I speak to the media a lot.

I have no formal media training, and I don’t actively solicit television appearances.  I don’t know when the phone started ringing, or why, but I guess something, at some point, just sorta clicked.

A now-retired journalist once told me, “This is why I love you.  You’re a goddam quote machine.”

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but years later, I asked her what she meant.  She said that most people she interviews are dry, unoriginal and they carefully craft their responses.

“So I’m just blubbering idiot who says whatever pops into his head, with absolutely no filter?” I asked her.

“You’re not a blubbering idiot,” she said.

I’ve never been one to pull punches, that’s for sure.  I started Toronto Realty Blog in 2007 with a mandate of bringing transparency to an industry that has none.  “Honest opinions from Toronto’s real estate insider,” was my first tag-line.

When I speak to the media, I don’t change my approach.  Whether on television or during a newspaper interview, I’m always honest, and I have no problem with adding some flair to what I say.  Using an analogy, or a turn-of-phrase – I don’t mind.  Especially if I’m trying to make a point.

This weekend, one of my points ruffled some feathers.  I don’t know why somebody would read what I said, Google me, find my contact information, then email me to say that I’m an asshole, but apparently, it’s something worth doing, because not one, but two people did exactly that.

First, some background…

A house was listed for sale at 300 Euclid Avenue in late-July.

It was a detached bungalow on a 21.08 x 129 foot lot.

The house itself was nothing special: 2-bedrooms, 1-bathroom, no basement, and not in great shape.

The price?

$999,000.

The house?

Have a look:

Say what you want about the list price of $999,000, and whether you dislike the “under-list” strategy, followed by the expected “offer date,” but how would you sell this house, if it were yours?

Also say what you want about the house itself, which I think we can all agree isn’t exactly Windsor Castle.

But when the property sold for $1,808,000, the city went nuts.  And there was no shortage of articles on this property, and this sale, most of them taking the same view:

I can’t believe this crappy little house sold for $1,808,000

Or, I suppose the other view:

How did this house sell ‘almost a million dollars’ over the list price?

It’s here that my objections begin, as each statement is asinine, but for different reasons.

And most of the coverage on this sale, to be honest, would lead readers to ask those two questions.

Narcity wrote:  “Toronto’s Tiny $1M House Just Sold For Almost Double The Asking Price”

BlogTO wrote: “Tiny House In Toronto Listed For $1M Sells For $800K Over Asking”

Of course, the coverage was no less exaggerated before the houses sold.

Toronto Storeys wrote: “Tiny Shed-Like House Hits Market In Little Italy For $1M”

Toronto Sun wrote: “Tiny Toronto House Goes On Market For Nearly $1M”

Within that article, from the end of July, was this:

Scott Ingram, a realtor and chartered accountant who offers analysis of the Toronto housing market, used the listing as one of three examples of “places bought recently, didn’t get big-time renos, and are now back on the market.”

“My cynical theory is the owners are getting nervous and want to cash out,” he tweeted.

This couldn’t possibly prove to have been more wrong, of course.

Both before and after the sale, there have been no shortage of articles on this house.  And the reaction to the stories are always the same: woe-is-me people complaining about the high price of real estate.

I’m sympathetic to the high cost of real estate.  You might not think I am, and I suppose I don’t blame you, based on what I write about on my blog, but how can I not be sympathetic?  How can anybody not be?

But it’s when people start to ignore facts, or create their own “alternative facts,” and/or completely miss the point, when I lose sympathy.

The sale of this house on Euclid Avenue is a fantastic example.

Read the comments on these articles, or on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, and you’ll see nothing but angry people bitching and moaning about the “unfair” price of real estate.  They are all using this sale to prove their point.

When I was interviewed for an article last week, the journalist said, “Looking at the photos, I can’t even see much of a dining room….” and I cut her off right there.

“Stop, stop, just stop,” I said.  “You’re falling into the same trap as everybody else.  You’re looking at this property as a house, when it’s not.  It’s land.”

That’s what the peanut-gallery on Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook refuse to acknowledge, and it makes their complaining about real estate prices somewhat of a strawman’s argument.

So when I was quoted in the Toronto Star over the weekend, suffice it to say, some people didn’t like it:

Wilful ignorance.

Rude?  Unsympathetic?  Or honest?  Maybe true?

