I had many whopping sale prices in 2019, but this particular property stands out as I was able to utilize my entire skillset, which resulted in our sale price exceeding our goal price by $134,000!

The home was in Toronto, yet the seller had relocated to Calgary two years prior. She was in town, so we sat down for a chat on how to best approach the situation. The seller deferred to my expertise saying, “This is your world, Geoffrey, so just do your thing,” and then advised me that we couldn’t list until May at the earliest as the tenants’ lease didn’t expire until the end of June.

The Game Plan

It’s always the same: To get the seller the maximum amount of money for their home. The challenge here was that, with listing in May, the bulk of potential buyers might have already bought a home. We would run the risk of losing the strongest part of the market, which could seriously impact our sale price.

I didn’t like the idea of listing that late into spring, so we had the seller contact the tenants to let them know that her friend the REALTOR® would be popping by to take a look at the property. My goal here was to get permission from them to list much earlier than May.

Tenant Relations

The tenants agreed to having me over, and were very inviting under the circumstances, and asked if the seller was thinking of selling.

It wasn’t 100% certain that she was going to be selling at the time because that depended on what price I thought we could get for the home. Being “likeable” can go a long way in this situation here, and I advised the tenants that I was just coming to see the property for the moment to get a feel for it and to give the seller an idea of what I thought it was worth.

The tenants were pretty nervous at the possibility of having to move (and understandably so), but I turned that around with, “Hey, if she does end up selling it, you should buy it, no? It really looks like you are enjoying living here.” (They kept the place impeccably!).

I think this is a very important conversation to have at this point because it shifts me away from being the “bad guy” who’s potentially sending them packing. It also moves me into being the “good guy” that could help them buy a home they already clearly loved and who could save them a ton of hassle.

The tone changed immediately with my idea, but they weren’t sure they could afford it. I then introduced the idea that they could speak with my trusted mortgage broker to see if there was a chance, and they were open to that. It was the friendliest visit that we could have had under the circumstances and it set up a good working relationship which is important to the success of the eventual sale.

I left the home that day with them agreeing that they’d speak with my mortgage broker, and in exchange, I promised that I’d circle back to them once I knew more about the seller’s plans and what the potential price might be should she be in the selling mood.

When I revisited them just a few days later, they had indeed spoken with my trusted mortgage broker and a really good thing happened. My earlier visit had prompted them to think very carefully about which schools they wanted their children attending going forward, and they advised me that they had decided to leave Toronto altogether and move to the Guelph area. Excellent! Now I was completely off the hook as ‘the bad guy’ and even offered to help them further by finding a good agent for them in Guelph. Turns out, her aunt was a REALTOR® in that area so that was perfect too. They had already started looking online for a new home in Guelph.

From here, relations were very good and I shared the fact that I did NOT want to inconvenience them with a month or more of showings, and that I had a good track record at ‘getting things done’ in seven days flat. “That would be GREAT!” she said.

I inquired if they had any travel plans over the upcoming March break and they hadn’t firmed their plans yet but they knew for sure they were going to see his parents over the Family Day long weekend. Okay, that could work!

From there we made a plan for them to have their cleaner come on Thursday morning, my photographer comes immediately after, and for them to be out the door by Friday noon when the showings commenced. The seller and I now had a window to open up the home for continuous showings and I was really pleased that we were able to ‘get to market’ earlier than March break. Supply was very low, which it usually is in January/February.

As the listing date approached, the seller and I worked towards taking care of…

The Little Things

Wherever you can take away an ‘unknown’ for a buyer you improve your chances of success.

• We had the original home inspection from when the seller bought the home eight years prior.
• We had all the receipts for any and all work she had done since moving in.
• We had a brand new home inspection done and also available for review.
• We had a floor plan of the home created and available both online and at the home.

These little things reduced many unknowns for the buyers coming in and worked nicely with the BIG thing…

Market Timing

When the outside of your home looks like this in the spring or summer:

It’s hard to imagine listing it for sale when it looks like this:

What sellers often forget though, is that every other seller out there is thinking the same thing.

When you list in February, you are beating so many others to the market, and the serious buyers that are out there (97 in our case here!) have very little options. Listing in May when the grass is green and things are ‘pretty’ means that MANY of those serious buyers have already bought and now the remaining buyers have more homes to choose from because some of your neighbours are now on the market too.

