A frog was sitting quietly at the edge of a pond one morning, preparing to swim across.

Suddenly, the frog felt a presence behind him and turned around to meet eyes with perhaps the last foe he wanted to see: a scorpion.

The frog immediately pleaded, “Please, please don’t sting me!”

The scorpion calmly said to the frog, “Relax, it’s okay.  Calm down.  I’m not going to sting you.”

But the frog replied, “You’re a scorpion though, that’s what you do!  You sting frogs!”

The scorpion reasoned with the frog.  “I just want to get across the pond,” he said, “And I can’t do that on my own.  Can I ride on your back?”

The frog said, “And I’m supposed to trust that you won’t sting me?”

The scorpion replied, “If I climb on your back and you start swimming, and then I sting you, then we’ll both drown.  Think about it.”

With that logic in hand, the frog agreed.

The frog let the scorpion climb onto his back, and they began their trek across the pond.

About halfway across, however, the frog screamed out in terror as he felt an unbelievable pain in his back.

The scorpion.

He stung the frog, even though he said that he wouldn’t, and even though it meant they would both perish.

With the frog dying, he muttered out one last breath: “I don’t understand.  Now we’re both going to die.  Why did you sting me?”

The scorpion simply answered:

“Because I’m a scorpion.”

You’ve all heard this story before, whether it was forty years ago or just last week.

It’s one of my favourite fables and metaphors because it reaffirms something I’ve, rather unfortunately, always believed:

People are people.  People don’t change their nature.  Or they can’t.

In last Thursday’s blog post, titled “Why Infill Home Builders Always Make The Same Mistakes,” I explained how residential developers, specifically those who build one-off homes by tearing down bungalows or sub-dividing lots, have a habit of always following the same pattern even when it’s to their detriment.

Consider a conversation between me and a developer where I say, “Don’t overprice this by 25%, and don’t hire a 905 agent, and don’t list the property without staging or marketing.”

Then imagine that the developer lists the house for 25% more than it’s worth, hires a discount agent from the 905, and lists the property without staging or marketing.

If it’s been proven that this is not how you successfully sell real estate in a particular neighborhood, and if it’s been proven that developers make the same mistakes, over and over, then why do they continue to do the same thing, every time?

I think we’ve answered that rhetorical question, haven’t we?

Scorpions.

They don’t change.

Even if their self-destructive behaviour, such as stinging the frog that’s carrying them across the pond, is going to end in their demise, they just can’t help themselves.

These residential infill developers operate in the same fashion.

When I met with the developer from last week’s story, who we called “Jerry,” and Matthew from my team, I knew exactly what was going to happen.  I predicted it in advance.

When all was said and done, Matthew asked me, “Why do you think he would ignore everything we just said, even though it’s undeniable, and then act in a manner that’s to his detriment?”

I said to Matthew, “Because he’s a scorpion.”

In last week’s blog post, I also introduced a concept that I said we’d have to return to in a future blog post:

“Buying The Listing”

This has both metaphorical and literal components to it, and today I want to flush this out so that the readers (and would-be sellers) can identify this down the line when it happens to them, but also to explore how this is, in fact, a business model for many agents.

As I explained in last Thursday’s post, Matthew and I told the developer that his house was worth around $3,200,000, and we suggested that we list for $3,295,000 to build in a negotiating cushion, but also because we wanted to attain more than we felt the property was actually worth, as we pride ourselves on setting a high standard.

The builder told us, unequivocally, that we were wrong about the value and offered to “partner with us” and list the property for $3,849,000.

After we politely declined, we waited to see who he would list with, and at what price.

To nobody’s surprise, he listed with a Richmond Hill agent who knew nothing about this area (but had listed one other property – also for way too much money), didn’t stage the property, put zero marketing effort into the listing, and failed to connect with the community.

But what was surprising was the price: $4,149,900.

Why?

Better yet: how?

With the developer offering to list with Matthew and I for $3,849,000, how did he come to list the property with another agent for $4,149,900?

I have no doubt that this was a case of that agent “buying the listing.”

This developer routinely told me, “My house is worth $3,800,000,” even though it clearly wasn’t, but I digress.

But this means he told everybody else that it was worth $3,800,000 too.

As I mentioned last week, I knew two other real estate agents who met with “Jerry,” and both concluded in the end that they didn’t want to take on the listing because Jerry was out to lunch on price, and because, well, developers are really hard to work with.