I don’t think it’s a matter of opinion.  I think it’s a matter of fact.  Because anybody who uses this sale to complain about the price of real estate is, in fact, being willfully ignorant.  People saying, “This is a 2-bedroom shack and it’s $1,800,000” are absolutely, positively demonstrating their ignorance about the real estate market, and thus undermining their own arguments.

If an investment banker used a small gold bar as a paperweight, an onlooker could remark, “That’s an expensive paperweight.  He paid $6,000 for that paperweight but he could have got a really nice one from Pottery Barn for $27.99”  But it’s not a paperweight; it’s a gold bar.  It’s a gold bar being used as a paper-weight, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a gold bar, and doesn’t make it worth any less.

Maybe that’s not the right analogy, so let me try again.

If you sold a cow based on the amount of milk that the cow could produce, and the price at which you could sell the milk, then you could justify that price.  But if you ignored the fact that the cow could be sold to a person who would use the cow for a hundred different cuts of beef, which could be sold for far more money, then again, you’re being ignorant about the true value of that cow.

For anybody that believes this sale at 300 Euclid Avenue is preposterous, I give you the following…

First of all, who is looking at this $1,000,000 list price as any indication of what the house could or should sell for?

This is a list price, right?  While this should be obvious for those who read TRB on a regular basis, or who have transacted in real estate in the last few years, it’s not obvious to a LOT of Torontonians who frequent Reddit and Instagram.

So how about this: whether you know anything about graded vintage hockey cards or not, what do you think of the following…

That’s a 1953-54 Parkhurst Gordie Howe hockey card graded PSA-5.

It’s for auction, starting at $0.99, and there are almost seven days left on the auction.

Does anybody think it’s going to sell for $0.99?

Now, what could it sell for?  Hmmm……if only there was a way to know what a card could sell for.

Ah, how about this:

There are the last three sales for PSA-5, Gordie Howes.  As you can see, there’s a price trend, and they aren’t selling anywhere near $0.99.

So why do people look at the list price of real estate, as though it’s any indication of a potential sale price, but they have enough sense to know that this Gordie Howe card isn’t going to sell for $0.99?

Second of all in this pot of frustration, why didn’t anybody look to see what this house sold for the last time it was offered?

Because a quick search of MLS, or even Google, would reveal a fall, 2016, sale for $1,200,000.

So surely this isn’t going to sell for $1,000,000 this time around, right?

Attention Reddit Complainers!

Last, but most importantly not least, how often do you find a detached house for sale in this are?

Let’s look at the area bordered by Dundas, Bathurst, College, and Grace, and see how many properties have been offered for sale in the past two years:

That’s 108 properties, for those trying to guess the jellybeans in the jar.

But that’s all property types.

What about detached properties?

Here’s how that map looks:

That’s 12 properties, and despite those clusters of three red dots, that’s just TREB trying to show us there’s “multiple” properties, but they don’t use different icons for 2, 3, or 4.

So only 12 of 108, or a mere 11.1% of properties offered for sale in this area, are detached houses.

And how many of those listings were for properties under $2M?

One.

Would I have told a client to pay $1,800,000 for this property at 300 Euclid Avenue?

No.

But $1.5M?  Sure.  $1.6M?  Yes, probably, if they were going to build a modern new house, and a laneway house out back.

A property is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it, so who says this isn’t worth $1.8M?

That’s not even the point I’m trying to make today.

The point I’m trying to make today is that I’m tired of the real estate haters, and the real estate complainers, using sales like this one to try and demonstrate the relative level of “fairness” in the market.  The argument with this sale, among so many in our city, has been, “If a 2-bedroom shack goes for $1,800,000, then what hope do I have?”

But that’s just so misleading.

And it’s so willfully ignorant.

Yes, I’m using that phrase again, even though I received two angry emails from strangers who took issue what my quote in the Toronto Star.  Ordinarily, I would share those emails, but I don’t feel like justifying the angry mob today.

Something about this sale really struck a chord with me, and that was before random basement-dwellers started emailing me.

Not everybody can afford to live in the property of their choosing in this city, and yet events like the sale of 300 Euclid Avenue continue to bring out those who believe the opposite.

And the hyperbole surrounding this sale – the idea that the “common folk” can’t live in the city, if shacks are selling for $1.8M, is misguided and ignorant.

To those who spent time on the weekend bitching about this sale on social media: just stop it.