Last week, I successfully picked the winner of the game between the San Francisco 49’ers and the New Orleans Saints.

I went to the local sportsbook maker and asked them to pay out my bet.

But they refused.

I couldn’t understand why.

But the explanation they gave me made sense:

I made my bet on Monday after the game was played on Sunday.

Pretty easy to pick the winner when the game has already been played, right?

Those who know me are already aware that this is a metaphor, since I’ve mentioned so many times that I despise gambling.

But you get my point, right?

When it comes to reviewing multiple offers on a property here in the Toronto real estate market, there is no set process for doing so, nor is there even a “widely accepted” method.

A listing agent can give any set of directions to buyer agents, and ten offer presentation situations can be run ten different ways.

Then consider that there’s a very big difference between how an offer night might be run in 2025 versus how it was run in 2022.

There are always the cases of agents who don’t know what year it is, however…

I remember one such instance in May when I had an offer on a west-end home.  The property was listed with an “offer date” and I just didn’t think the house was going to garner that much attention and interest.

Offer night came along and, lo and behold, I had the only offer.

The listing agent kept talking absolutes like “We’ll review all the offers at 7:00pm,” even though I had the only offer, or at one point he said, “We’ll do things very fairly and everybody will have a chance to improve their offer.”

Amazingly, he called me an hour after I submitted my offer, and he said, “Hey David, so now we’re going into round number two of bidding,” and I honestly couldn’t help but laugh.

I wanted to channel Jonah Hill from This Is The End, and say, “Oh, really, Ted, are you?  Are you really, Ted?  Round two?  Really?”

He was a newer agent, and I know he was having problems with the sellers, who wanted too much money, of course.

I said, “Ted, I think we’re good.  We don’t need the second round, we’re cool.”

He called me again a half hour later and said, “So, what we’re doing now, is we’re going to have all the buyers resubmit their offers….”

All the buyers, Ted?  All of them?

I had the only offer.

It reminded me of a scene from Shark Tank where the person pitching their business ignored offers from the Sharks and said, “Alright, so now I’m going to open up the bidding again, and we’ll get some more bids…”

He was lambasted.  I wish I could find that clip.

In any event, all this is to say that how an offer night is run by the listing agent, or how an offer night plays out with buyers and their agents, depends dramatically on the type of market you’re in.

The most fascinating offer scenarios, in my opinion, have always been where there are two offers.

Why?

Because fifty percent of the buyers are going to win and fifty percent of the buyers are going to lose.

In a situation where there are two offers, both buyer agents expect the listing agent to be pulling for them.

It’s human nature, right?

Both buyer agents act as though the listing agent is their friend, in their corner, and wants them to win.

When one of the agents doesn’t win, he or she always reacts to the listing agent with absolute disbelief.

Here’s a story I’ve wanted to tell for a while that’s yet another exercise in human nature.

I could also suggest that it discusses the following themes:

-Regret
-Humility
-Honour
-Hindsight

Sounds scandalous, right?

Except, if I’m being honest, this isn’t really a long story, nor is it sensational.

In fact, the punchline is kind of disappointing.

But I want to tell it in full detail, verbatim, to prove a point about human nature.

Earlier this year, I listed a beautiful house for sale for $3,295,000.

The funny thing about this house was that agents were already telling me it was over-priced!

One very well-known “local area agent” told me that it would be suicide to list over $3,000,000.

I had an agent call me as soon as the “Coming Soon” sign went up on the weekend before we listed, and she asked to show the house.  I don’t usually do this, but you catch more flies with honey, so I told her to go for it.

We listed the house for sale on a Monday morning, and another agent booked a viewing as well.

Later that day, the first agent booked another viewing, which was for Monday evening.

Then the second agent booked his second viewing, which was for Tuesday morning.

Confusing enough?

We had four viewings from two agents.  Each one had gone twice.

But both of those agents ended up bringing us offers!

It’s funny because when this happened, I told my colleagues we could put two different spins on this, one negative and one positive.

A pessimist might offer, “You only had two buyers in the whole city who were interested.”

An optimist might offer, “One hundred percent of the people who viewed the house ended up submitting an offer.”

