The Last Honest Realtor

Ep. 50 - The Silent Buyer: Why No One Follows Up Anymore

Toronto Realty Group Season 2 Episode 21

Send us a text

In this episode of The Last Honest Realtor, David Fleming reveals how the disappearance of buyer feedback and agent follow-up is quietly reshaping Toronto real estate. In 2025, buyers have gone silent—and most listing agents are missing the signals, killing deals through inexperience, confusion, and a refusal to adapt.

From aggressive feedback calls before a showing is over, to agents clinging to 2022 tactics in a buyer-driven market, this episode breaks down the small missteps and missed conversations that now separate a successful sale from a lingering listing.

In This Episode:

  • Why listing agents are chasing feedback the moment you leave a showing
  • How fear and confusion are paralyzing agents on both sides of the deal
  • The critical difference between patient buyers and buyers stuck in indecision
  • What actually happens when agents refuse to negotiate or communicate
  • The new metrics that matter: showings, inspection requests, and vanished offers
  • Why outdated playbooks are costing sellers six figures in lost opportunities
  • What listing agents must start doing differently—or risk irrelevance


Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro: Why the feedback loop is broken in 2025
02:10 – Agents desperate for live feedback (and what it signals)
06:15 – Real stories: missed deals, stubborn sellers, and silent buyers
12:00 – Patience vs. inaction: which buyers win?
17:30 – How poor communication turns opportunity into failure
23:10 – What metrics actually matter now (and which don’t)
28:00 – The case for direct, honest agent collaboration
32:15 – Closing thoughts: adapt or be left behind

Subscribe, comment, and share this episode with anyone still waiting for the market to “go back to normal.”

Bosley Real Estate
Bosley Real Estate: Family-owned since 1928, delivering trusted real estate services across Ontario.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Subscribe and Follow:
Toronto Realty Group Website
Toronto Realty Group YouTube
Toronto Realty Blog Instagram
Toronto Realty Blog Twitter
Toronto Realty Blog Facebook

SPEAKER_00:

