all costs, make a significant enough profit to force him to move and he can also buy a replacement. If he really badly wants to be in that area and there really are no houses for sale, ever, then no amount of money is going to move him.

    Though I would wonder if he would say yes to $10 million? If say a person sold a business for 20 million and also wants to live in that area really badly would Jack say no to pocketing 3 million assuming 7 million is his break-even net of costs/headache of move etc. But that would be kind of stupid because I would try to find someone else who might be willing to sell for 7 million i.e. someone who paid $400,000 for their house say 25 years ago, or $50,000 50 years ago. Something tells me if I offered a person 6 million for a current 5 million house who paid 50k for it just might go for it.

    This would essentially be like a bully offer. Except for this time, you’d really have to knock him out.

    Clearly, this agent is new, just fishing for listings if she is door-knocking during the holidays. If she actually had a motivated buyer ready to pay up, the conversation would have gone differently. Though even in that case she wouldn’t have done her homework as I wouldn’t even bother knocking on anyone’s door who moved there less than 5 years ago.

    1. JL

      at 5:13 pm

      You beat me to the “not high enough” argument, which I also noted below.

      But great point about the “motivation” aspect as well. Ideally you’d be targeting people that don’t mind living where they are living (and therefore are not actively selling), but who don’t need to actually stay in that particular neighborhood or even in that level of housing. People that actually may even be inclined to move (up/down/or horizontally) and/or change location but are held up by those very transaction costs and moving effort that everyone has pointed to as barriers. In such cases, offering that extra premium may just be enough of an incentive to temp them to make the move.

  11. JL

    at 5:03 pm

    In full agreement on the inertia in real estate due to prices and transaction costs, but the introductory principle is still valid: everyone does have a price, you’re just not offering a high enough premium yet. Would Jake say no to $10M? Probably not a practical example in most cases for someone to overpay by that margin, but if someone of wealth insists on getting a specific unique one-of-a-kind property its plausible you could find a seller who might be tempted.

    1. Condodweller

      at 5:26 pm

      You’re reading my mind. Any house in that area would be unique one-of-a-kind property by virtue of being available for sale.

      I have a good personal example for this. I own something that everyone keeps asking me if I’d sell to them. I keep saying no as I’m not interested in selling but one time just out of curiosity I tested one and said sure, you can have it for $2000 more than FMV to test how serious they were. The answer was no. Over the years it has increased in value where it’s double what I offered it for. It is similar to houses in the sense that it’s unique and you can’t buy one.

      Recently I had someone ask me again. I told them what FMV is and that I’m not interested in selling, but everything has a price and when pushed for a price I said I would start thinking about it at 50% above current FMV. He offered me FMV and I told him to let me know when he is serious. I told him how the last guy would be very happy today having paid half of current FMV. He would likely be in the same position a few years down the road. If someone were to offer me say 3-4 times current FMV I would probably take it as I could replace it with something similar but less in value.

  12. Mike Stevenson

    at 8:56 pm

    What a great story. This might be my favourite blog so far.

    I think some could be surprised by what multiple interest rate hikes do to the demand side of the equation. We haven’t had an inflation problem in this country since around the time David was born, so it’s easy to forget what an inflation-fighting central bank looks like. Easy money created a lot of the demand, so obviously tight money can take a lot of it away. It could also create new sellers.

  13. Kramer

    at 11:08 pm

    I dig this story. Generalizing here, but the GTA is filled with a lot of people with this combination of elements:
    1) tax avoidance savvy
    2) don’t want to leave toronto
    3) are dug into their home and neighbourhood and school district and love it

    And every day as prices get higher, and trading up is more expensive, and the costs are higher with a higher selling price, everyone just burrows deeper. I am myself in the camp where if anyone offered us $0.5M over market right now, we wouldn’t take it either. We don’t want to move. We’d have to be offered serious f$$k off money to accept. But that would never come, because with such a price the buyer could win a bidding war on a house one tier up 3 minutes away. And so they go do that. And here we are.

Pick5 is a weekly series comparing and analyzing five residential properties based on price, style, location, and neighbourhood.

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