I mentioned in an Instagram video earlier this week that I have been writing on Toronto Realty Blog for fifteen years.

June of 2007, folks.  That’s when this started.

And some three-thousand blog posts later, the number-one question I’ve always been asked and continue to be asked is this: “How do you come up with topics to write three times per week?”

Today’s blog posts is an answer to that question, as well as an example of how this blog brings me closer to individuals in the real estate industry.

If you didn’t read Wednesday’s blog, I’ll summarize: a lot of pricing games are being played by listing agents and sellers!

Some of these games are deliberate.  Others are examples of agents being afraid to act.

A cynical real estate onlooker might suggest, “Games are always played in the real estate market, no matter if the market is up, down, or sideways.”

That may be true, but the games being played right now are at another level.  Listings aren’t being updated for weeks at a time as agents leave the “bait price” on MLS, trying to solicit calls, and avoiding re-listing at market value.

That’s my bone to pick this fall, anyway.

Other agents, buyers, sellers, brokers, or market participants have their own issues.

On Thursday afternoon, I answered my phone and a voice on the other end of the line said, “David, you don’t know me…”

Always a great way to start a call, right?

And while I had a feeling this wasn’t a call about duct cleaning, I surely had no idea that it was going to produce my Friday blog.

“My name is Erin Judge and I work for A.L.E. Real Estate,” she said, although that’s obviously not her name and that’s not her brokerage.

“I read your blog yesterday and I swear to God, I was shouting at the screen; ‘yes, absolutely, hell yes,’ as I agreed with everything that you said!  I had agents in my brokerage coming up and asking me what was happening!”

Flattered as I was, I figured there was a story here, and indeed there was.

“Do you have a few minutes?” Erin asked me.  “Can I tell you about what happened to me last week?  This is just so good!  I mean, bad, but good, like, in relation to the stories you’re telling on your blog!”

I opened up a fresh MS Word doc to start taking notes, and told her, “I’m listening.”

Erin showed a property to a buyer-client, listed for sale at $999,900, which was clearly under-listed, not just because they had an “offer night” but also because the property was worth more.  Whether you looked at comparable sales on the street, those from February, adjusted for price, or those from August as a direct comparable, this property was worth more.

But how much more?

That’s what the market would ultimately determine!

Erin planned to “come in strong” with an offer at her client’s best and final price, knowing that this property was probably worth $1,250,000 in February and that it would, could, or should sell for around $1,100,000 today.

The listing agent was providing a really hard sell.  He kept talking about how the depreciation in this particular area wasn’t nearly as bad as the market on the whole.  He noted all their “upgrades,” even though his list was right down to the new hardware on the kitchen cabinets

She felt as though the listing agent wasn’t working in “today’s market” but knew she couldn’t control him.

On offer night, there were three offers, including hers.

She figured that she could offer $1,050,000 as a starting point and see how the listing agent handled the process, but her client said, “I’m happy at $1,100,000, I’m fine to pay that, no matter what the other bidders are offering, but I won’t go higher than that.”

Erin said that her buyer was “an honest type,” explaining that she was an optimist by nature, happy to “put it out there in the universe” and see where the offer lands.

The offer was submitted at $1,100,000, with no conditions, with a deposit cheque in hand, and with the seller’s desired closing date.

The listing agent worked very slowly, Erin said, as he continued to dodge her requests for updates, saying, “More offers are coming in, we have to wait.”

With offers scheduled to be reviewed at 6:00pm, the listing agent didn’t call Erin to talk shop until after 9:00pm.

“I shouldn’t have given him that damn midnight irrevocable,” she told me.  “We’re so robotic; we automatically insert 11:59pm and we don’t think about who we’re dealing with!”

Who she was dealing with, she explained, was an agent she didn’t trust.

During the first call at 9:00pm, the agent talked a blue streak about how there were “a dozen other buyers who didn’t want to bid tonight” and how he knew if he didn’t get the price he was looking for tonight, he could re-list higher tomorrow and sell to one of them.

“He was setting up his big play,” she told me.  “His setup just went on and fucking on.”

Eventually, he got to the point.

“He told me he was sending ‘everybody’ back to improve,” she said.  “And I sarcastically asked him, ‘Everybody, like, all three of us?””

Erin told the agent, point-blank, that this was the buyer’s best and final offer, but the listing agent said, “You don’t have a chance at this price.”

So Erin thanked him for his time, wished him luck with the listing, and prepared to hang up – but the listing agent interjected…

“Just go back to your clients,” he said.  “Talk to them.  Tell them that another ten or twenty grand isn’t gonna hurt.”

Erin explained to me, “David, one moment this guy is telling me that we don’t have a chance, and the next minute he’s talking about ten grand!  He was so full of shit, I could smell it through the phone!”