Let’s pick some names for these agents.

We’ll call the first agent Vivian and the second agent Edward.  Free coffee if you can tell me why…

Vivian had previewed the property on Saturday with her buyers, then again on Monday.  She was the first to submit an offer, and it was for $3,200,000.

Edward had shown the property to his buyers on Monday afternoon, then again on Tuesday morning.

Our first offer came from Vivian.  She submitted an offer on Tuesday morning for $3,200,000.

This was obviously $95,000 under the list price, but given there was no competition on the property at that time, she and the buyers clearly felt that they had “nothing to lose.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Edward submitted an offer on behalf of his buyer clients for the full list price of $3,295,000.  Edward knew that there was already one offer on the property, and thus the price reflected the competition.

Circle back to Vivian’s offer, and it was lower because it was made prior to, and not in competition.

Edward did his job and said, “Now that you have our offer, I just want to know how you’re going to handle the process from here.”

He was essentially saying:

You have two offers on this property.  When and how are you and your clients going to decide which offer to accept, and will there be an opportunity or opportunities to improve?

Every one of these situations plays out differently, as noted above.  In this case, after receiving Edward’s offer, there was only one acceptable immediate action item: notify Vivian.

I registered the second offer through BrokerBay and called Vivian to inform her that she was now competing.

Vivian said, “Let me talk to my buyers.  Obviously, now that we’re competing, we’ll want to improve our offer.”

And they did exactly that.

Vivian’s clients resubmitted at $3,350,000.

So, how do you think we should go from here?

Is this about “fairness,” or is this about getting the most money possible from whichever buyer will end up with the home in the end?

The general public will disagree with just about any method offered, as well as with  each other.  Some believe that a seller should be “forced” to accept an offer in a certain circumstance.

But at this particular juncture, I did what any agent should do:

I talked to my clients about how they wanted the process to play out.

The clients basically said that while they wanted to maximize their sale potential, they also wanted to be classy about the process.

With two offers, you basically have a ping-pong ball going back and forth.  The first offer comes in, the second offer trumps it, the first offer improves over the second, and so on.

But this is based in necessity.

Look at the first three steps:

1) Vivian’s offer was submitted under the list price because she wasn’t in competition.
2) Edward’s offer was submitted at the list price because he knew there was already an offer.
3) Vivian’s improved offer was submitted over the list price because she knew that somebody had made an offer after she was the first to the table.

Those steps follow logically.

From here, a listing agent could take any number of paths.

Before I could act, however, Edward called to ask if the first agents had improved.  I said that they had.  I also added, “Edward, hang on – I’m going to speak to the sellers about how we want to go from here.”

But Edward didn’t wait.

He sent me a revised offer of $3,375,000 a half-hour later.

We now had two offers: Vivian’s offer of $3,350,000, which was her second offer, and Edward’s offer of $3,375,000, which was also his second offer.

From there, the sellers and I decided that we would offer both parties one more shot.

“Best & Final”

Having been in this position before, however, I knew I needed to get out ahead of the objection that always comes when one party loses.  No matter how you prepare two buyer agents before the “best and final” offers are submitted, the losing party always grovels.  It’s human nature.

In this case, I gave both Edward and Vivian the same speech:

“Hey, thanks so much for your efforts so far.  I absolutely hate the fact that I’m working with two awesome agents, and one of them is going to be unsuccessful by the night’s end.  My goal here is to ensure that both parties understand, agree, and respect the process from here.  We think that the most fair way to do this is simply say – give us your absolute best and final offer by 9:00pm.  That will be it.  Even if the two offers are separated by one dollar, we’re moving forward.  Are you good with that?”

Vivian said yes.

Edward said yes.

But I wasn’t finished.

I know how people are.  So I added:

“Listen, I know it’s easy to say this is all well and good, but I need your word that if you are, unfortunately, on the short end of this, that you’ll respect the outcome.  We are truly looking for your absolute best and final offer, and that’s it, we’re done.”

Vivian said she understood.

Edward said that he understood.

