Many of you cringed when you read the title of today’s blog post.

You were a bit anxious to read this.

When you had your home listed for sale, you listened to conversations between buyers and their agents through your Ring doorbell.  It was fine though.  In fact, it was essential.  You had to know what was going on, what was being said, and what your prospects for a sale were.

So when you got to TRB this morning and saw the question being asked in the title of the post, you wondered, “What are people going to say?”

It’s one thing for me to express my opinions on this, but what about the other TRB readers?  What if they scold these fictitious, hypothetical home sellers for listening in on conversations between buyers and their agents?  What does that mean for you, having done it yourself?

I say this in jest, of course.

Most people are going to argue, “It’s my home, I can do as I please,” and so long as these conversations arent’t recorded, edited, thrown into an A.I. program, and used to extort money from sweet, naive grandparents, I think most would agree it’s okay.

But some won’t, and that’s fine too.  “Ethics” is a massive grey area, after all.

I can’t recall the first time that a seller client told me he or she had “listened in” on conversations between buyers and their agents, but it might have been a client of mine who owned a townhouse near Trinity Bellwoods Park.

This would have been around 2019, and while it’s not that long ago, it’s certainly before everybody and their mother owned a Ring doorbell.

Not only that, he would record these conversations and email me the videos.

Ethical or not?

I never asked him to do this.  In fact, I suggested that it’s not a good idea for him to listen in on conversations, as he might hear something he didn’t like.

He told me, “It’s one thing for me to ask you for feedback, you to ask the buyer agent for feedback, and then the buyer agent to ask his clients, then report back up the chain.  But it’s another thing entirely for me to hear the feedback first-hand, directly from the horse’s mouth.”

He wasn’t exactly wrong.

There were other benefits to the Ring doorbell, of course.

As many sellers in Toronto have experienced, keys can go missing!  Buyer agents never admit it was them, no matter what.  As a listing agent, I’ll receive a call from somebody who has a 3:00pm viewing, telling me that there’s no key in the lockbox, and it’s simple for me to look back to see who had the previous appointment booked.  But when you call the agent who showed previously at 12:00pm, it’s always, “Nope, I put the key back!  Absolutely, one hundred percent!”

In the case of my client with the Ring doorbell, he had a video of the agent exiting the house, having a conversation, then never locking the front door and putting the key back.

I would ask again: Is it ethical to take this video and send it to that agent to prove a point?  Especially when that agent denies having accidentally walked off with the key?

You decide.

Over the last few years, an increasing number of homeowners have installed some form of doorbell that provides two-way communication.  This means they can hear and see everything that happens outside the house.

Ethical or not, I have had countless seller-clients listen to conversations that take place on the front porch over the last few years, many of them taking detailed notes.

This helps with the feedback loop, especially when we’re in a market where few buyer agents actually follow up and provide feedback on their viewings, even when asked twice.

This can also help from a negotiation standpoint.

Earlier this year, a client of mine listened to an entire conversation between a buyer and their agent as they stood on the front porch and discussed their offer strategy.

The buyer noted that he wanted to act immediately.

The buyer said, “I don’t want to lose this house, but I want to try to negotiate.  I would buy this for the list price right now, but we don’t know what the seller is thinking, right?”

The buyer agent said, “So let’s offer something low and we’ll play like we like it, but don’t love it, and see what the seller signs back at.”

My seller-client would have negotiated on the price had he not heard this conversation, which he detailed to me.  In the end, the buyer did come in with a low offer, but armed with this inside information, my seller-client refused to come off his asking price, didn’t sign the offer back, and eventually the buyer came in with a full-price offer.

Some will argue, “It’s up to the buyers and their buyer agents to know not to discuss how they feel about the home when they’re on site,” and I would be inclined to agree.

Then others might argue that this is unethical.

You decide.

Where this gets tricky is when the seller and/or the selling agent hear something that they don’t like, and then take issue with it.

I feel this is a case of, “Careful what you wish for,” or “Play with fire and you’re to get burned,” but listen to the following story and let me know if you have a better analogy.

Several weeks ago, I was showing a west-side loft and from the very moment I opened the front door, I could just feel that my client and I weren’t alone.

We walked inside and I could see a purple light turn on out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to look, and there was a small camera on the kitchen island, pointed right at the front door, which now had the purple light illuminated, demonstrating to me that the camera was on.

As I’ve noted to this point, it’s not unusual for home sellers to have security or to listen to conversations.

But this was something altogether different…

Not only did the camera turn on as soon as we went inside, but it was painfully obvious that somebody was watching and listening!

The camera wasn’t exactly hidden, but worse was that the box and user manual from the camera were sitting on the kitchen island right next to the camera!