Erin called her client and the client told Erin that she really didn’t like the vibes that the listing agent was sending and that she was growing disinterested in the property.

So Erin simply asked her client, “He says we’re behind on price, and who knows where we really are.  But do you want to chase this thing?”

The buyer confirmed that she did not.

Erin told her buyer, “I’ll let you know how this ends.”

Erin hung up and turned on Netflix.

“Have you seen the Jeffrey Dahmer series?” Erin asked me.  “It’s disgusting!  And I’m hooked!”

A half-hour later, the agent called her.

“Any update?” he asked Erin.

Erin was confused.

“I told you that $1,100,000 was our max price and you told me we had no chance.  Aren’t we done here?”

The listing agent said, “No, no way!  Don’t give up!”

She said, “I’m not giving up anything.  We presented a very strong offer and you rejected it.  I’m willing to bet that’s the best offer you have, and you want to play games, and my client doesn’t.  So that’s that.”

The agent got aggressive and said, “You’re in the middle of the pack here and the other two agents are going to send improved offers, I’m just trying to help you.”

Erin said, “I don’t need your help, we’re out.”

That’s when the agent said to Erin, “Not yet, you’re not.  Don’t forget: you gave me an irrevocable date of 11:59pm.”

“That’s when I knew I caught this little fucker,” Erin told me.  “We had the highest offer, no doubt.  Or maybe we had the only unconditional offer and the other was slightly higher in price but conditional on the sale of their Jet-ski, I dunno.  But he wanted our offer!”

Erin hung up with the listing agent and called her client again.

She explained the entire situation to the client, conveyed every conversation she had with the listing agent, and then asked her client, “Do you still want to buy this house for $1,100,000?”

The buyer said, “No, I don’t.”

So Erin called the listing agent.

Amazingly, he answered the phone and said, “What were you able to get?”

“If I wasn’t sure before this comment, I definitely was now,” she told me.  “This guy was so gross.  His voice made my skin crawl.  I pictured him standing in a used car lot, selling speakers out of the trunk of his car, licking his gold tooth.”

Erin told the agent, “We’re going to withdraw our offer,” and there was silence on the other end of the line.

“I don’t think he knew this was even a thing,” she told me.

The listing agent told Erin, “Well, I mean, that’s not something you can do.  You gave us until 11:59pm.  That’s the irrevocable.  The offer is……uh…..irr…..revocable!”

“I knew what I needed to do,” Erin explained to me, “So I just hung up on him, right there, so I could get to my computer.”

Erin emailed the listing agent, CC’d his broker, and penned the following:

Hi Anthony,

Regarding the property at 123 Smith Street and our offer, submitted at 5:52pm in the amount of $1,100,000, we hereby withdraw our offer.

Kindly confirm receipt of this email.

Erin Judge

“The timestamp on my email to him was 10:26pm,” Erin told me.  “But I just knew I hadn’t heard the last from him.  I swear, I fucking knew it!  I wanted to go to bed this point, but part of me couldn’t turn off the Jeffrey Dahmer series and the other part of me knew I wasn’t finished with this guy.”

Any guess as to what happened here, folks?

Some of you are already mad.  Pissed.  Disgusted.  Angry, even.

But the “good” stories, the ones with clear eyes and full hearts, really don’t play here on TRB, hence why this one is such a doozie!

“Imagine my surprise,” Erin told me, “When a half-hour later, my iPhone dings and the subject line says Congrats!”

“This fucker!” Erin said.

“He had his client sign the confirmation of acceptance, and I have to give him credit because as stupid as this asshole was, he dated the Confirmation of Acceptance 10:00pm.”

Does anybody see a problem with this?

Well, I mean aside from the agent acting in bad faith, and all that.

“Our phone call was like 10:23pm,” Erin said.  “I have this in my call log, and the call was like a minute long.  Then I emailed him to withdraw my offer at 10:26pm and I have this time-stamped in my outbox,” she explained.

So how could the offer have been accepted at 10:00pm?

Well, it clearly wasn’t!

“I got his email after 11pm,” Erin told me.  “Such a little shit, he was, congratulating me and my buyer, asking when we could drop off the deposit cheque.”

Do you guys follow?

As soon as Erin told him that she was withdrawing her buyer’s offer, the listing agent had his seller-client “accept” the offer that had been withdrawn.  He had enough foresight to see that the offer was withdrawn at 10:26pm, so he had the client date 10:00pm.

“I didn’t want to speak to this guy,” Erin told me.  “I was worried I might tell him I was going to rip his head off and eat it, or something.  I mean, maybe that was the Jeffrey Dahmer series affecting my mood, or maybe I was just more pissed than I’d ever been after twenty years in this goddam business!”

