This never happens.

Ever.

Except when it does…

Here’s where the experienced readers are going to say, “Wait a minute, David, you always tell people to make their offer price some random number in case of a tie.  Like, they got married on August 25th, so their offer is $1,000,825 instead of an even $1,000,000.”

That’s true.

And that’s how it always happens.

Except when it doesn’t…

This is actually the intersection of multiple stories.  We’re going to talk about bully offers, we’re going to talk about buyers acting quickly and decisively, and we’re going to talk about what happens in the case of a tie.

Which never happens.

Except when it does.

Okay, you’re tired of that gimmick, so let me set the table…

This truly is a story that combines several different themes, but for those of you who hate SPOILERS, alas, I’ve already let the cat out of the bag here.

I shudder to think who is stuffing cats in bags, but I digress…

Clients of mine recently sold their downtown Toronto condominium and then began their housing search.

Re-read that for a moment.  More specifically, I would encourage you to look at the order in which they’re going to transact.

They sold their condo and then started to look for a house, which is a major shift from the way things used to be done.

Ah, the good old days!  Or not so good, depending on who you are and what you experienced.

When we were in that twenty-year bull market that ended in 2023, anybody who was looking to move up from a condo to a house would start the housing search first, and throw caution to the wind when it came to selling their condo.

John & Jane would spend a week, a month, or a half-year looking for the perfect freehold property, maybe submit a few bids, lose in competition a couple of times, and then finally secure their future home.

After that was done, I would meet John & Jane at their condo for a consultation with my stager and designer, we’d put a listing plan in place, and have the condo on the market in 10-14 days.

One week after listing the condo for sale, we’d have our “offer night,” and voila!

I can tell you stories about receiving 22 offers on a listing at 2 Fieldway Avenue, or 21 offers on a listing at 311 Richmond Street East.  This seems unfathomable today, but once upon a time, this was the norm.

Of course, the classic idiom, “that was then, this is now,” rings true, and reality sets in for those looking to buy a house and sell a condo in 2026.

This changed at the onset of 2025 when the condo market really began to slow down.  No longer could condo owners buy a home, list their condo for sale, and be guaranteed a sale of that condo within the thirty, sixty, or ninety-day timeline before the home purchased closed.

Some folks tried and got into trouble, whereas others were ultimately successful but didn’t sleep for two months as they nervously waited for their condo to sell.

All this is to say that in today’s market, almost every person or couple who owns a condo and is looking to buy a house is selling their condo first.

My clients listed their downtown condo for sale in early January, and it took three weeks to sell.  They have a closing date scheduled for the end of March, and while they know they could end up homeless if they don’t buy a house and close it by the end of March as well, that flexibility was essential to the process.

We’ve been looking at houses for about one month, and last Wednesday night, we found the “winner.”

As is seldom the case in this market, the house would likely fall into their comfort zone with respect to price, and with offers scheduled for the following Tuesday, we had ample time to reflect on the property, the offer process, our affordability and strategy, and maybe even go back and see it again on the weekend.

The following day, I was driving down Mount Pleasant Road, and I received the email that no real estate agent likes to receive, especially when they’re driving, and telling themselves they’re not on their phones:

“PRE-EMPTIVE OFFER REGISTERED.  IRREVOCABLE 9:30PM TONIGHT.”

This was 4:30pm, for your information.

I called the listing agent immediately.

She answered.

I didn’t waste any time with a salutation.  I greeted her with, “You’re going to be on the phone every single minute from now until 9:30pm, you know that, right?”

She laughed.  She knew exactly what I was getting at.

As soon as she rang the proverbial bell, let the horses out of the stable, launched the ship, or adhered to any other similar metaphor, she was inviting fifty different real estate agents to call and ask the same series of questions.

She said, “Yes, David, we’re doing it.  We’re going to work with the bully.”

“And I’m your…..fifth call since that email was sent?” I asked.

“You’re only my third, David, but I expect there’s a lot of agents lined up behind you, many of them angry.”

Agents are always angry when a listing agent decides to work with a bully offer, of course.  Some because they can’t act in time to compete, others because they were caught off guard, and then some who are simply mad that they didn’t think of the idea first.

I got the information I needed, thanked her for her time, and called my buyer clients to deliver the news.

They were a bit stunned to be on the receiving end of that phone call, but I suppose, deep down, every buyer knows this is a possibility.

I told them, “Good news and bad news,” which I think is kind of fair.  “The good news is, you’re going to be free next Tuesday night.  The bad news is, if you want to buy this house, you have to act in the next couple of hours.

They took a long time to discuss what they wanted to do, but as you can infer from the opening of today’s blog, they eventually decided to jump into the fray.

But as is often the case, there wasn’t just the one bully.

In fact, while I was literally on the phone with my clients telling them that a bully offer had been registered on the house they were interested in, a second bully offer was registered.

The buyer’s mindset is an interesting one when that happens.  You would think that when a second offer is registered, the buyer would think, “Oh no!”  You would think that the buyer would be disappointed and potentially driven away.  But in reality, this actually confirms for many buyers that the house is sought after and eventually serves to reaffirm the buyer’s decision that they should compete.

That’s exactly what happened with my buyers.

After the decision was made to enter the fray and compete, the decision of how much to offer needed to be explored.