It was as though the seller had just set up the camera and left.

I told my client, “We’re clearly being listened to, so don’t say anything that you wouldn’t want the seller to hear.”

My client shrugged and said, “I don’t give a shit what the seller hears,” and we proceeded to tour the loft and chat about what we thought.

Whether it was user error, inexperience or sheer stupidity, an incredible thing happened:

We could hear the seller through the camera, loudly munching on what sounded like chips.

This was a two-way camera, apparently, and the seller hadn’t muted his or her microphone.

My client noted that the kitchen felt really dark, tired, and uninspiring, and we could hear the seller on the other end of the camera gasp.

It was incredible.  Seriously, this was a first.

I smiled at client and sort of waved at him like, “Keep calm, it’s fine,” and figured that this wasn’t the unit for him, we should move on.

He looked at me and said, “They’re going to have a really hard time moving this unit.  They’re over-priced by about $200,000.  They’ve got some balls listing for more than they paid when they bought in 2023.”

That’s when we heard a faint voice through the camera whisper, “Oh, for fuck’s sake…”

My client and I weren’t in the direct line of sight of the camera, so whoever was listening couldn’t see us.

My client threw his head back with quiet laughter.

He wasn’t wrong about the price, though.  We knew this going into our viewing, but we wanted to get into the building for a look regardless.

Was he being a jerk by baiting the seller?

I don’t think so.

The seller was listening and watching.  My client was providing excellent feedback.  The kitchen was dark, uninviting, and uninspiring, and the unit was overpriced.

Was this a case of “Two wrongs don’t make a right”?

The seller shouldn’t have been listening and watching, and the buyer shouldn’t have been negative about the space?

Or is this the complete opposite?  Is this a case of the seller having every right to listen and the buyer having every right to express himself accordingly?

What happened next is the issue, however.

The listing agent called me for feedback, and I told him that the unit showed very well, the loft features were gorgeous, and we really liked the building; however, we felt it was too dark and over-priced, so we didn’t have any interest.

He paused, sighed, and said, “You know there’s this old adage that we were all taught when we were children…”

Then he paused again as though he was waiting for me to inquire.

I said, “Uh-huh, go on…”

He continued, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I had a feeling that I knew where he was going with this, but I played dumb and said, “But, Todd, you called me for feedback!”

Exactly as I suspected, he replied, “Yes, that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about your comments in the condo the other day.”

I said, “Oh, really?  What comments?”

He said, “My client is a nervous, first-time home seller, and you and your client were saying very unflattering things about the condo, bordering on rude and obnoxious.”

I asked him, “Really?  Like what sort of comments?”

He said, “Comments about the kitchen being unfriendly, about how there’s nowhere to put clothing in the master bedroom – like this is the seller’s responsibility to adhere to what your buyer client wants, or I think she said that your buyer said the bathroom looked like something out of a night-club…”

At this point, I knew I wasn’t going to make a friend, so I faked a laugh and said, “Oh, yeah, that bathroom!  I felt like it was 1999 and I was about to put my glow-sticks down on the counter so I could drop a tab of ex…”

He gasped!  Much like his seller-client did when she was listening to us at the condo.

The agent said, “Are you kidding me right now, with this?”

I told him, “Yes, actually, I am kidding with you.  I’m merely proving a point.  Tell your client not to listen to people’s conversations if she doesn’t want to hear what they have to say.”

He started to argue with me about the price, and I said, “Listen, listen – I’m not your guy.  I’m not the market-maker here, I’m just an agent who showed the condo, I have no control over the market, and I wish you all the best and hope to hell that you sell the condo for that price.  I’ll be your biggest cheerleader!”

He finished by saying, “It was unfair.  Your comments.  The situation.  My seller….it’s just….it was unfair…”

I wished him all the best, and that was the end of the call.

As for his seller, I have absolutely zero sympathy for her, and that’s saying a lot, since I’m usually a pretty sympathetic person.

The seller seemed to have gone out of her way to set up a camera and microphone – while leaving the box and the user manual on the counter, and then listened to our conversation while watching us navigate our way through the condo.  And she did so while munching on some Lays or Pringles, no doubt.

I can’t help but feel like this is one of those situations where you say, “If you’re not going to like the answer, then don’t ask the question.”

We haven’t even discussed the legalities involved with recording private conversations, but that would veer us off course toward a whole other conversation.

After all, there’s a difference between recording conversations, with either one-party consent or two-party consent, depending on the jurisdiction, versus that of simply listening to conversations happening in your own home.

Either way, my advice to all home sellers is this: there’s an upside and a downside to listening to conversations between buyers when they’re inside your home, so just know what you’re getting into before you click “listen” on that Ring doorbell…

Have a great weekend, folks!