Well, I was going to post thirty-six line graphs and bar charts dating back sixty-four years as a special blog feature today, but if the recent comments are any indication, y’all are looking for a bit more fun right now…

You want stories, do you?

Having worked in the real estate business for the last twenty-two years, I clearly have no shortage of stories.

But some stories don’t age well, do they?

Case in point, the answer to the following question:

What did you read to your children at bedtime?

This greatly depends on when your children were born, of course.

I was talking to a colleague today, and he said, “Well, my kids were little in the early-2000’s so it was all Harry Potter back then.”

That makes perfect sense.

My children are 9-years-old and 6-years-old respectively, so in order to know what I read to them, you might wonder, “What books were all the rage in the early 2020’s?”

But if you used that type of logic, you’d be led astray.

In fact, I would suggest that you don’t know me at all…

Obviously, I chose to read my children the exact same books that were read to me in the early 1980’s.

Duh.

And obviously, my mother still had the books, in near-mint condition, which I commandeered as soon as we set up the first crib.

Ah, those magical hardcover books penned between 1978 and 1982!

Socks For Supper
Popcorn
Those Terrible Toybreakers
The Diggingest Dog
Rabbit’s New Rug
Willy’s Raiders

Google is going to have a field day with those titles when some nostalgic 50-year-old searches for his or her childhood pastime and randomly comes across a real estate blog, but I digress…

I was raised on these books, and they made me the person that I am today!

Except, well, some of them didn’t really age well…

Upon reading my daughter the book Popcorn, I realized that the costume that “Sam the bear” chose for Halloween is not socially acceptable in 2026.  Like, really, really not acceptable.  Not only that, several of his friends attended his Halloween party in costumes that get you kicked out of school nowadays.

I really didn’t have a problem with Willy’s Raiders until I realized that “Willy the Raccoon” was essentially a human trafficking victim.  Those nasty “Weasels” wanted to win the big baseball game so bad that they resorted to kidnapping and forcible confinement.  They’d be looking at lengthy jail sentences in the real world (at least in the USA; in Canada, they’d be released so they could immediately re-offend…), and thus this book might not be appropriate for the children we’re raising in today’s society.

Don’t even get me started on Those Terrible Toybreakers.  A lion, tiger, and elephant are breaking all the toys belonging to 8-year-old “Walter,” so he sets a trap to catch them.  But, God forbid he injures them while they’re trespassing on his property and stealing from him, we’re going to have a problem!  In Ontario, it’s questionable as to whether you can defend yourself or your property when a criminal breaks into your home.  Walter’s friend “Bernie” really sandbagged him here.

But then comes a classic: The Diggingest Dog.  I’ll be honest: part of the reason I named my son “Duke” was that it was the name of the dog in this book.  Poor Duke (the dog, not my son…) grew up in a dog pound and never learned to dig!  But once he learns to do so, he digs up the entire city!  There’s no way that society in 2026 could find fault with this, right?

Hang on.  If you look hard enough for problems, ways to be offended, opportunities to apply today’s morals to actions from the past, and these cool, new things called “micro-aggressions,” which are all the rage, trust me – you’ll find them!

While searching online for a JPG of The Diggingest Dog book cover, I stumbled upon a community of people who were discussing the book.  But they weren’t nostalgic like I was; rather, they wanted the book banned.

It seems that the other dogs in the story were guilty of discrimination.  The other dogs “bullied” Duke because he was different.  They “shamed” his lack of digging abilities.  And thus my absolute favourite childhood book, and one that I read to both my young children, is likely going to end up in a massive bonfire one day…

In any event, some things don’t age well.

But how about my video series from 2015?

I can’t believe it’s been eleven years since I decided to make a point about Toronto real estate, and do so as sarcastically and cynically as possible.

So while I don’t have any new stories to tell today (this was the busiest month I’ve had in years, and time is fleeting!), I wanted to share this series with the “new” blog readers (ie. those with less than eleven years under their belts…) and provide a refresher for the long-time readers as well.

How did these age?

I guess we’ll find out.

If you’re familiar with me, my blog, my thoughts on pre-construction condos, or all of the above, you’ll know that I have always wondered WHY we build and pre-sell condos the way we do, and I have always advised consumers to avoid pre-construction condos at all costs.