Both parties tried to pump me for information, but I didn’t have any, even if I wanted to share!  I had no idea what either Vivian’s clients or Edward’s clients were going to do, so I couldn’t “tip off” one party or the other.

I told both of them, “Listen, if your guys want this, they can throw ten million dollars at the house and get it.”

That was hyperbole, of course.  But setting the stage to say, “Honestly, I don’t know if this is going to be $3.4 Million, $3.5 Million, or $3.6M million; I have no idea.  All I can say is: put your absolute best and final offer on paper and don’t hold back.”

Edward came back with an offer of $3,500,000 even.  I asked him, “Edward, is this your absolute best and final offer?”

He confirmed that it was.

Vivian came back with an offer of $3,477,700.  I asked her, “Vivian, is this your absolute best and final offer?”

She confirmed that it was too.

The decision had been made.  Or rather, the decision made itself.

Edward “won,” fair and square.

I called Edward and said, “Congratulations.”

Sometimes, that’s all you need to say.  You let the agent on the other end of the line let out all the air they had sucked in when they answered the phone and waited for your response, before they subsequently let out some version of, “Oh my fucking god, that’s amazing, oh man, wow.  Okay.”

There’s tension in that situation.  There’s anxiety.  Your stomach is in knots when you get that call.

Like I said: with two offers, it’s a fifty-fifty.  When you’re one of nine offers, you don’t necessarily expect to win.  But when there are only two of you, the stakes are higher and the knife cuts deeper.

I told Edward that we were signing up the offer and we’d send him a completed copy shortly.

Then, I called Vivian.

She answered the phone, and to explain what the dialogue sounded like, I’ll have to get creative with grammar:

“Hi Vivian, unfortunately, we /” “WE CAN COME UP….”

She just cut me right off.

I didn’t get past “we” before she interjected, blurting out, “WE CAN COME UP.  We’ll come up.  We’ll improve.”

I sighed.

I tried my hardest to avoid a situation where an agent agrees to the rules only to disagree with them after they’ve lost.

“Vivian,” I said, very slowly, talking to a woman very much my senior as though she was my child, “We discussed this.  We agreed.  We each got one shot to improve, and it’s done.”

“My people will come up,” she said, speaking very quickly and rather panicked.  “They will improve.  I’ll get it done.  Just need a few minutes….”

“Vivian,” I said, again very slowly, “The competing offer has been signed and accepted.”

That’s when Vivian went on the offensive.

“Well, that’s fucking stupid,” she said.  “You always go back.  Always.  This is a joke.”

I suspect this would not have been stupid or a “joke” had Vivian’s offer been higher.

Not only that, I suspect that had Vivian’s offer been higher and had I given Edward a chance to improve, Vivian would have cried foul.

Vivian grovelled for another five minutes, explaining how things should work.  I took the high road and simply sat back and let her rant, since I knew there would be no convincing her.

The next afternoon, after we had obtained the deposit, the listing was updated in MLS to show it was sold firm for $3,500,000.

I don’t burn bridges, and I always attempt to put out a fire, where possible, so I called Vivian in an attempt to smooth things over.

She answered the phone by saying, “Twenty-five grand?”

I said, “Hello Vivian, it’s David Fleming…”

She replied, “Twenty-five grand?  Really?  You think two offers separated by twenty-five grand don’t need to be sent back for another round of bidding?”

At this point, I figured that all was likely lost, so I took another shot at the situation.

“Vivian, do you remember when we said ‘absolute best and final offer’ and that there would only be one shot to improve?”

She replied, “Yeah, but you always go back.  You just do.”

The situation was lost.

I wished her the best of luck with her buyers, and she grumbled and hung up.

In retrospect, you might suggest that we could have kept this ping-pong ball going, back and forth, all night long.  You might suggest that this was the best way to get the highest price for the home.

But when you don’t set the table for a “best and final” offer submission, buyers and their agents don’t improve their offers significantly.  They always expect another “chance” so they come up a little, then a little, and so on.

In the end, this is yet another story about the unavoidable display of human nature in our real estate market.

Or perhaps, if we wanted to trace everything back to a lesson from our childhood, this is an example of when to “use your listening ears.”  We all remember that one…