January is a reset for most. There are always buyers who were planning on buying in the previous six months who just didn’t get the job done. Homes are most usually bought by couples and when the New Year arrives the driver of the relationship sets the priority for the New Year.

We also improved our chances greatly by having FULL access to the home for showings. We opened the door for agent showings on Friday at noon, and then had:

• Total showings Friday: 17
• Total Showings Saturday: 26
• Total Showings Sunday: 14

These were agent-booked showings, meaning that 57 agents came through with their clients in tow to see the home!

I also easily had another 40 sets of buyers that came through the weekend open houses which we ran from 1 – 4 PM both days.

Had they been home, the probability of the tenants allowing close to 100 showings over that weekend would have been low. They would have ‘tapped out’ at some point.

We thankfully didn’t have that challenge — we made it so.

The Back-Up Plan

We were blessed to have a ton of time here. It was indeed aggressive to think that we could list at the start of a holiday weekend and have multiple offers by the end of it, but as suspected supply was minimal. We couldn’t officially ‘close’ until the end of June.

By the books, we shouldn’t have even been showing the home until May first, but we of course had the tenant’s permission as we were potentially doing them a favour and saving them from weeks of showings. Should our first attempt have failed here, we had lots of time to get back on the market at some point, go through the process again, and still get our end of June closing. Having the freedom of the backup plan allowed us to be really aggressive on our price and list low in efforts of attracting the most attention.

To illustrate how this helps, imagine if we listed at $700,000 and offers A, B, and C showed up. Yet, if we had listed at $649,000, then as well as offer A, B, and C showing up, D and possibly E were now present too. It’s a better situation that gives me more leverage and greater control.

The Bidding War & Control

With DocuSign so prevalent, offers can be put together much faster than ever before. Conversations had escalated with enough agents who were prepping their clients for the Tuesday 1 PM offer date. There were some really nice numbers being proposed so it was go time!

Strike While The Iron Is Hot

With every listing there is the initial wave of showings, the peak, and the fall off. In most circumstances, the hungriest and ‘most ready’ buyers get there early. They’re already trained to do so because they’ve missed out on prior homes by waiting.

There is great experience needed to make the decision to pull the trigger at the perfect time (in our case early) and with full confidence that we would not be leaving anything on the table. We were ready to go here by the Sunday afternoon with absolutely no reason to delay.

Every agent was notified that our offer date was now moved up to 7 PM Sunday. Good decision! The ‘management’ of the offers (nine of them in total) yielded us 128% of our asking price, a final sale price of $834,000, which was a full $134,000 over our goal price going in!

Every NHL coach will tell you that in order to win, you must win all the little battles, and execute perfectly. Here, we won all of those including the bigger (market timing) battle and we couldn’t have executed better on any of it!

The Feel-Good Part

The tenants’ lease was actually expiring on June 15th, except the school year didn’t finish until about June 23rd.

“Do you think the seller would let us stay until the end of June without payment?” was asked of me in that second meeting when I was mapping out the plan of listing the home Family Day weekend.

My reply was that I couldn’t promise that, but if things went the way I could envision them going, I thought that might be ‘okay’ with the seller. Don’t forget that cooperative tenants makes my job a whole lot easier, so if the seller was unwilling to do anything with that, I may have indeed stepped up and helped them out myself.

I gave them hope, but made no concrete promise. All in hopes that they’d still do as they promised in straightening out the house as much as possible before their weekend away. They delivered on that, and it was our turn to thank them for that. So that’s what we did.

HOT TIP!

It’s possible that you might know THIS spring that there’s a chance you’ll be selling NEXT spring. If that’s the case, then there is no harm in sending my photographer over to capture your yard in all its beauty this spring, just so we have the photos in hand. This way, if we do list earlier in January or February or even March, we can do so without all the snow, and we can show that spring/summer beauty!

When I’m not selling places for record prices, you might find me on stage with The National Ballet of Canada!

I honestly pinch myself every time I get the opportunity! The ballet world is not too different from the world of figure skating that I grew up in, so I was always a fan, and very often a spectator.