The listing agent began texting me around 6:00pm to ask if we were going to submit an offer, and I told her, “It’s almost certain, but I don’t have it yet.”

By 7:00pm, I hadn’t heard from my clients, but I didn’t want to bother them during what was likely a monumental decision between the two of them.

The listing agent began to ask, “What’s your timing?  I’m meeting my clients at 7:30pm.”

When you’re trying to compete with a bully offer like this, you want to provide the listing agent with enough time to ensure he or she waits for you, but not too much time to allow other offers to come, or allow existing offers to be improved.

At 7:20 pm, a third offer was registered, and suddenly, this felt like it was 2022 all over again.

My clients called me at 7:30 pm and said, “We’re in.  Let’s do this.”

Our offer was emailed at 7:45 pm with a 9:00 pm irrevocable date, and we waited.

Patiently.

And then some.

The listing agent called me at 8:35 pm and said, “David, you’re in the lead.  But two of the other three buyers say they’re going to improve.”

Now, it was a race against the clock!

We were in the lead, and our offer expired at 9:00pm.  If the other two offers weren’t improved and higher than ours by 8:59 pm, the sellers would likely have no choice but to accept our offer.

Sure, they could choose to let our offer expire and hope the other two buyers come back higher, but if they don’t, then the sellers are left holding nothing.

My phone rang at 8:52 pm.

Note the timing of that phone call.  It wasn’t a good sign for our offer…

“David, I’m so sorry,” she said, offering those words that no buyer agent wants to hear.  “One of the other offers came up above you guys, and we’re going to accept that offer.”

I asked her, “How long do you have on that offer?”

She said, “I have until 9:30pm.”

I said, “Don’t do anything yet, just give me a few minutes,” and I called my clients.

Here’s a tough situation to be in as a buyer agent.  My clients had already told me that they weren’t going to increase their bid, but I wasn’t just going to leave them in the dark, right?  I had to tell them that another offer had come up above them, and more to the point, I had to advise them of their options.

“I know you don’t want to improve,” I told them.  “So we have to be sure that we’re okay with this selling for more than our bid.”

They said, “Yes, that’s fine,” and I figured we were done.

Now, let’s say, for argument’s sake, that our offer was $1,300,000.  Just to make absolutely certain that my buyers were out, I said, “So we’d be okay if this sold for $1,305,000?”

What are they going to say?

What is anybody going to say?

The reason I always ask this is not to “trick” my buyers into paying more, but rather to ensure that they’re okay with the decision.  I can’t tell you how many times my buyer clients tell me the next day, “I should have gone higher.”  Not only that, once buyers actually see the winning bid the next day, they often tell themselves (or me), “I would have paid that.”

My clients said they needed to chat for a moment, and then they came back and said, “We’ll go to $1,310,000.”

I started to draw up the offer, and the listing agent sent me a text message:

“I need a verbal.  Can’t wait any longer.”

I called her and said, “We’re coming up to $1,310,000.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.  I actually asked, “Are you there?”

She said, “Yeah, okay,” and sounded defeated, for some odd reason.  She then said, “Send it over.”

Five or six minutes later, my clients had signed the revised offer, and I’d sent it through to the listing agent.

She called me back so fast, I wondered if she had even seen it.

“David,” she said, in a tone that I’ve heard a thousand times before in this business, “I’m so sorry.”

It was anticlimactic.  I knew we had lost as soon as she said my name.

“But I’m even more sorry because your offer of $1,310,000 is identical to the other offer, and we’re going with that one.”

(mic drop)

A tie?

Really?

REAAAAALLY?

This never happens.  Ever.  Not without some sort of a tiebreak, right?

A dance-off, maybe?  Whoever can do a better iteration of “the worm” on the pavement in front of the brokerage’s head office?

“Jenny, you love me!” I told the listing agent.  “I’m awesome.  You know that.  You know you want my people to have this house,” I told her, with just enough playfulness to not sound desperate.

“I know, David,” she told me.  “But this offer is printed, sitting in front of the sellers, submitted first, and, well, their deposit is higher, if that’s any consolation.”

Oh, it is NOT!

Zero consolation!

I laughed and said, “Jenny, that is so not the tiebreaker,” to which she responded, “Maybe, maybe not, but something is the tiebreaker, and that something is resulting in us accepting this other offer.”

There are bad beats, and then there are really bad beats, and this was the latter.

You’re going to have questions, I know you are.

“David, could you have increased to $1,311,000 and just sent it over anyways?”

Maybe.  But when I told my clients, they said, “Well, we gave it our best effort, and it wasn’t meant to be.”

“David, shouldn’t she have sent you both back to improve, or for another ’round of bidding,’ or however you want to put it?”

She could have, but she didn’t.  This was up to the sellers, and they clearly decided they wanted to accept the first offer of $1,310,000 that was sitting in front of them.

“David, why didn’t you offer $1,310,010 just to differentiate your offer?”

Well, because hindsight is 20/20, because I have never actually tied in a multiple offer situation in twenty-two years (a couple of times we were tied, and the listing agent sent us both back), and because there’s no reason why $10 would have broken the tie, if the sellers really valued the “first horse to the trough” or the higher deposit.

If you feel the need to ask more questions, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll understand what I go through after an experience like this…