It’s blog posts like this that make me wonder, “Have I covered this topic before?”
I find a tremendous amount of irony in the fact that, from time to time, I will actually Google a topic and add the words “Toronto Realty Blog” to see if I’ve written a similar post in the past.
In this case, I found a blog post from 2011, if you can believe it.
I also found articles in major media outlets that have covered the idea of a “reverse offer,” notably in 2017 when the market corrected.
I love that term: corrected. It’s a synonym for “declined,” but it seems to imply that the new, lower price is somehow more accurate or just. Hence “correct.”
In any event, as our 2025 market continues to ebb and flow, we’re seeing the return of the “reverse offer” once again.
However, as with all things in real estate these days, we’re seeing examples of where the reverse offer is used wisely, accurately, and effectively, as well as examples where it’s being used by individuals who have no clue what they’re doing.
I’m going to tell two such stories today.
What do you want first: the good or the bad?
The condominium market in 2025 has been tough. I think that’s no secret.
We essentially picked up where we left off in the fall of 2024, except that, to the surprise of many, the market got even tougher.
Earlier this year, we listed a small, 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom condo for sale in what I would call a B- building, in a C- location.
Suffice it to say, that combination of B’s and C’s didn’t make this an easy sale. No condo sale is easy in this market, but you would expect an “A” property to sell eventually. The rest of them? You just never know.
We were listed at $499,900 for three months. That’s a long time, but it’s also the “new normal” in 2025.
Matthew was the point of contact for the listing, and if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s making “feedback calls” to buyer agents.
Truth be told: every listing agent tells his or her clients that they make feedback calls (ie. calling the buyer agents after a viewing to see how the showing went), but many don’t. In this market, however, it’s essential.
Feedback calls can be very hit or miss.
Many buyer agents don’t answer their phones, don’t return voicemails, and don’t respond to text messages, especially if they have no interest in the property that you’re calling about. In some ways, I don’t blame them. Imagine being a buyer agent and showing your client six condos on Saturday afternoon, only to have six listing agents call, email, and text you for feedback on Saturday night.
Having said that, this is a relationship business, and it’s a personal one as well. Agents should speak to other agents, all the time, to get their names out there, develop a reputation in good standing, and create trust with others.
After twenty showings and twenty feedback calls that went nowhere, Matthew finally connected with an agent who had an interested buyer.
Somewhat interested, however.
The buyer agent said, “My client has seen a slew of condos, as you can imagine. She likes three places, and yours is one of them.”
That’s great!
Except that it meant, statistically speaking, we had a 33.3% chance of receiving an offer on the condo.
This is when Matthew had the bright idea: make an offer from the seller to the buyer.
Behind the scenes, the seller had been struggling with a price reduction for some time now. He knew that, after three months, the $499,900 price point was too high. He also knew that he probably should have reduced after two months, and thus was very open to Matthew’s idea of a reverse offer.
The logic went like this:
If the buyer is considering three condos, then why wait for the buyer to make a decision? Why leave it to chance? Why not make an offer to the buyer?
So that’s exactly what they did.
Matthew drafted an offer, from seller to buyer, for $470,000.
Keep in mind: this property probably should have been reduced to $479,900 a month prior. So if the property sold for $470,000, it was basically market value.
But to the buyer, it seemed like $470,000 on a $499,900 listing was a great deal!
When Matthew called the buyer agent to tell her he was sending a reverse offer, she said, “Ooooooh……interesting! I like it!”
So did the buyer.
Faced with the paradox of choice, the buyer was having a hard time making a decision on which of the three condos to submit an offer.
Now, here was an offer sitting right in front of the buyer.
Maybe the closing date wasn’t what the buyer wanted, and maybe the buyer wanted a different set of conditions, but that was all the more reason for the buyer to engage. It’s human nature, after all. You’ve got a set of terms proposed in front of you, and they’re not perfect, so naturally, you start to think about what would be perfect. You start in your mind, but eventually, you pick up that proverbial pen. The next thing you know, you’re engaged in the process.
That’s exactly what happened.
The buyer provided a sign-back with a longer closing date, the insertion of a financing condition (Matthew’s offer only had a status certificate condition), the inclusion of the wall-mounted IKEA medicine cabinet in the bathroom, three extra clauses in the Schedule-A, and a lower deposit amount.
But the buyer did not change the price!
Upon receiving the sign-back, I told Matthew, “I’ll lie down on the ground; have your seller come over here so she can sign this on my back.”
It was a massive win.
That might sound overstated; selling a condo for market value. But in today’s market, with listings near all-time highs and with sales at all-time lows, getting a unit moved is a huge success.
The conditions were satisfied, and within one week, we had a firm deal.
I wonder if the other two listing agents, for the other two properties that the buyer liked, had any idea how close they came to receiving an offer on their listings, but didn’t.
My second story has to do with “a colleague from another brokerage.”
We’ll call her Hanna.
In early August, Hanna took her buyer to see a property in a neighbourhood in Mississauga.
I remember her telling me, “I just know this is going to be an issue.”
I laughed, accused her of having a glass that’s half-full, and she explained the situation.