Then in the summer of 2013, I was helping my friend, a Principal dancer with the NBOC, with her condo purchase. I asked her who these people were that sometimes appear with her on stage, always in the background, never really dancing.

They call us “Supernumeraries” or “Supers” for short. I had to be patient, but on March 18th, 2014, I took to the stage and played the role of a servant in Onegin. The role was the simplest of all “Super” roles. Stand at the side by the wing for about 20 minutes, then turn and exit on cue. The costumes are exquisite.

It was fun wearing the Beethoven wig too! We supers — as you can imagine — are not on stage the whole time, but we have the pleasure of being able to watch the rest of the ballet from the wings, which is absolutely incredible!

In June of 2014, they called me back to be one of The Duke’s Guards in Romeo and Juliet. This role was much more involved than just standing at the side, and we even had a few hours of practice with the dancers!

I can remember that first practice with the Company vividly. We were in the side studio of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. For our entry, we six Guards run on to the stage with spears in our hands and stop on our mark. We stand for a while until our next cue. In the dance world, as in the skating world, prior Champions train the current dancers (who are already Champions themselves, honestly). “Look dead ahead” was our instruction, and dead ahead of me sitting in one of the four chairs at the front was none other than the legendary Karen Kain! I’m looking at her, and she’s looking right back at me!

“What is going on here?!” I thought to myself. How am I even in this situation? See, my sister took ballet for easily 15 years in Oakville. Me, not one lesson, yet here I am standing with my spear amidst The National Ballet of Canada dancers with Karen Kain watching my every move!

“Am I right here? I think I’m right… oooh, we’re moving now… okay follow the leader… here we go!” That’s how it all started.

Manon was next (November 2014) followed by Sleeping Beauty (June 2015), a ballet in which we Supers have a very quick costume change and a ton of stage time! A bit ‘rock star’ like, we have our own dressers helping us with the quick change! Can you believe that?!

They only need us in the big Classic ballets though, so our opportunity comes up only a couple times in a calendar year. In the fall of 2015, we did Romeo and Juliet again, as well as during the March break of 2016.

The inspiration I receive from being in this environment with these incredible athletes is immeasurable. Except it is measurable, in fact. When I took to the stage once again in Romeo and Juliet on March 11th, 2020, I did so a full fifty pounds lighter than my debut in that role four years prior. In the dance world, you’d say I had successfully lengthened! And rewarded I was, because this time around I was chosen as the ‘lead’ guard with the added responsibility of bringing Lord Capulet his sword. Our run got cut short by the NBOC having to close the theatre due to COVID-19, but the shows we did were my 85th, 86th, and 87th ballets with the Company!

Earlier this year, I was on stage with the Company as they toured in Washington D. C., reprising my role as The King’s Courtier in Sleeping Beauty. With 27 local Supers needed for that one, they liked having me on board as I know the King’s Courtier role quite well by now. Here I am pictured with the King!

I actually am an advisor to the King in real life, too! That’s my good friend Jon Renna who has recently joined our great Brokerage and is killing it as a new REALTOR®.

Beyond The National Ballet of Canada, I’ve been a Super for American Ballet Theatre in their Romeo and Juliet (a completely different version) at The Met in NYC, and in April of 2019, I once again joined ABT while they were on tour in Chicago. I’ve been on stage in Boston (where my sister lives) with the Boston Ballet as well. There’s nothing better than wrapping a little travel in with a little ballet! When time permits, I hope to continue what I call my highly improbable “World Tour!” Ha!

Forever thankful I will be to the dancers, and honestly, everyone involved in the process of creating such beauty, for allowing me to ‘drop-in’ on their world from time to time. Doing so changed me, even beyond my 50-pound weight loss. The ‘work ethic’ of a dancer is off the charts!

After each one of these extraordinarily unique experiences, I always return to my real estate business with renewed passion and even stronger work ethic, and this formula has recently landed me in the Top 25 in all of Keller Williams agents in the country (out of 3,711).

I was #17 on this list to start 2020, and what makes me the proudest about that is the fact that I haven’t changed the way in which I do business. You get my absolute best! Whether we are selling, buying or finding your investment, I’ve got your best interests at heart. I always view real estate as your most important asset, with your home being your castle. I am literally guarding your castle!