You haven't even locked the front door and put the key back in the lockbox before the listing agent calls you to ask how your showing went. Hello everybody and welcome back to the Last Honest Realtor podcast. I'm your host David Fleming. Thank you so much for joining me today and yes that is a true story. That happened to me last week. I was standing on the front porch of a property literally locking the front door when the listing agent called. I answered it of course because I was at her property and I thought maybe she was going to remind me to set the alarm or tell me that the back door had one of those hockey sticks that you put down in the track to make sure no one breaks in or I don't know maybe ask me to feed the cat but no. She was calling to ask how the showing went. Now I said, we're actually still here. And I thought she would say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I thought your showing was yesterday, let alone three, four hours ago. But no, she said, well, while I got you, how is it going? How is it going present tense? If you need to know anything about the 2025 market, there is a microcosm, the showing feedback, not after the fact, but live and on the spot. Folks, the feedback loop has changed significantly as the market has changed in 2025. And today we're going to talk about how this feedback loop has provided both an opportunity for success and failure between listing agents and buyer agents, buyers and sellers, as I always say, the four parties to the transaction. Now, this is, of course, a reaction to the market and as i said an opportunity for success those agents the listing agents who i always talk about i hold myself and my team to a very high standard when we are working in this changing market but i also talk a lot on toronto realty blog and within this podcast about how these listing agents have an opportunity for success if they can adapt to this market and unfortunately failure if they don't recognize how it has changed now there's sort of this blind inexperience this wistful optimism in the voices of many of these listing agents and it's very interesting because not only will they call you for feedback during a showing or after which is something they never did when the market was hot but i'm getting this sort of are you bringing us an offer for your property that's been on the market for 46 days i just showed it 15 minutes ago to use an analogy it's kind of like if you meet somebody and you say do you want to get married before you've even gone out on a date. Now I know the analogy doesn't hold perfectly true because of course we're showing the property, but this is yet another example. Property's been on the market for 40, 50 days, I go do a showing, I'm in the car, the phone rings, it's the agent, hey, it's so-and-so, are you bringing us an offer? Not even how did your showing go? So as I said, this is an opportunity for success or failure. And what I would say is that the listing agent should start with small talk. How's it going? How are you finding the market? How did your showing go? Ask questions. Then try to offer some value, not selling me. Well, this sold for this and they want that. No, no, no, don't make it about you. Tell me about the property. What are some of the things that I might not know about it? Well, did you notice that the windows were all replaced last year? Great. There's some value. Tell me that there's a pre-home inspection. Ask me if I've got a copy of it. Tell me that you just did a survey from last year. But a lot of the times we're not getting this. We're getting, are you bringing me an offer? And a lot of the times, even if they're not being so direct, the listing agents, instead of sort of extending the hand and offering the olive branch, so to speak, they can't help themselves. You say, well, I'm not sure. And God forbid you say, I mean, listen, it's been on the market for two months and the price. And then they jump right down your throat and they bark at you about the price. They bark at you about what's happening in the area and what the comps were and what this was worth. And I think that that is a tremendous mistake. Now, the market is mixed, so to speak, but it's not all of the market. I'll give you an example. I brought a listing out yesterday. And it's a decent listing. It's a B, maybe a B minus. We're underlisted as everything is with an offer date as people do. The only difference between myself and I think most listing agents out there is I have prepared my seller clients by telling them we have maybe a 25% chance of selling this on offer night. Offer nights just aren't working. Now I get a phone call from an agent and she says to me that her clients are really tired and worn out. That's kind of news because it's a buyer's market, but go on. And she said, you know what? They were going to rent, but they saw your listing and they're just kind of curious. So great example right now that underscores this dichotomy between what I'm seeing out there, which is opportunity for buyers, and what she tells me, hey, there were 16 offers on a house on Bastido the other day. Right. That's one house. And I'm not trying to be negative about the market. I'm trying to be realistic about the market. Is it yes or no? There were 16 offers on that house. And yes, the house on Riverdale got multiples and the house on Sparkle got multiples, but those are in prime Riverdale. My listing is further east, further north, different locations. So the market is mixed, but you're still seeing examples of these particular buyers that are tired and worn out because they've seen properties that have been in multiples or they've lost on offer nights. But that leads to kind of the antithesis of today's podcast. which is the way that the buyer mentality has changed. Buyers are operating slower. The feedback loop is different between agents on the buy side and the sell side. And I have this idea, this concept of patience versus inaction. So buyers go and look at properties. If this was 2022, here's how it would be. Your agent emails you at 9 a.m. This property just came out. Can you meet me at lunch? You have a meeting. Can you cancel it? You need to get in there at lunch because they do have an offer date, but it could get a