Location1st.ca Toronto Real Estate Blog

First of all, in Ontario, real estate has been declared an essential service, so real estate transactions have never stopped during the state of emergency in Ontario. However,  Health Officials have provided important guidance to help contain the spread of the virus including not to conduct open houses and to limit showing appointments and the number of people at showings to what is absolutely necessary.   These requirements have not changed (as of the writing of this blog post). So what are we doing differently? For Sellers: Let me share,  even before COVID-19, our marketing philosophy is that a buyer’s physical viewing of a home, should not be the first time they see a home.  A buyer should have seen the "pictures" first.   Taking pictures is common for real estate, but we have been utilizing new technologies such as providing floor plans and 3D tours to give a much better viewing experience of the home and now we are also going to do video tours too!  

The best way to explain this is through an example ... Let's say you, as a buyer see a home today and its reviewing offers five days from now (the Offer review date).  The Seller is clearly trying to create a bidding war.  In the fine print, it says the Seller can accept pre-emptive Offers before the Offer review date.  A bully offer (formerly known as a pre-emptive Offer) is an Offer received before the Offer review date. Further, a bully offer usually has to be a substantial amount over the asking price and usually has no conditions and to be a "true" bully offer, there is a short deadline for the Seller to respond.  For example, a bully offer is 20% above the asking price, no conditions and the Seller only has 4 hours to respond. If the Seller does not respond by the deadline, a true bully offer says they are not coming back on the Offer review date. (Note: the Buyer giving a short deadline is not always done) Are bully offers good?  I personally don't think

Here is some background information by using an example ... buyers like a home that has a delayed bidding war date (that is you have to wait till a set date before submitting an Offer).  The asking price is $589,000 and the buyer's budget is $630,000. What should we do? First of all, I need to do a detailed CMA (comparative market analysis) to determine the value of the home.  In this case, my CMA indicates the home is worth $620,000. On the bidding war night, there are 3 competing offers (not including ours).  From my experience, each offer increases the final SOLD price of the home.  In this case, I know that each additional offer is worth $10,000***. So if there are 4 offers, the final selling price will be approximately $630,000 ($589,000 plus 4 x 10,000).   My clients don't want to pay $630,000, but want to try and submit an Offer at $600,000. What happens?  The home sells for $631,000 and the clients are disappointed, but are ready to try again.  Unfortunately, its

When I meet buyers, I often hear them say they don't want to see a home if there is a "bidding war" (aka multiple offers) First of all, what is a "bidding war ... in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), one marketing strategy is to delay reviewing offers until a future date in time. For instance, a home comes on the market, you see the home today and like it and want to submit an Offer to buy it, but the home has a delayed offer strategy and is not reviewing offers until one week later. The purpose of this strategy is create a bidding war. The Seller wants multiple buyers to bid on the home at the same time. Whether or not, the successful buyer is overpaying for a home, really depends on the initial asking price. For instance, let's say the home above is asking $599,000 and is reviewing offers in one week. On the Offer review date, the Sellers sells the home for $650,000. Did the buyers overpay? Based on the asking price, the answer is yes, but the right question