Top Ten: Sales Gimmicks In Toronto Real Estate (Pt2)

Did anybody else have their obsessive-compulsive disorder firing on all cylinders after we only went through FOUR of our top-ten on Monday?

Five and five.

It has to be, right?

When you’re doing a “Top Ten List,” and you want a break in between, it must be equal!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you also don’t know the pain that we OCD’ers feel on a regular basis, but I digress…

Let’s pick up where we left off on Monday, and as always, we’ve saved the best for last…

–

6) The “Just Listed” Flyer

A lot of agents are going to hate me for this one, but I would encourage them to read the rest of this section first.

Now, if you’re a property owner and you have your home for sale, do you want your agent to send out admail advertising your home?

Junkmail, as some people would call it.

But when it’s your home, it’s not the same as a coupon for Pizza Pizza or an flyer for a local landscaping company!  It’s not junkmail; it’s admail!  And it’s pretty as hell because it has a photo of your house on it!

It’s this line of thinking that takes a seller’s focus of the entire point of the “Just Listed,” and that’s very, very important.

Earlier this year, I was meeting with a prospective seller in the midtown area and he asked me, “What is your competitive advantage?”

I was holding a copy of our “TRG Renovation Guide,” and since he and his wife freely admitted that they hadn’t done a single thing to their home in the twelve years since they purchased, I explained that managing a pre-listing renovation was where we were going to separate ourselves from our competitors and get him more money for his home.

He said, “Well, there’s a local firm; I’m sure you’re familiar with them.  Their advantage is their marketing.  I mean, as an example, do you send out Just Listed cards?”

I told him, “No, I’m not a geographic farm agent.”

He paused and said, “No, what I mean is will you advertise my home through the mail?”

I explained something very important to him:

Be careful not to confuse an agent farming a geographic area and advertising his ability to get listings, with an agent putting money into marketing your home.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

The truth is: many “Just Listed” cards don’t even arrive in the mail until a week after the property is listed.  Often times, the property has already sold by the time the admail arrives at houses.

A just listed card tells home owners, “My name is Chester Ming, I work for XYZ Real Estate Brokerage, I’m in your neighbourhood, and this postcard is proof that people trust me and have hired me to list their home for sale.”

A Just Listed card isn’t about advertising the property; it’s about getting future business.

Not always, of course.  As I continue to say in every point on this list, there are always exceptions to the rule.

But the following situation will prove my point…

Let’s say that an agent has secured the listing for a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house in Leaside for $1,499,000.

The agent sends out a “Just Listed” card to the 4,000 homes in Leaside.

But the home ownership rate in Leaside has got to be about 99.9%, right?  So who is the Just Listed card actually targeting?

I know, I know, there are exceptions.

“David, what about a renter who might want to buy the entry-level home?”

“But David, how about people who get the postcard and then tell a friend of theirs who has been looking?”

We can play this game all day, but it doesn’t change the math, and it surely doesn’t change the intent.

An overwhelming majority of Just Listed cards are sent by agents who geographically farm that specific neighbourhood, and it allows them to advertise themselves while, at the same time, telling the client, “I’m spending money on your listing!”  It’s a win-win.

If I’m actually working for my client, I’m taking that ridiculous sum of money spent to print postcards and mail them through Canada Post, and I’m putting the money toward online advertising.

Folks, just be logical, reasonable, and honest for a brief moment, and you’ll realize that advertising a listing in Leaside to people who already live in Leaside is like bringing sand to the desert…

–

5) Listing agent must be present for viewings

Have you come across this one before?  If you’ve ever been a buyer in Toronto in the past twenty years, I’m sure you have.

In my opinion, there are three reasons why a listing agent “must” be present for a buyer showing:

1) It’s a luxury home, and the listing agent and seller don’t want unqualified “tourists” visiting the property for fun.
2) The seller is overbearing and unnecessarily insists that the listing agent be present at his or her $900,000 bungalow in Don Mills.
3) The listing agent wants access to the buyer so he or she can provide a sales pitch.