In the past 12 months, I have sold places as high as 114% over asking, 120% over asking, and perhaps the greatest success of them all, 128% over asking on 16 Howick Avenue, which was tenanted at the time (see full success story here).

Just think about it, if I can launch an international ballet career at the age of 42, then I can probably sell your house, right? Right!

I’m sometimes asked about the greatest real estate victory I’ve ever seen. There have been some major heists in 20 years, but none of those could touch this success story.

The Search

There were really only two properties being considered in September of 2009 when I had the pleasure of helping former Toronto Maple Leaf Phil Kessel. One was a 4,400 square foot condo at The Residences of College Park, and the other a 3,600 square foot townhouse in Yorkville.

The College Park condo was, and still is, the nicest condo I’ve ever seen in Toronto. Phil loved that condo too, and rightly so.

It had a ridiculous amount of space, which felt even larger due to the 10-foot ceilings. The penthouses are always the last to be finished; this one was brand new and never lived in, and there were just two suites on the floor. The builder had built this particular condo for himself, so as you can imagine he held nothing back inside.

The Choice

Now you’ve probably heard that you should never buy the most expensive home on the street, right? Generally, I’d agree that, with perhaps one exception — and this was that exception.

The Toronto Maple Leafs had just signed Phil to a five-year, $27,000,000 contract and with that comes big expectations — and big pressure, too. I was plugged in enough to the game to know that a contract like this will go one of two ways: Expectations will either be met/exceeded or there will be an early trade.

When I am helping someone with their real estate, 99.81% of the time the actual real estate is the main driver and the main concern. This was different. There was MUCH more at stake than the real estate.

‘Know your client’ is the #1 rule in the investment industry, and I was fortunate enough to spend 12 years working for perhaps the best money manager in the country, Taylor Echlin. Taylor thankfully drilled this ‘know your client’ rule into me and so I kept it as my #1 rule in my real estate dealings too.

Phil was just 21 at the time. He was already one of the top players in the league. Phil Sr. and his mom Kathy were now in town and there we all stood, in the massive living room looking south to the beautiful downtown skyline.

“Which property holds value or goes up the most in five years?” Phil Sr. asked.

“The Yorkville townhouse is more bankable, no question,” I answered. “But this is a one of a kind space so it should be okay too. Phil should live where he wants to live, though. If it were me, I would live here, no question about it.”

Phil Senior nodded and smiled. He knew the big picture too. Although very nice inside, the Yorkville townhouse had nowhere near the ‘inspiration’ factor that the Bay Street condo had. It didn’t have much light; it was dark and cave-like. You couldn’t even compare the two in that regard.

I said, “Listen, Phil, very important. You’re going to move in here and you wake up in the morning, walk over to the window here stretch like this see as I stretched my arms out, look out at our beautiful city and say to yourself, ‘I think I’ll score two goals today, maybe an assist. It’s very important.’”

Everyone laughed. And I followed along, except I was serious. I brought humour into it, I often do, but what I do best is look after my client’s wealth. Most usually, that’s wealth within their real estate, on a purchase or sale. But this time, I was looking out for my client’s potential wealth. I knew what was at stake.

I wasn’t overly concerned, in this case, with where the real estate value would go in the years ahead, because I knew my client and I knew that what he did on the ice over the next five years was going to be FAR more important. The Yorkville townhouse, though more bankable in terms of resale, didn’t light Phil up the way this Bay Street condo did. We made the right choice. Things went well.

The Benefit of Getting It Right

Things went so well in fact that on October 1st, 2013, at the start of his fifth season here in Toronto, a year ahead of schedule, the Leafs extended Phil’s contract signing him to an eight-year deal worth a whopping $64,000,000.
I was at that game, which was the season opener in Montreal (always an amazing atmosphere). Once it was officially announced, my phone blew up with all my friends texting saying, “I guess you’ll be helping Phil find a new place now.”

Except there was no need. We did it right the first time. We did it more than right.

My greatest real estate victory had little to do with real estate, yet everything to do with real estate at the same time. It’s 11 years later and Phil still talks about that condo as being the nicest one he ever saw in the city of Toronto.

Phil led the Maple Leafs in goals five times and scored at least 30 goals four times during his six seasons with the Maple Leafs. He had 394 points in 446 games before he was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2015.

