It’s been a tough couple of weeks for the real estate industry, eh?

If you’re wondering why I haven’t written about the iPro Realty Ltd. story, or “scandal” if you will, there are several reasons.

First, I don’t know any more than you do.  I only know what I’m reading in the newspaper and through RECO bulletins.

Second, I don’t know that speculating is the right thing to do at this particular time.  I understand that the line between “news” and “editorialism” has blurred beyond recognition (Leslie Roberts wrote a great article about this in the National Post on the weekend…), but until we actually know what happened here, I don’t think that posing hypothetical scenarios and discussing them as though they were individual facts is prudent.

Then again, this is a blog, not a newspaper, and just about everybody else is speculating on what happened behind the scenes at iPro Realty.

The time for discussion on TRB will come, but it’s not today.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then here are three articles by Shane Dingman from the Globe & Mail over the past two weeks:

“Ontario Regulator Shuts Down iPro Realty After Finding $10-Million Shortfall In Trust Accounts”
Globe & Mail
August 14, 2025

“Ontario Brokerage Collapse Raises Questions About Oversight”
Globe & Mail
August 19, 2025

“Official From Ontario’s Real Estate Regulator Leaves Post After Collapse Of iPro Realty”
Globe & Mail
August 22, 2025

And just to show I’m not completely biased, here’s one from the Toronto Star:

“IPro Realty Scandal: As RECO Registrar Ousted, Critics Call For Bigger Change At Watchdog”
Toronto Star
August 23, 2025

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On Monday, we discussed the idea of “ethics in real estate,” which a cynic would suggest is an oxymoron, and I might be inclined to laugh at that.

I told the story about “Beverley” who was thrust into a very difficult situation when, as the listing agent for a property, she was told by her seller-clients not to disclose the fact that the house had flooded and $250,000 in repairs were made.

I mentioned toward the end of Monday’s post that I have found myself in situations throughout the past year where I had to strongly consider whether accepting a listing, the way the seller wanted it to be offered, would be ethical or not.

In describing these events, I might be risking a “Jerry Maguire moment,” as some of the TRB readers could be inclined to think that I would lie, cheat, and steal for them in order to get the most money for their homes.

Hyperbole aside, since this wasn’t stealing, but might have been lying and potentially cheating, real estate agents will often find themselves in situations where the confidentiality that they owe to clients is at odds with the ethical and often legal guidelines that govern them.

Back in March, I was called by prospective sellers to view their Scarborough bungalow, which they had purchased in 2021 for $800,000.

When I arrived at the house, it looked nothing like the photos from the previous listing.

The front lawn had kids’ toys and junk scattered all over it, the porch was in disrepair, and the awning was hanging off.

Inside the home, it wasn’t much better.  It was like they had never upgraded or updated the house, but they had also neglected to take care of it.

I walked through the house with the sellers, and the wife did most of the talking.  When we finished on the main level, I approached the stairs to the basement and she said, “Oh, you should probably get your shoes.”

I figured that maybe the basement hadn’t been cleaned, but then I realized the entire house hadn’t been cleaned in some time, so perhaps there was more to this?

The husband shouted from the other room, “Maybe rainboots, if you got ’em.”

I put on my shoes and took three steps down the staircase before I could basically feel moisture in the air.

In the basement, there was water everywhere.

Both the husband and the wife acted like it wasn’t there, however, as they asked questions about staging.

The back room contained a desk with four monitors and I realized that one of the sellers used this as a home office, despite the fact that the floor was soaking wet.

They continued to ask about what couch we might choose for the rec room or whether we would upgrade the lights, and finally I said, “Guys, can we talk about the elephant in the room here?  What’s with the water?”

Amazingly, they both played it off like it was nothing.

“The basement floods every year at this time,” she said.  “It’s not a problem.”

I told them that it was a problem and asked them why, if it floods every year, they haven’t done something about it.

“We don’t have any money,” she said.

In speaking to the husband a week later, I learned that after purchasing the home for $800,000, they had the house re-appraised in March of 2022 for $1,000,000, then took out a $200,000 line of credit.  By March of 2025, they had spent all that money but didn’t seem to realize (or acknowledge…) that the market had withdrawn since the “peak” and that their house wasn’t worth $1,000,000 anymore.

“We’d really like to get more than a mill,” the wife told me, while we stood in that soaking wet basement.

I told her, “In this condition, I don’t know that you could get $700,000.”

Without missing a beat, she said, “We wouldn’t sell it in this condition.  We would mop up, run dehumidifiers, and time the market so we list when it’s dry outside.”

I pointed to the baseboards, which were brown and yellow with stain, and said, “What’s your plan for this?”

She said, “We would want your painter to just paint over them.”

I explained, “You need to rip out all the flooring and sub-flooring, which is likely soaked and moldy, through-and-through.  The baseboards need to come off and you need to cut the drywall from the floor up to about 24-inches, then replace it all…”

She interjected, “We’re not doing any of that.  We don’t have the money.”

Then she added, “We need to fix this up, quick-and-dirty, and make sure the buyers never know we’ve got water issues.”

The husband added, “Yeah, make this somebody else’s problem next year when the basement floods again.”

I left the house and wondered if I could talk any sense into them.

I set up a phone call with them two days later and explained that they couldn’t simply “hide” all the water damage in the house, then sell it without disclosing, nor could I be expected to “un-see” everything I had seen that day.

I said, “For starters, you need to sell this house in ‘as-is condition’ to ensure that you limit your liability if and when something goes wrong.”

The wife said, “Wouldn’t selling the house in ‘as-is condition’ raise a red flag?”