It is the third reason that we’re talking about today, and while most of what we’ve discussed in these two blog posts so far have been “gimmicks,” this one is more of an outright lie.

Maybe “lie” is the wrong word.  It’s sneaky.  Just really, really sneaky…

Back in 2005, when I was early in my career, I remember showing a house in Bloor West Village to a nice young doctor-nurse couple.

My instructions said, “Go Direct.  LA To Meet.”

Standing outside the house, we watched a grey Porsche pull up on the curb (literally), with the top down, and a set of golf clubs sticking out of the back seat.  A man in his late-50’s got out of the car dressed like he just came off the 18th green, and led us into the house.

He proceeded to give us the biggest sales pitch I’ve seen to date.

It was shameless and so unnecessary.

You want an example?  He was showing us how the darn window-cranks worked!

He pulled out a cutting board that was built into the kitchen island and said, “Look at this!  Look at it!  No more cutting board storage!  You’ve got it right here!  It’s genius!”

It reminded me of the infomercials we watched in the 1980’s for Miracle Blade and, of course, Ron Popeil’s Pasta Maker.

The agent did this for twenty minutes until one of my buyers literally said, “I’ve had enough of this,” and walked out.

I would never allow this to happen today, but I was young and inexperienced.

Ironically, while he was hoping to sell them on buying the house, his sales pitch backfired and turned them off.

Like I said, there are times when the listing agent needs to be present, but if they knew what they were doing, they’d step outside or wait in the foyer.

Why?

Because buyers spend less time in properties when tenants, owners, or other individuals are present.  When a prospective seller tells me that he or she wants me present for all showings, I have a great metaphor to share: “If you were trying on clothing at a store, you wouldn’t want the salesperson to go into the little changeroom with you.  That’s personal, but so too is buying a house.”

Nevertheless, there are all kinds of listing agents who decide that they want access to another agent’s buyer client, and that is why they insist on being present for showings.

They want the opportunity to get in front of your buyer clients so they can tell them everything they couldn’t tell them otherwise.

Sometimes, it’s overt, like bragging about the finishes while throwing out dollar amounts, or touting comparable sales in the area.

Then other times, it’s reserved and tactical, like disclosing that the seller is at their country home for the week, and thus quietly planting the seed that the seller doesn’t “need” to sell, and thus the buyer doesn’t have as much leverage as they think.

Unless it’s a $9,000,000 property, the listing agent doesn’t “need” to be present.  So yeah, this one falls under the umbrella of “gimmick” for sure.

–

4) The classic “I have a buyer for your house” letter.

First and foremost, these buyers do exist, and many agents do use these letters legitimately!

I have!  And I’ve done so recently.

Earlier this year, clients of mine told me that they would only consider moving if they found their “needle in a haystack,” so I tasked a young, enterprising agent from my office with door-knocking homes that met the criteria and leaving a note behind when she couldn’t connect with the seller.

So yet again, there are exceptions to the rule!

Having said that, many agents use this “I have a buyer for your house” letter as the basis for their entire business model!  In fact, some of you reading this, right now, know exactly who I mean…

So what is the gimmick?

You receive a letter at your home from an agent who essentially says, “I’m not soliciting your listing, but rather I have clients, John and Judy (they often provide names), who are looking for a property specifically like yours.”

The letter is a soft-sell approach, suggesting that John and Judy have absolutely no timeline, can close at any time, don’t need to sell a ‘backup’ property, and hits at multiple times on the fact that this agent is not soliciting the listing.

When the homeowner invites the agent for a tour, the agent might ask to come back with the clients (paid actors?) or not.  It depends on the agent and the gimmick.

But each and every time the agent gets in front of the homeowner, he creates rapport with them.

Eventually, those homeowners might reach out to the agent when they are ready to sell.  Or, the agent goes in for the close, saying, “You know, it’s not right for John and Judy, but honestly, it’s such a great house, I’d love to talk to you about listing it on the open market.”

