You see that guy in the feature photo?

Yeah, the one sitting on the couch, hand over his eyes, frustration more than just a little bit apparent – you see that guy?

That’s a silhouette of everybody who ever sold their property conditionally, and who were then told by their real estate agent, “The buyers would like to extend their condition.”

This photo may as well be the seal on every Amendment offered from a buyer to a seller from now on, because that’s exactly how the seller is going to react.

I mean, how can you not be disappointed?

I suppose it could be worse.

The buyer could have walked away, right?  That’s worse!

But worse than worse is when the buyer asks for an extension, receives the extension, and then walks away when the second conditional period is through…

Over my two-plus decades in the business, I’ve had my fair share of tough deals.

What makes a deal “tough” can differ from one person or one situation to the next, or even from one market cycle to the next, while we’re at it.

Sometimes, it’s the properties that you thought were really awesome, only to find that the market didn’t love them, which turn out to be difficult transactions to work on.

Then other times, it’s the deals that take longer than expected to culminate that are a bitter pill to swallow.  In layman’s terms: the houses that take forever to sell.

I’ve had a handful of properties that took over a year to sell, but the property in today’s story wasn’t that.  It took seven months, which is a very long time, but it was far from any sort of record.

What made this particular transaction difficult was a combination of factors:

1) It did, in fact, take a long time to sell.
2) It was an incredible property, and the lack of serious interest early in the listing was surprising.
3) We had over 100 showings in total across the seven months for which the property was listed.

On their own, these three reasons are enough to suggest that this sale was anything but easy.  However, when we dig into the nuances of the agreement that was eventually executed, you’ll see why this sale was particularly unique…

This property was listed in the 905, in a very popular, quiet, family-friendly neighbourhood, with old-world charm.  Certain streets in this pocket felt like something out of a movie, and with great parks, highly-rated schools, walkability, and excellent amenities, we were optimistic.

The problem, however, was that most areas of the 905 had been hit hard by the market shift, and this particular area wasn’t immune either.

In fact, sales in the area were sluggish.  Sporadic.  Slow.

Re-listings were common, price adjustments were almost automatic, and buyers were in absolutely, positively, “no rush.”

We didn’t receive our first offer on the property until a week before Christmas, if you can believe it.

The offer was for $600,000 below the list price, which set a new record for “worst offer I have ever seen in my career.”

The agent who submitted the offer was embarrassed.  I’m not exaggerating here either; his actual words were, “I’m so embarrassed to be submitting this offer.”

We received another offer in January, then another in February, but nothing materialized.

Perhaps the most frustrating part about the entire process was that every single buyer agent who called me asked, “Why hasn’t this property sold?”

The comments from buyer agents were somewhere between inspiring and infuriating.

“This looks too good to be true.”

“Why has nobody jumped on this yet?”

“What am I missing here?”

“Seriously, what’s wrong with the house?”

By March, I was receiving a phone call on the property just about every other day.  I had never experienced such interest in a property for which there was seemingly no interest.

Over March Break, we spun our wheels with yet another offer, but this one died out after multiple rounds of sign-backs as well.  Funny story here: the buyers wrote a letter to my sellers in another language, simply assuming that my clients were of that particular persuasion.  Evidently, my clients were not, and wondered why the buyers sent them a letter in a language that they didn’t speak, with characters that they could not decipher…

In any event, we received an offer in April that was workable.

The offer, however, was also conditional.

If I am one thing in this business, I am realistic at all times.  There was no world in which I would allow myself to believe that we would end up selling this property unconditionally, so I knew when not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The offer was conditional on a satisfactory home inspection for seven calendar days.

That was longer than what is considered standard, but it wouldn’t matter in the end, because the offer was also conditional on satisfactory financing for ten business days.

Ten business days?

That was an eternity!

It’s essentially a nice way of saying “two weeks,” which was a really, really, really long time in today’s market.

Nevertheless, my clients and I determined that this was an offer we wanted to work with.  Actually, scratch that.  This was an offer we needed to work with.

The agreement was executed, and we moved on to the next steps.

Five days later, the buyers conducted a home inspection and came back to us to ask if we would remedy a few issues that they found in the house.

The buyers’ agent put a lot of effort and research into what needed to be done, by whom, on what timeline, and what it might cost, and that helped my sellers and I to wrap our heads around the notion of spending out-of-pocket money to get the inspection condition waived.

We agreed, and the buyers’ agent drew up an Amendment to that effect.

At this point, it would be prudent to introduce the buyer agent, as she played a tremendously important role in getting this transaction over the finish line.

She was an individual with over twenty years in the business, and with a name I recognized.  She was the type of agent who could do a ton more business if she chose to, and by that, I mean her services, experience, and professionalism would be in extremely high demand in today’s market, but she seemed to be a “quality over quantity” type of agent.  Her commitment to these buyers was incredible.  Her diligence throughout this process absolutely amazed me.

Her clients were living in the GTA and had Permanent Resident status, but were taking money from the sale of their home in Australia, and that was complicating the process.

We would soon learn just how complicated this process was, however, as our fourteen-day conditional period drew to a close.

On the twelfth day, she called me.  That’s important, keep in mind, since most agents in her position would call the listing agent at 4:30pm on the fourteenth day.

She explained the ins and outs of the Australian banking system and detailed exactly what had been done to this point, and what was still needed.

She then requested a fifteen-day extension of the financing condition.

Calendar days, mind you, but perhaps another way of phrasing this is “half a month!”

But she didn’t just send an Amendment.

She called me.  She discussed with me.  She informed me of what was happening behind the scenes.