I spoke to both of these agents, as the neighbourhood is a small community and agents from other brokerages do talk and collaborate.

So if Jerry was telling everybody, “My house is worth $3,800,000,” then how did the eventual listing agent come up with the $4,149,900 price?

She “bought” the listing.

It’s not the most difficult concept to grasp, is it?

Find out what the seller wants, tell the seller it’s worth more, or that you can sell it for more, or simply that you’ll list it for more, and voila!

I’m assuming that the eventual listing agent, whom we’ll call “Betty,” met with Jerry as a slew of other agents did, and heard Jerry say that the house was worth $3,800,000.

Betty is the type of agent who “buys” listings as a business model, so Betty assumes that other agents buy listings too.

That’s why Betty didn’t tell Jerry that the house was worth $3,900,000, because she figured somebody else would have said that too.

And Betty, being the savvy listing-buyer that she is, didn’t tell Jerry that the house was worth $4,000,000 either.  Because what if there was another agent with the same strategy as Jerry?

Betty decided to act like a billionaire, buying trinkets at a charity auction and just blow away everybody else in the room!

$4,149,900.

That was Betty’s “offer” to Jerry, and Jerry bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

Who knows how it went down and exactly how Betty explained this to Jerry, but suffice it to say, Betty didn’t get this listing at $4,149,900 because she felt that Jerry was undervaluing his home at $3,800,000.  She got this listing because she bought it.

This is how many agents in Toronto do business, and I don’t mean in terms of one listing, but rather as an actual business model.

You might be thinking, “To what end?  What’s the ‘strategy’ in all this?”

The ultimate goal for any listing agent is to sell the property, so Betty and agents like her aren’t just showing off their ability to buy a listing and over-price it.

But where Betty and another agents differ is as follows:

1) How to win the business.
2) How and when to sell the property.

These go hand-in-hand, since #2 is answered by #1.

Many agents simply can’t win or earn the business in the first place through traditional means.

Consider “Betty,” who isn’t a top agent, doesn’t have a marketing plan, isn’t part of the community, doesn’t work that hard, and has no outside-the-box ideas in terms of how to list, market, or sell the property.

She’s the opposite of hands-on; she’s exactly hands-off.  Her business is signing listings and then doing absolutely, positively, nothing.

This is completely at odds with what somebody like me does, but that’s entirely the point.  We have very different business models and different business acumen, and we attract a completely different type of client.

Betty isn’t going into a listing presentation and convincing the developer that he’s wrong on price.  She doesn’t do presentations.  She doesn’t know the area, and even if she did, she wouldn’t know how to analyze and present pricing data.

Betty isn’t going to stage the house.  She’s not going to get an ice cream truck to come to the open house on a hot summer day because she doesn’t do open houses.  She’s not knocking on doors, or hosting a “neighbour wine and cheese night” because she will never come to the property again, at all.

Betty has one objective: to get the listing signed.

Well, I suppose there’s a second objective therein, and that’s to get the listing signed for the longest duration of time possible.

How does twelve months sound?

Let’s say that Betty gets this listing at $4,149,900 and puts the property on the market in April.  This is literally the “peak” season, not just in terms of the spring market, but likely the year itself.

You and I would realize that if the property doesn’t sell, doesn’t get interest, and barely gets any showings, then it’s over-priced, right?

But this isn’t how developers think.

They tell themselves, “We just need more time to find the ‘right buyer,’ and it’s too early to adjust our strategy.”

But there is no strategy.  There never was.

And all the while, the listing agent who bought the listing is just biding his or her time.

April, May, and June pass by, and then Betty finally gets a price reduction, say, down to $3,999,000.

The property is still catastrophically over-priced, but it’s a start, and it’s all part of Betty’s business model.

The summer passes and Betty tells the seller that with the fall market now upon them, they really should consider “refreshing” the listing.

The listing is terminated and the property is listed anew at $3,899,000.

By November, they aren’t getting any traction, so Betty suggests that they price at $3,299,000 and set an “offer date,” which you and I know isn’t going to produce the out-of-control bidders that would be necessary to push the sale price up where the developer wants it, but this is also part of Betty’s process in terms of showing the developer she’s working, trying, and strategizing.

After the failed offer night, Betty has the developer re-list at $3,799,000, just to “see what happens before Christmas.”

Nothing happens.