“This listing has an offer date. That’s a problem. In this area, properties aren’t selling well. Of course, my buyer finds the one property that’s listed by a guy who thinks it’s 2022!”
I know that feeling.
I know both the feelings of agents not knowing which market we’re working in, as well as the feeling of a buyer being attracted to the only problem listing in an area filled with inventory.
Hanna told me, “He’s listed at $999,900 with an offer date, but honestly, this thing is probably only worth a million bucks. I had a call with him, and he’s flexing like he’s gonna have ten offers, like he’s sitting on something special, but he’s not. He’s got a house just like the rest of them.”
Sure enough, the offer date came along, and Hanna had the only offer.
Her buyer offered $999,900, of course, just to get the process started.
The listing agent climbed up onto his soapbox and regaled Hanna with a lesson in real estate that she never asked for, and she let him have his say.
He told her, “You’re going to have to do better than this.”
Hanna replied, “The buyer might do better than this, but she’s not going to bid against herself. Get me a sign-back, and we’ll talk.”
To his credit, the agent did get a sign back.
Unfortunately, it was for $1,200,000.
Hanna’s client wasn’t interested in proceeding at all. Not only was the $1,200,000 a bridge too far, but she just lost interest in the house, given there were other houses in the area that had been sitting on the market and did not have offer dates.
Fast-forward to late August, and Hanna receives an email with that familiar Mississauga address in the subject line.
She clicked on the email and was surprised to see an attachment. A PDF. An offer.
Wait, not an offer.
A reverse offer.
The listing agent said in the email:
Hi Hanna,
Great news, my seller has come off his price substantially.
Please find our offer to your buyer attached.
I think you will find that this is an extremely competitive price in this market. You will not find a better deal.
This is the seller’s bottom line, and he will not negotiate further.
Agent
Hanna opened the attachment and found a reverse offer for $1,100,000.
Not only was the price well above fair market value, but the reverse offer did not contain a home inspection condition, which Hanna had included in her offer back in August. In this area, listing agents rarely provide pre-inspections, and thus, conditional offers are very common.
But the seller obviously didn’t know and didn’t care.
Neither did Hanna, though.
This price was ridiculous, and her buyer wasn’t interested.
Her email back to the listing agent said as much, as she merely wrote, “I appreciate your efforts, but my buyer has moved on.”
The listing agent didn’t respond.
Two days after Labour Day, the listing agent emailed Hanna again. This time, he used the term “reverse offer” in his email:
Hi Hanna,
As a sign of good faith, my seller is submitting a reverse offer to your buyer.
This price is well below fair market value.
I trust that we may come together to get this deal done and both parties satisfied.
Agent.
It looked like he had learned the term “reverse offer” over the last couple of weeks, and he had also, apparently, learned fair market value.
This offer was for $1,000,000.
But didn’t he just say that his client wouldn’t go below $1,100,000? Didn’t he use the words, “my seller won’t negotiate further?”
Once again, Hanna emailed the listing agent back simply to say, “Thanks, but we’re not interested.”
This time, he wrote back and said, “How can you not be interested? Are you even presenting these offers to your buyer? I need to know that you are working in your clients’ best interest.”
It was ridiculous. This agent was lost.
But Hanna’s buyer had, in fact, moved on. She purchased a home in Milton, of all places, just before Labour Day.
Why didn’t Hanna tell the listing agent this?
“Because it’s none of his goddam business,” Hanna explained to me.
Now, if it’s possible for something to be “shocking” and “expected” at the same time, it’s what happened next.
Four weeks later, the listing agent emailed Hanna again with something that stands out as one of the oddest choices of words I’ve seen in a long time:
Hi Hanna,
My client yields.
Please find attached our final reverse offer.
Agent.
Oh, your client yields, does he?
What the…
This isn’t a Medieval duel, bro.
The offer, in case you’re wondering, was for $980,000, which was less than Hanna’s clients had offered about seven or eight weeks prior.
But it was all moot, as you know, since Hanna’s client purchased a property in August and was now days away from moving into it.
Hanna told me, “It reminded me of that episode of Seinfeld when the crazy chick asks Jerry if he’s breaking up with her, and Jerry says, ‘Umm….were we even dating?’ It felt the same way. Like, this guy and I weren’t negotiating an offer for two months. We made an offer. He rejected it, er, I mean, he sent us that stupid sign-back, then we moved on, bought a house, and he kept on us for some reason. I was getting stalker vibes by the end.”
I’ve told stories like this before when a clueless listing agent keeps contacting a buyer from the past, but never one like this – where the seller makes reverse offers to the buyer.
As ludicrous as this story was, I have to give some credit to the listing agent for trying.
The major difference between the first story and the second (aside from the success in the first and the failure in the second) was that in the first story, Matthew made a reverse offer to a buyer who had never offered to begin with, and in the second story, the listing agent kept chasing a buyer whom he had previously cast aside.
Either way, I’m hearing about reverse offers more and more now, and it’s not that broken telephone, urban legend situation.
They are happening, and as we saw with Matthew’s seller-client, they can be successful.