Erin emailed him back with the following:

Hi Anthony,

Attached is a JPG with a screenshot of my call log with you, showing that we spoke at 10:23pm, whereby I verbally withdrew our offer.

Attached is a PDF of my email to you from 10:26pm, whereby we withdrew our offer in writing.

I have CC’d your broker of record above.

Erin Judge.

The listing agent emailed back and simply said, “We have a deal.  It is signed.  We expect the deposit cheque tomorrow.”

What a mess, eh?

The next day, Erin had her broker of record call the listing agent’s broker of record, and this is where things get amazing: the broker of record on the other side argued that they had a legally-binding transaction, and threatened that if the buyer didn’t produce the deposit cheque, then the buyer would be in breach of contract.

Are you sick yet?

Just because somebody is a broker of record doesn’t make them any better than the agents they represent.

A long-time blog reader emailed me last week about an agent, who is also a broker of record, breaking into his condo to change the locks after he refused to agree to an illegal increase in the rent for the property.

Shitty brokerages attract shitty agents, and vice versa.

Don’t paint us all with the same brush, and please respect my forthcoming nature on TRB with all that is good and bad, but what else can I say?  People suck.

“The broker of record was as dumb as the agent he was protecting,” Erin told me.  “Guess what we did, David?  Can you guess?”

I guessed.

And I guessed right.

“So my broker says to his broker, ‘Just send us the Certificate of Completion from DocuSign, show us the timestamp on that 10:00pm acceptance, and we’ll talk.’  He had the broker on speakerphone in his office, it was amazing, there was just silence!”

How could anybody be so stupid, you’re wondering?  I’m wondering the exact same thing…

“There was this epic pause, like the one that’s so long, you actually ask the person if they’re still on the line, which my broker did!  The other broker said, “Ummm, I don’t think I can send you that,” and my broker says back, ‘You can, it’s just that you won’t.'”

Erin did such a great job conveying this experience, I felt like I was there.  But then again, I’ve been in so many of these situations before, and I’ve been just as angry, frustrated, and disgusted with other agents and their actions, that I really was there with her, and her broker of record.

“The other broker of record said, ‘Um, let me call you back this afternoon,’ and my broker just smiled and told me he would clean this up.  Four hours later, that broker of record emailed and said they would let us out of the Agreement.”

Good enough?

Nope.

“My broker of record said, ‘No, you’re going to send us a Mutual Release, signed by your seller and yourself, and you’re going to have it to us before 5pm or I’ll escalate this.’  They had it to us about thirty minutes later, those dirty fuckers!”

If you’re wondering why a Mutual Release was needed, it’s simply to alleviate the buyer of any potential future obligation or litigation, no matter how unlikely.  This Agreement of Purchase & Sale was not signed legally; not after the offer was withdrawn, not after the Confirmation of Acceptance was fraudulently dated, and not after the seller’s agent/brokerage failed to produce a Certificate of Completion.  But why have any lingering doubts?  Sign that “Mutual Release” and drive the stake right into the heart of the vampire.

Erin told me, “I want to say this is the worst experience I’ve ever had, but it’s not.  It’s just the worst one in memory.”

Situations like this are rare, but when they happen, they remain on your mind for weeks, if not months.

The actions on the other side of this transaction were so dirty, so unethical, and so wrong that the experience has a tendency to shape your views for a short time in the immediate future.  You’re left guarded.  You’re more cautious.  You’re far less trustworthy.

“I know when I’m being lied to,” Erin told me.  “I can’t write a blog, and I can’t do a TikTok, and maybe I can’t price a condo by the square foot, but if there’s one strength I have in this business, it’s that I know when I’m being lied to,” Erin said.

Some of you might wonder why Erin and her buyer were willing to pay $1,100,000 for the house, but changed their minds and went on the offensive to ensure they didn’t buy the place, once the agent’s actions were known.

It’s a fair question.

Some people see an end goal and they don’t care how they get there.

Others have a more holistic view.

In this case, Erin’s client simply didn’t want to do business with somebody she didn’t trust.  She wanted to like the person she bought from, however cheezy that sounds.

Real estate is a very impersonal business at times, even though it involves people and is conducted face-to-face.  Many buyers don’t care who they buy from, or who they deal with, but here’s a case of somebody that absolutely, positively, put her foot down.

And what becomes of that agent?

Unfortunately, nothing.

He suspended the listing and it’s anybody’s guess whether the property is re-listed or not, but as far as repercussions go, any complaint will likely be fought with “it was an honest mistake,” and that will be the end of it.

Surely that’s not the happy ending you were looking for on a Friday afternoon, but it’s what happened!

And I’m hoping that by sharing this story, not only will it encourage others to suss out poor behaviour in the industry and fight against it, but it will also encourage agents to contact me when they have an experience like this so I can share it on my blog!

Erin, remember – you told me I could! 🙂