I’m not going to tell you I was out there on the ice with him passing him the puck. I wasn’t. But I was there, with the big picture in mind, and I made sure I passed him the right set of keys.

Suite 1708 at 99 Harbour Square is a property I have sold twice now. Both times I had it staged by my trusted stager, Ella, from The Last Detail. And the result? Both times we sold it earlier than scheduled, and for a whopping ‘never seen before’ record price.

What is Staging?

First, understand what staging is, and what it isn’t. You don’t just simply move a bunch of furniture into a home in its current state and hope for the best — that’s not staging. In fact, if you’re not willing to do at least some of the suggested work to your home ahead of the furniture arriving, then I say don’t bother.

Staging is an investment you make, and it’s one that is statistically proven to bring a handsome return. The statistics on this don’t lie.

The First Step

Before staging, the stager visits the property well ahead of time for a consultation. I always tell my clients that she’s a bit like Madonna getting set to perform in the SuperBowl. She will walk through the home and spot every tiny detail that she wants fixed inside before moving her furniture in. She’s seeing your home through the buyer’s eyes.

Choosing Furniture

In all truth, the furniture is actually the easiest part! She’s got an extremely talented and pleasant crew for this. She points, they do!

“This wood trim is aging this kitchen and needs to be painted white.”

“The light fixture here is hanging too low and is bringing the whole kitchen ceiling down, you see? It needs to go up.”

She’ll scroll through her phone and now show a picture of the exact light she wants which is flush to the ceiling which is $30 at most. It’s usually NOT major money that is needed, it’s SMART money. Do understand that she is NOT trying to burn your money. Her goal is exactly in line with my goal — to get you the highest possible price for your home! This should be your goal too. What she is doing is improving our probabilities for success, by encouraging you to take care of every last detail.

Trust The Experts

Some sellers will do absolutely everything she asks, which is ideal. She’s three steps ahead already when she’s asking you to paint that bedroom Edgecomb grey. That colour looks best with the furniture she’s planning on bringing.

Trust her. She knows what she’s doing! In cases where there is a limited budget, she will help identify where the money invested will have the biggest impact.

“I asked for the moon, the stars and beyond before that Super Bowl knowing they wouldn’t let me do everything but at least they gave me the moon, right?” — Madonna

The very best results I have seen after staging have come when a seller fully commits to what the stager wants done inside before the furniture arrives.

Here are the 7 reasons why you should stage your home:

7. It Puts You In The Best Position Possible

We can only control what we can control. There’s not a chance we can stop someone else in the building or neighbourhood from listing at the exact same time as you are. So why not get your space into the best possible appearance that you can and increase the probabilities that your home beats any and all others? Staging gives you a competitive edge, should your competition show up.

6. Photographs POP!

Photography is the first step in getting the maximum number of buyers to your home. “I love Ella,” says my trusted photographer Julian. “She always gives me my corners.” When she is staging a home she’s already thinking ahead to how it will photograph. This is critical because nowadays every buyer’s search begins online. Gorgeous photos = greater number of people coming to see your property = higher probability for success.

5. Unforgettable First Impressions

Ninety-five percent of a buyer’s decision is made within the first 30 seconds of stepping inside a home. Duncan walked into #1708, looked around, stood in the living room, and took out his phone. “I’m calling my wife,” he said. Followed by, “This is probably going to be a mistake.” Boom! He was already ready to buy it! First impression success! Double boom! (His wife loved it too!)

4. The Pressure Is On

With the staged furniture and the home in ‘showroom condition’, there’s now pressure on the buyer to act fast! At this precise moment, a prospective buyer is thinking, “Holy smokes this place is hot and if I don’t jump on it someone else surely will!”

3. Highlights Potential and Minimizes Faults

I’ve shown this ‘08’ layout for two decades now and the buyer ALWAYS instantly points out an architectural flaw in the design. Why did they put a little corner window there instead of a full window? It’s true. On floors 25-38 there is indeed a double window (double the space inside, too) but from the 24th floor down, we’re dealing with a shortcoming.

There is nothing you can do about this silly quarter window. But then I met Ella. It’s counterintuitive to completely block out a window, but in this case, it worked magically. She draws the buyer’s eye away from the bad (the useless quarter window) and toward the GREAT (the full window). Brilliant! We just removed a major historical complaint about this layout.