Back in 2015, I wanted to find a new way to convey my point, and thus, my first video was launched.

How The Pre-Construction Condo Industry Works

Yes, those are all my shirts.  I went through a phase…

Back in 2015, a large number of consumers ignored the message from this video.

But just imagine if the people losing their life savings in 2026 had watched this, let alone listened to it, when they purchased from 2018 to 2020?

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A few months later, I wanted to find a new way to convey just how absurd our process for listing, receiving offers, and selling houses in Toronto truly was.

The “bully offers” were out of control back then, and consumers were furious.

Confused, yes.  But angry too, and it was completely justified.

In response, I wondered, “What if other products or services were sold like this?”

How Bully Offers Work In The Real Estate Market In 2015

I always figure that when you’re trying to make a point, sometimes dumbing it down makes it easy to absorb.

I figured that buying a tube of toothpaste was about as simple a transaction as there is, right?

So why not apply the real estate sales process to the toothpaste to prove the point?

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One of my largest pet peeves in all my years of real estate has been this concept of a condo “den.”

What is a den?

I’ve written countless blogs on this, I’ve contributed to media articles and news reports on the subject, and yet we are no closer to agreeing on the concept of a den.

Not only that, during all the pre-construction madness, developers took the opportunity to apply the “den” label to anything, everything, and nothing, all at once.

In response to this problem, I took the same “dumb it down” approach as I had taken before, but with an additional layer of sarcasm.

What Does A Condo Den Look Like In 2015?

We absolutely destroyed my condo making this video.

Eight people, equipment, boxes, and all those props!

It took hours to clean up.

My wife came home after everybody left, found a single Cheerio on the ground, and lost her mind.

It’s been eleven years, but we are no closer to understanding what constitutes a “den” in Toronto condos.

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Continuing the theme of the consumer response (or lack thereof!) to the fast-moving market, bully offers, and frenetic pace of the real estate market in prime season, I became increasingly frustrated by buyers who simply didn’t understand that the market won’t wait for them.

You can’t imagine what it was like back then.

A listing would come out at 10:00am, and you’d rush your clients to see it at lunch.  That evening, at the latest!

And yet, many of us had buyer clients who continued to say, “We’ll have a look on the weekend,” even as every quality property was selling midweek via bully offers.

So how do we convey the message?

Like this…

The Market Moves Fast

Poor Chris!

This was probably his first month in the real estate business, and I forced him to take part in this video.

I always thought he was great at “acting” like I annoyed him, which you can see even in the still image above.

But after working together for the last eleven years, I’ve come to realize that he wasn’t acting…

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Are open houses worthwhile?

The answer to that might be different in 2026 than it was in 2015, but having said that, the answer might be different in 2015 than it was in 1985.

Many people think open houses are a waste of time, and that includes sellers and listing agents.

I’ve long mused that most people who attend open houses don’t belong there.  In fact, I was honoured to get my own feature article in the Toronto Star back in 2015:

“A Toronto Real Estate Agent Offers His Insider’s View Of Open House Visitors”
The Toronto Star
David Fleming
September 18th, 2015

This article was based on a blog post I wrote earlier that year, but it wasn’t the only time I made a point about open houses.

What Really Happens At An Open House?

Have I properly thanked my mother for letting me use her house for this video?

Let’s see if she chimes in today in the comments section down below.

One important point about open houses before we move on:

Open houses are more important today than ever before.

Why?

Several reasons:

1) A generation of young buyers wants to do the searching on their own, and thus they attend weekend open houses in droves.

2) A lot of lazy agents tell their buyers, “Just go to the open house on the weekend.”

3) Many buyers, for some insane reason, use an agent based in Niagara Falls or Barrie, and those agents also tell their buyers, “Go to the open house on the weekend.”

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Alright, be honest…

…how awful was my haircut back then?

Would it have killed one of you to say something?  I thought we were friends?

A good friend of mine, who is follically-challenged, did his best “Ben Affleck from Good Will Hunting” when he told me to get rid of the childish brush cut and grow my damn hair out!

“I’d kill to have what you got,” he said, just like Chuckie told Will.

Okay, that’s it for today!

I hope you enjoyed these videos, although many of you have seen them before.

Many of us need to catch our breath in this market.  The media is not seeing what I’m seeing out there right now, that’s for sure.

See you Monday!