Then, before sending me an Amendment, she emailed me with a summary of our discussion, as well as additional notes that would provide comfort to my sellers.  For example:

“John and Jane have given notice on their current rental property, which is not something they would do if they were not one-hundred percent committed to purchasing this home from your seller-clients.  We are not looking at any other properties.  This is the home for us.”

Call this a sales pitch, if you want.  But I call it honestly.  I call it professionalism.  And most of all, I call it collaboration.

My clients and I agreed to provide the extension of the financing condition, and we signed another Amendment.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I continued to receive calls on the property, much as I had before.

Interestingly, I received a few comments from other buyer agents to the extent of:

“Why did you allow them to extend their condition?”

You’ll have to excuse the bluntness of some buyer agents out there, as you might assume that this is none of their business.  But agents ask, and if it causes me no harm, I’m happy to answer.

I simply told these agents, “We’re confident that the buyers will firm up the sale,” and left it at that.

One agent told me, “You’ll have to let me know if the sale doesn’t firm up, because my people are interested!”

He hadn’t shown the property, by the way.  And this will be important to note in a few minutes…

The additional fifteen-day conditional period was long, I won’t lie.  It just seemed to drag on forever and ever.

During that time, we began to remedy some of the issues that were found in the home during the buyers’ inspection.

You might ask, “Why did you do that when they hadn’t firmed up the deal yet?  Why spend that money when you had no certainty that the buyers would come through?”

Well, it’s a two-way street.  The buyers were doing everything they could to show us that they intended to firm up the agreement and close on the purchase, so we wanted to show them that we were keeping our word as well.

The buyers’ agent was present for all of the remedies, by the way.  I don’t know if you could say definitively that this was her job, my job, our job, or the sellers’ job, but ultimately she took the bull by the horns, sourced the contractors, booked the appointments, and was on site.  My sellers were quite pleased, as this made their lives easier, and all they had to do was pay the invoices.

Fourteen long days went by, and then I got a call from the buyers’ agent.

I can always tell what the voice on the other end of the line is going to say, just from the salutation.

It didn’t take more than “Hi David” before I knew that we had a problem.

She told me that the Aussie banks were still working away and that, unfortunately, she had to request yet another extension.

This was on a Wednesday, and while the Aussie banks told her they would have an answer by Friday, she knew better than to take them at their word.  So instead of requesting a two-day extension, she requested one for seven calendar days.

So let me pose the question to all of you: would you give them the extension?

They had already tied up the property for almost a month!

You might ask, “Was there any other interest in the house?” and that is a very good question.  It’s also one that I’ll address shortly…

We granted them the extension, signed a new Amendment, and updated MLS accordingly.

The next day, I received a phone call from an irate agent, one whom I had spoken to a week or two earlier.

“I just saw the update on MLS,” he told me.  “Why the hell did you give them another extension?” he asked.

I answered, “Because they represent our most qualified buyer who gives us the best opportunity to sell the house.”

He shot back, “That’s laughable.  They’ve got issues, man.  They’ve got issues.  How can you not see that?”

I simply replied, “Their offer is still better than yours.”

There was a pause, and then he took the bait and said, “I haven’t sent you an offer.”

This gave me the opportunity to explain a few things to him…

“Exactly,” I said.  “You haven’t sent me an offer.  You could have sent me an offer that was conditional upon the release of the existing agreement, which would have allowed my clients to have a backup plan in case the existing buyers asked for another extension.  But you didn’t do that.  You didn’t think to do that.  In fact, you haven’t even shown the property.”

Amazingly, he shot back, “Why would I waste my time showing the property when it’s sold conditionally?”

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force them to drink…

And for the record, this is what a buyer agent should do in his position.

But all this was moot, however, or would soon prove that way.

The following week, I received a text message from the buyers’ agent:

“Can you take a call?”

I said, “Sure.”

She said, “Can I FaceTime you?”

I figured that she either wanted to deliver the bad news, face-to-face, or she wanted to do the exact opposite.

I’ll be honest: in that very moment, I believed it was going to be good news.  Simply put, I believed in her.  I knew from the very start that she would get this deal done, and while we certainly encountered some hurdles along the way, I knew she would overcome them.

We met face-to-face over our iPhones, and she smiled widely.

“We’re going FIRM!” she said.

I asked, “Really?  So soon?  You sure you don’t need another week?”

She laughed, and I thanked her profusely.  She thanked me, and we had a very brief Realtor thank-off.

A waiver of the buyers’ condition landed in my inbox shortly thereafter, and we had ourselves a firm deal.

It took thirty-five days from the execution of the conditional agreement to get the sale firm, which is a new record for me.

But “all’s well that ends well,” as the saying goes.

And if I may be so brash as to share one more thing that the buyers’ agent said, I’d like to share this:

“David, any other agent would have fucked this up.  I don’t think there’s another agent who wouldn’t have got in his or her own way, and sullied the deal, like, got pissy and told me to fuck off at some point, so I really appreicate you sticking with us.”

Here’s the sad part: she’s not wrong.

Nothing gets in the way of a real estate sale quite like ego.

There are four egos involved in every transaction: buyer, seller, buyer agent, and seller agent, and in today’s market, emotion is playing a huge role.

She’s right; many other listing agents would have shouted her down, tried to strongarm her, and let their egos and emotions blow up the deal.

But we had the right buyers for the house.  We had their deposit funds held in trust.  And they had the right agent, too.  If this were any number of agents on the other side, I might have thought twice about the buyers’ intentions and sincerity, but she guided this thing from start to finish.

So, if you’re reading this blog post because you happened to query “should I grant an extension on the buyer’s condition?” suffice it to say, it’s not an easy decision.

My advice would be to look at all the parties involved before you check in with your emotions, and remember that your ultimate goal is to sell the property…