I said, “It’s going to tell people that you’re not accepting responsibility for what’s in the house, or what could happen between now and closing, but that’s just to start.  We haven’t got to the water damage yet…”

She interjected and said, “Yeah, I’m not doing that.  I’m not doing anything that could cost us money.”

I realized at this point that this house and these sellers weren’t exactly “my jam,” as the kids say, and I told them that I would unfortunately not be able to help them.

I know there are a lot of real estate agents who would have jumped at the chance to sign that listing, and I shudder to think about how many of them would have gone out of their way to clean up the water damage, hide the evidence, and sell the property without the “as-is condition” designation.

Not more than a couple of weeks later, I was doing an evaluation for an old Victorian home in Toronto’s west end.

I met the sellers, who were a lovely couple, looking to move on from the house that they had called “home” since 1988 and move into a condo.

I inspected the home, prepared an evaluation and listing package, and returned one week later to present.

We did not agree on the value, however.

I felt that the home was worth about $1,600,000, and the husband insisted that they “needed” at least $1,800,000 for the property.

Wants and needs.

I’m thinking……..Abraham Maslow?

Try as I may to convince them that they didn’t need $1,500,000, nor was it worth anywhere close to it, but rather they simply wanted that amount to afford them their desired level of comfort in their next chapter, they remained unconvinced.

But that wasn’t even the problem here, you see.

Because at one point during our conversation, the wife turned to the husband and said, “I think it’s time we show him the basement…”

I had already been down to the basement, however.  I wasn’t sure what she meant.

The husband sighed, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

He took a deep inhale and said, “Alright then, come along,” and directed me to follow him downstairs.

We went to the basement and everything looked fine.  It looked just as it did when I had visited one week earlier.

They took me to the bedroom in the back of the basement and turned on the light.

Again, it looked as it did previously.

But then the wife moved the massive King-sized bed, which, admittedly, looked rather large for a basement, and she revealed something I had probably never seen before:

There was a two-foot hole in the ground at the foundation.

It looked like a pot-hole in the road, but deeper.

I approached the wall very carefully, almost acting like this was a giant sinkhole and I risked falling into it.

Maybe I did?

The floor buckled at the foundation, and you could see the bricks that were laid back in 1890 and what was underneath them – nothing but air.

Under the foundation was about two feet of space and then dirt.  Actual dirt.  Dirt that hadn’t been seen since Sir John A. McDonald was Prime Minister.

I shone the light from my iPhone into the hole ,and I felt like I was looking into the core of the earth.

I had seen enough, which is to say that I had never seen anything like this in all my years in this business.

Turning to the owners, I said, “What do you think?”

The husband said, “I think we both agree that we can not let any potential buyers see this.”

The wife added, “That’s why we pushed the bed against the wall.  We wanted to know what you thought the house was worth without this potential issue.”

I said, “Potential issue?  Guys, this is an issue.”

They looked at eachother, then me, then at eachother again.

“What are you proposing?” the husband asked.

I told them, “I’ve never seen anything like this before, so I’d have to look into it.  But you’d need an engineer’s report, and….”

That’s when I was cut off.

“No, no, we’re not doing any of that,” the husband said.  “We just want to sell the house, move on, and somebody can tear this house down, for all we care.”

I told them, “But nobody is tearing this house down.  This isn’t land value.  The $1,600,000 I quoted you was based on this being a turnkey home that somebody can move into.  Nobody is building in this area, and land value would be closer to $1,200,000.”

“That’s not our concern,” he told me.  “What I mean is that they could tear it down, or not, or fix it, whatever.  We just don’t want any part of that giant hole.”

I’m not afraid of giving tough love, so I said, “But this is your giant hole.  It’s in your house.”

They looked incredibly disappointed.

We walked upstairs together, sat back down at the table, and the husband said, “Talk to us about your marketing…”

He had completely disregarded our little journey down to the earth’s core and was ready to move on.

So was I, in fact.

I can tell when I’m speaking and people are nodding along, pretending to listen and agree, but it was clear that these folks were determined to hide the foundational issue in their home, and, right or wrong, it just wasn’t something I was comfortable with.

Not more than twenty-four hours later, however, he emailed me to say, “Thanks, but we’re going in another direction.”

Not only did these folks find somebody to list the house for over $1,800,000, but they also found an agent who seemed to have no issue with the giant hole.

In the MLS photos, the King-sized bed was pushed against the wall, as it was when I visited the property.

They did not do a pre-home inspection either.

This house didn’t sell, in the end.  It sat on the market for four months at the same price and has since expired.

So you tell me, folks: was I right to want nothing to do with these two listings?

I wasn’t kidding when I said that I risked pushing away future business here, since some people would expect their real estate agent to do “anything” to get them the highest possible price for their home.

Ethics is a grey area.

Disclosure is a grey area.

What is right to one person could be wrong to another, and while I certainly do believe in “buyer beware,” there’s a line.

Not disclosing is one thing.  Taking action to cover-up, hide, deter, deflect, and avoid major issues in a home is another.

When it comes to selling properties for top dollar, I firmly believe “The cream rises to the top.”

My team and I have spent the entire summer preparing our fall listings for sale, and by “preparing” I mean downright renovating in several cases.

In this market, top-quality product sells, and everything else risks sitting, selling for less, or both.

One seller and agent might want to push a bed in front of a foundational problem to avoid lowering the value of their home, and another seller and agent might want to spend $30,000 on upgrades before listing a home in order to increase the value.

I guess it’s up to the consumer to decide which view they align with?

Have a wonderful long weekend, everybody!

See you back here next week with a look at our Burning Questions For The Fall Market.

Unoriginal or consistent? 🙂