If you subscribe to the adage, “All lies surface eventually,” then consider how this can backfire on the agent.

Here’s a story for you that demonstrates how…

Many years ago, my colleague, Richard, was called in to price a house in Moore Park.

The sellers told him, “We spoke to another agent earlier this week, and he has a buyer for the house.  Just to let you know, he’s doing a showing with the buyer right now.”

A couple of moments later, the other agent came down the stairs with the “buyer,” who was actually his partner.

Richard very calmly said, “Hello, gents!  So cute when a couple house-shops together.”

The sellers listed with Richard…

Like I said: there are agents in Toronto that send out tens of thousands of these letters every single year, as a business model.  So while there are sincere versions of this letter, and while I have used it myself, as have many other agents, it’s often very hard to tell the difference…

–

3) The entire rental market in Toronto.

The timing for this couldn’t be better – literally as I’m writing this, I received an offer on a $12,000 per month luxury condo from an absolute fraudster.

An online “influencer” in the world of personal finance who, apparently, made $1,300,000 last year.

I have the “documents” to prove it, but the problem is, they look like they were made on Canva.

This guy was hardly trying, and while I don’t know what the actual scam was, I don’t care.   I only know that he’s not getting the keys to my client’s place.

The rental market is full of scams, schemes, gimmicks, and downright fraud.  But when it comes to how real estate agents employ gimmicks to get business, there is an absolute classic:

Posting a rental listing on Facebook Marketplace that isn’t yours, knowing nobody will actually care.

This happens hundreds, if not thousands of times per day in Toronto, and I honestly don’t know that there’s a way to combat it.

Let’s say that I list 500 King Street West, #5001 for $2,200 per month.

Getting started in the Toronto real estate industry is hard!  Clients are tough to come by!  So what’s stopping a young, inexperienced agent from simply taking my listing and putting it up on Facebook Marketplace as though it were their own?

Nothing.

I would never know it’s even there.

It costs the agent nothing, the chances of getting caught are slim, and even if a listing agent did find out, they might just say, “Meh.  It’s just a rental.  I don’t really care.”

Shane Dingman wrote an article about this last summer:

“Rental Listing ‘Hijacking’ Raises Security Concerns”
The Globe & Mail
September 3, 2025

The article describes an agent who was farming leads online, providing the lockbox code to her unlicensed boyfriend to do showings, and then attempting to lease the properties.

She was fired, by the way.

Now you want to read the article…

But make no mistake, this happens all the time, and it takes a simple “sales gimmick” and turns it into a potential liability.  When a third-party takes a listing and posts it as their own, they can change or omit details, and if they are successful in finding a tenant, they can completely misrepresent the property.

So, on the off chance you’re reading this blog, but you’re also looking at property listings outside of MLS, know that there’s a very good chance the agent who has posted the “listing” is not actually the agent who is under contract to the seller.

Classic real estate sales gimmick!

–

2) The “If we can’t sell your home, we’ll buy it from you” advertisement.

Quick question for you: do casinos ever operate at a loss?

No, they don’t.  By merely opening their doors, they are guaranteeing themselves profit, since the house always wins.  Always has, always will, and it doesn’t matter which 21-year-old self-described savant has his little idea of how to count cards, or how to implement his “system” for betting on the NFL; the house always wins.

Alright, here’s another question: when you pay $400 per month for car insurance, you total your car, and the insurance company cuts you a cheque for $80,000, how can they afford to do that?

Combine rhetorical and sarcastic, and you get the topic of discussion in point #2.

I think the insurance companies have figured it out by now, right?  Yeah, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars in profit.

So then ask yourself:

“How is a brokerage able to guarantee that they will buy my home if they can’t sell it within a prescribed amount of time?

Ummm…..well…… because they’re going to buy it from you for substantially under market value?

“Ding, Ding, Ding!”

These agents and brokerages aren’t registered charities.

Neither are banks and insurance companies.