2. It Answers Buyers’ Questions

When you stage, you are taking the ‘thinking’ away from the buyer. “They need to be spoon-fed,” says Ella. How many times have you walked into an empty bedroom and wondered if your King or Queen size bed would fit?

The stager takes that question away. It’s clear to see; no thinking needed. The more questions or doubt you take away from the buyer the more comfortable and excited about the property they will be, which leads to…

1. A Higher Sale Price in Less Time

Statistics show that staged homes will sell for between 6% and 14% more money. That’s ‘on average’ though, with likely some ‘average’ agents in there. Get some agency skill in there and now we’ve got the one-two punch!

I first sold #1708 in 2015 and then sold it again in 2019 for that first buyer. Looking at the percentage gain over the prior ‘08’ sale, our average percentage gain here was a whopping 22.3% higher than the last sale!

Unless you’ve already got hidden treasures, you’re going to need a mortgage for your new purchase. You could walk into the bank and talk to their mortgage specialist. Or, you could work with a trusted mortgage broker.

My advice? Go with the mortgage broker. Here’s why…

1. You’ll Have More Options

Ultimately, the bank (whichever bank it is) can only offer you their mortgage products, which are extremely limited. Meanwhile, a mortgage broker has access to each and every one of that same bank’s products plus a whole host of other lenders, too.

2. You Build a Long-Term Relationship

Obviously, you want to get the lowest mortgage rate possible, and in my experience, a trusted mortgage broker will always beat out a single bank’s products. But there’s a much deeper reason why I prefer my clients to have their own trusted mortgage broker.

This is your home. It’s likely — or likely to become — your largest asset, and your mortgage secures that asset. It’s an important piece of your financial health. There are advantages to establishing and maintaining a long-term relationship with a mortgage broker; one who will always be there for you, like a trusted dad or voice guiding you to make the right decisions as they come up along your journey of homeownership.

How many times in the past 10 years have you switched either your doctor or your dentist? You have a relationship with them. It will serve you well to have the same consistent relationship with your mortgage broker.

3. It Makes Future Decisions Easier

Fast forward five years to when your mortgage is due for renewal. Good luck finding that same bank employee who helped you years before! They’ve likely moved on, so now you’re dealing with a new representative at the bank. You don’t know them, and they don’t know you.

Now contrast this with your trusted mortgage broker. They have valued you right from the start and have likely stayed in touch with you, informing you of different trends in the mortgage industry. There is both value and power in having a strong relationship like this. There is potentially money-saving power too — and there is leverage.

4. You Can Leverage Their Relationships

The bank representative doesn’t ‘know’ you, nor are they the decision-maker. They pass your file up the chain and wait to hear back, having no control over anything. Your mortgage broker has a much more direct link to the decision-maker (the underwriter). Since they’ve done business together for years and years already, they have a very strong working relationship in place.

See, the lenders have rules they must follow surrounding all mortgages. But with that, sometimes certain exceptions can be made. We can’t predict the future, but it is a possibility that down the road you’ll be in a situation where a special exception will save you a ton of money. When such an exception is being considered, there’s a lot of weight in this relationship that your mortgage broker has with the lender.

Essentially, your mortgage broker is able to present your case and really stand behind it and convince the lender that you are worthy of the exception. Since we always do business with the people we like the most, the lender then pushes the mortgage application through as a special favour for his buddy, the mortgage broker. You’ve just leveraged their long-term friendship is what you’ve done here. That’s very smart of you!

Picture This…

It’s a Thursday heading into the Easter long weekend. A ‘one of a kind’ condo hits the market at a price too good to be true. You get in there the same day, start the offer process quickly, and Good Friday becomes Great Friday because you buy yourself the condo!

Your agent is miraculously able to negotiate the price down from the list price, which we all agree was a superb deal right from the start. That listing agent made a mistake and we pounced on it! This property was a bit of a stretch, though, in terms of numbers and qualifying for the mortgage. On the advice of your agent, you stayed clear of the boy at the bank and have already given your mortgage broker lots of info.