And by January of 2026, Betty tells the developer:

“I have worked tirelessly for you for eight months now.  Nobody is going to work this hard for you.  We’ve built trust.  Now you need to trust me when I say that the property needs a huge refresh and we need to price at $3,499,000.  Trust me when I say this will get the property sold.  I promise.”

Except, Betty knows better.

The property is worth $3.2 Million and change, but she’s been working the price down since April of 2025, right?

The listing sits at $3,499,000 from January through May.  The developer just won’t budge on the price.

It’s now been thirteen months since the property was first listed for sale.

Betty continues to tell the developer how loyal she is to him, how hard she’s working for him, and how she’s going to get him to the finish line.

In June, after the spring market has concluded and all the buyers have bought, Betty gets the developer to re-list at $3,299,000.

In August, they sell the house for $3,220,000.

Betty gets her sale.

The developer gets $20,000 more than some jerk like me told him it was worth.

And everybody wins!

Except that the developer paid carrying costs for sixteen months and has conveniently avoided acknowledging that, but he’s hanging his hat on achieving a price that’s slightly higher than what a so-called “area expert” told him his house was worth, and he gets to sleep well every night knowing that he built a house that was too good, too sophisticated, too classy, and too ahead-of-its-time for the people who live in the area.

You might think, “How could Betty deal with carrying this listing for sixteen months?”

Well, if you’re doing this with eight listings per year, then it’s just about the churn.  Keep signing, keep listing, keep crossing months off the calendar, keep reducing, and eventually they all sell.

Today, you sell the property that you listed eleven months ago.  Three-quarters from now, you sell the property you listed today.

And all the while, you, ie. Betty, does absolutely zero actual work.

There are zero expenses here, folks, and I can guarantee you’re getting Betty’s voicemail every time you call her.

Back in January, I lost a listing to an agent who clearly bought it.

I met with an older couple who were selling so they could downsize, and they told me that they “needed” to achieve a certain price on the sale of their house.

I told them that, while I would love to achieve that price for them, it would be impossible.

After presenting a comprehensive market analysis, they were unmoved.

Their house was worth between $1,000,000 and $1,100,000, and I felt that if we spent three weeks preparing it for sale, and invested our time, energy, and a small amount of money into the property, we would hit the higher end of that range, maybe more.

They ended up listing the property for $1,400,000 with another agent who bought the listing.

It sat on the market for two months.

They reduced it to $999,900 and set an offer date, but that clearly didn’t work, so they re-listed it for $1,400,000 again.

They have now been on the market for six months and have since reduced to $1,300,000, then $1,200,000, then $1,100,000, and the property continues to sit on the market.

Now they’re in the summer, which isn’t a great market.  Not only that, they now have a track record of being a property that “won’t sell,” and they have risked stigmatizing their property.  The buyer pool has seen it, over and over, and has determined that there’s something wrong with it, otherwise, “it would have sold by now.”

I recognize that they don’t “need” to sell this house, and I don’t want to come off like the unscrupulous agent who is simply looking to sell the house, at any price, at any cost, to anybody, at any time.

That’s not what this is about.

I went into that meeting looking to educate them about the real estate market, the economy, their neighbourhood, the selling process, and what their home was worth.  I explained how properties are listed and sold in Toronto, specifically those that are sold “right” and those that are not, and described how we could work together to achieve success.

In the end, they chose to list with an agent who just gave them the highest price of anybody they spoke to.

I have no doubt that they will sell for closer to $1,000,000 by the fall, and that they will have left money on the table.

But I also know that they haven’t sold real estate in a long, long time, and they didn’t recognize an agent who was simply “buying” their listing when he sat in their living room and told them the house was worth more than it was.

“Buying a listing” is far more common than you might think, and most sellers don’t understand what’s happened until they’re already under contract and languishing on the market.

But it’s human nature, isn’t it?

If four agents tell you, “Your house is worth $2,000,000,” and then a fifth agent comes into your house and says, “I can get you $2,500,000 for this house because I have magic sauce,” you’re likely to decide that this agent knows better than anybody else.

Again, a part of me worries that a reader or two will suggest, “You’re just not trying hard enough,” but that reader would be missing the point.

So let me drive it home one last time:

Some real estate agents, as a business model, will lie to sellers about the value of the home, deceitfully and strategically, in order to secure the listing.  They play the “long game,” looking to slowly reduce the listing price over time and secure a sale way down the line.

These agents just can’t help themselves.

They simply can’t do it any other way.

Come to think of it, kinda like a scorpion…