They’re businesses operating to profit, and if somebody “guarantees” you anything in this business, consider the red flag to have been raised.

A few weeks ago, I was playing Monopoly with my 9-year-old daughter, and she had to mortgage a property for $150.  When she passed “GO” and collected $200, she wanted to unmortgage the property, so she pulled out $150 and put it in the bank.

I told her, “Check the back of the card again.”

Alas, it showed that the price to unmortgage the property was $165.

She said, “I don’t understand.”

And in a moment of questionable parenting, I introduced her to a very important idiom: Shit ain’t free.

No agent or brokerage is going to put a guarantee in writing to buy a home unless that agent can guarantee that he or she profits from the undertaking, or at the very least, doesn’t lose money.

And even then, there’s no guarantee.

Is Properly still in business?

I hope not, since I’m about to disclose that back in 2022, a colleague of mine lost a listing to this brokerage that “lets shoppers buy first and sell later” by guaranteeing a sale price, only to find, when all was said and done, that they refused to guarantee the price.

“Sue me,” the agent said to the seller.

My colleague, by the way, was an agent with over three decades in the business who was aghast, not only at the brokerage’s about-face, but about her long-time client’s decision to work with a fintech startup that eventually went bust

(They sold their assets in 2023)

The price guarantee!  Hurrah!

Folks, this is a gimmick.  You should already know this…

–

1) The pretend “handwritten” note in your mailbox.

Remember the conversation we had on Monday about the origins of the “cash for gold” business?

Take something of value and make it sound invaluable.

Your “broken” gold, they say.

Consider a solid gold ring that has a chip out of it.  This advertisement would have us believe that the item is “damaged.”  But this isn’t a computer hard drive with a bullet through the centre; this is an item that is valued by weight.  The fact that a solid gold ring has a scratch or a chip doesn’t affect the value of the item, as is.

For many years in Toronto, we have grown accustomed to receiving these handwritten letters in our mailboxes that offer “cash for homes.”

Sound familiar?

Except these aren’t actually handwritten letters.  They’re just made to look like it, as the entire purpose of the content of the letter reads the same: to make the recipient feel safe, secure, without pressure, and see an “easy” path to riches.

Here’s an example:

But just as the folks offering “cash for gold” try to make you think gold that is scratched or broken is worth less, the author of these flyers wants you to think that selling your home is hard.

They offer “no financing condition,” even in a market where most properties sell unconditionally (this was prevalent in 2021 – 2022).

They tell you they’ll purchase “as-is condition,” planting the seed that there’s something wrong with your home, that buyers might not like it, or that you might not be able to sell it.

They tout the “private” sale, and often say, “No open houses, no strangers in your home,” to plant yet another seed that selling your home is disruptive and invasive.

They use the term “cash offer,” which has absolutely, positively no meaning in Canada in 2026.

There are no hidden costs or real estate fees, and the best part is: they’ll pay for your lawyer!

Of course they will!

They’re paying you with your own money.

These flyers are sent by scam artists who are looking to buy properties from unsuspecting homeowners at substantial discounts to fair market value.

As we said in point #2 above, these aren’t charities.  Mother Theresa isn’t offering to buy your home; a businessman is.

Sadly, the people who respond to these flyers are usually elderly.  They have no idea what their homes are worth, as they can’t possibly comprehend how quickly the market can rise (especially in 2016-2017 and 2021-2022).  These folks are self-conscious and defensive about the condition of their homes, and thus more likely to believe that “no work needed” is an asset, and ultimately they’re just vulnerable as hell.

The fact that the person sending these flyers offers a referral fee at the end for an introduction, and writes “NO QUESTIONS ASKED” has to raise a giant red flag, no?

These flyers are all the same:

The more somebody says “FAIR CASH OFFERS, and the more dollar signs I see, the more I would hope people see this for the nonsense that it is.

–

So there you have it, folks!

My “top ten” real estate sales gimmicks, most of which you’re familiar with, and all of which are still being used today.

Have a great weekend, everybody!