“This should be okay,” he advises that holiday Friday morning (the bank would have been closed, by the way). So that’s good to hear, but even better is the fact that we are able to slide in a financial condition protecting you! So in the event that things were not okay you were in no danger whatsoever. Excellent.

It sure wasn’t a slam dunk but your mortgage broker was able to work all his magic, leverage his lengthy relationship with the lender, and convince them to approve your financing. Awesome! A few days later we are able to waive your financing condition and the only thing left to do is have your lawyer approve the status certificate. Your real estate agent already has clients in this building and knew going in that the building reserves were very healthy and that the ship was not sinking here. Good, good!

The status certificate arrives verifying the financial health of the building, but with one surprise about the actual condo: The $812 advertised on the MLS listing was inaccurate. The correct monthly maintenance fee was $923! Not only did Captain Listing Agent screw up for his seller by listing the condo under full market value (which we worked to our gain), he also made a glaring mistake on the monthly maintenance fee.

As you can imagine, this comes as a complete shock to everyone, including Captain Listing Agent who claimed the $812 was the figure the seller gave him. He forgot to verify that with management when he listed (a major no-no!).

The mortgage approval was based on the $812 figure and we just barely squeaked through there, but the bigger concern was pointed out by the buyer, and he was right when he said, “We’ve lived in our first condo 10 years, and that’s at least our timeline here on this one, so $111 x 12 x 10 is $13,320, except since maintenance fees go up over time, the cost to us here is likely much more than that.”

Correct. Of course, I’m all over the listing agent and the deal is immediately being renegotiated to a lower purchase price to address this change of fact. The buyer certainly should not have to pay for this error. We negotiated in good faith and were just thrown a major curveball here.

But the seller has different ideas. He was obviously feeling that he had undersold the property that Easter weekend and had made a mistake by not having open houses. He was right on both counts, too. He was seeing the advantages of us pulling out of the deal, which we had full right to do.

We did manage to get the listing agent to make a concession for his error. There was a limit there, of course, because he controlled the listing. He really could have said no to that and just re-listed the property and sold it again to the next buyer should we not waive our condition. The seller even came around and relaxed his price a bit admitting that he made an honest mistake as the maintenance fee just comes out of his account and he doesn’t pay too much attention to it.

I was in close talks with the mortgage broker because the numbers had to be reworked and we were now going to need an exception on top of the earlier exception. With all that, we were still going to be a bit short.

Right here is why it’s really helpful to have a solid relationship with both your mortgage broker and your real estate agent, much like you have with your doctor or dentist.

We all agreed that we inked a terrific purchase price from the get-go, and I didn’t want to see my clients lose this amazing property over a few thousand dollars. The probability of us finding this same perfect space for the money we were paying I felt was extremely low. The market was moving higher at a good pace and there just weren’t enough three-bedrooms around (and still aren’t to this day!). Even if we could find this space again, that might be six months to a year down the road with no control over what price we might have to pay then. Too many unknowns.

It was my job here in this situation to step up and chip in a few dollars to make this workable for the buyers. We were 10 years into our relationship at this point and my aim is always to keep these excellent friendships. The mortgage broker jumped in and said, “I value their relationship too, so you do that Geoffrey, and I’ll do a little something on my end and I think I’ll be able to convince my lender friend that we can drive ahead here.”

See, the mortgage broker, because they do all the legwork on your application, is paid a fee by the lender. He saw everyone involved helping in the matter and he jumped in as well because he’s got your back too. He values you as clients and wants to keep you as clients going forward another 10 years and beyond.

Had it not been for your strong relationships with both your mortgage broker and your real estate agent, this perfect condo would have likely slipped right through your fingers.

There was all sorts of leverage at play:

• A 10-year relationship with your real estate agent.
• A 10-year relationship with your mortgage broker.
• A 15-year history between your mortgage broker and your real estate agent.
• The critical friendship that your mortgage broker has with the lender he chose for you.

Leverage on top of leverage on top of leverage!

It was Easter weekend. The bank was closed. This condo would have been sold to someone else by Tuesday when they reopened had we not jumped on it right away.

Fun Fact: At least a dozen times in 20 years I have helped a buyer who actually works for the bank. They always assume their employer will get them the best possible mortgage. Shocked, and upset they are to learn that my mortgage broker can get them a lower rate.

Leverage is a powerful thing.