bully offer. You rush over. You've got to go get a check. You've got to look at the home inspection. You've got to be ready to go. And if there's a bully offer, you've got to compete. And if there isn't, you're on offer night and there's 14 offers and you know how that works. The market has changed now and buyers are taking their time. But why are buyers taking their time? I have a theory on this. There is patience and there is inaction. Now, patience is a function of control. Inaction is a function of lack of control. And what I mean by this is that patience among the buyer pool, that is strategic, it is deliberate, and it is information-based. That is an informed consumer that is deliberately and strategically taking their time and looking at the market and seeing opportunity. The flip side is an action, which is a function of fear, inexperience, and confusion. Now, let me segue for a moment. I'm going to talk about a story I told on Toronto Realty blog last week, which underscores fear, inexperience, and confusion. And so this is more on the sell side, which kind of goes into this whole feedback loop idea that we're talking about today. And while the idea for this podcast is obviously from the buyer's eyes, I want to give you an idea of how this fear and this inexperience and this confusion on the sell side, on the listing agent side, can cause a reaction in the buyer pool. There is a property, it's listed for 999. Once upon a time, 1.4, maybe even 1.5. Now we're looking at 1.3, maybe 1.25. So we go and view this property, me and the buyer clients. We like it, we get to the offer date, we get our bank draft, And away we go. We draft the offer, we register the offer, and we wait. We wait all day. We wait to get that email that says second offer registered, third offer registered, fourth offer registered, but nothing ever comes. We have the only offer on the property. So it's 999 list. We think it's a 125 house. Now it could be 13. I don't think so. It could be 12. Depends on what the seller will sell for and what the buyer will pay. That's how the market works. So what do we do being the only offer? Some of you are gonna say, offer 9.99. Some of you are gonna say, offer 9.50. I work in reality. We offered 1.1 million. Right off the bat, I'm gonna lose a bunch of you. How could you offer 1.1 million on a 9.99 list? You're the only offer. Because they're not gonna take 9.99. They're just not. In fact, they're not gonna take 1.1. They're not going to take 1.1. Complain if you want. Tell me the market shouldn't work that way and people should be forced to accept and all that nonsense I disagree with. But we offer 1.1 million. The listing agent comes back. Hey, thanks so much for your offer. Can they come up? What do I say? Well, my clients have told me they can come up. They fully intend to come up. Our offer of 1.1 million is completely exploratory. And I say, yeah, they can come up. So what does the listing agent do? He says, great. Why don't you do that and get a better offer on paper and send it back to us? No. It's not 2022 anymore. Now, let's say it was 2022. I mean, listen, let's say it was 2024 because we're not that far removed from situations where this house would have got 12 offers. When you have 12 offers in a house listed at$9.99, you can bulk email all 12 agents and say, improve your offers. It's a mistake. I think personalization and communication is important. You can call all 12 agents and send them all back to improve, or you can do what I do. Start from the bottom. Call the agent with the worst offer. Thanks so much. We're going in another direction. If they say, can I improve my offer? You say, yeah, if you want to. I really don't think you should. There's a pretty big gap. But that's how I do things. I start from the bottom. I go up to the top. And that is what we do. And you offer people an opportunity to improve. Some of you watching it are like, I don't like this. You should just be forced to take the highest offer. Listen, it is what it is. I work for my seller. I work within the rules that are prescribed to me. Today, we have the only offer in this example. And the listing agent says, I invite you to improve your offer. I say to that agent, No, we're not going to do that. The agent says, why not? I said, we have submitted an offer to you. If you would like more money, we're happy to discuss. Sign our offer back. The agent then gives me an explanation on how offer dates work. This is our offer date. We're not signing it back to you. Why not? Because we're not. Okay, I mean, my eight-year-old daughter could have come up with a better justification, but why not? Because we're not, because that's not how offer dates work. Enlighten me, tell me how offer dates work. The agent takes the bait and says, we review all the offers, and then we make a decision. We invite people to come back, and I'm like, uh-huh. And I said, okay, yeah, but you said offers, plural. You have one offer. You have one buyer in the city of Toronto who wants to potentially purchase your home. We have made you an offer. We have even told you that we would consider paying more for it. You're listed at 999. We've offered you 1.1 million. We invite you to sign it back. This agent would not listen. This agent said, no, we're not signing back. Fear, inexperience, confusion. That's what this is. And this isn't arrogance. This isn't greed. This isn't stubbornness. This is fear, inexperience, and confusion. This agent has never worked in a market where he has to communicate with all parties to the transaction. This agent doesn't know how to be courteous, professional, respectful. This agent barks orders. You improve your offer or we're done here. Okay, I can go and buy one of many other houses on the market. That's changed. If this was 2022, I would lay down in the street and let this agent run me over with his car, metaphorically, literally. Times have changed. So I explained to the agent again, if you are not interested in accepting an offer of$1.1 million, you can take the offer and sign it back, change the price. And I said to him, the price is not going to change itself. Sign it back at 10 million if you want to, but sign it back. There's an expression in our business, never let a deal die. Agents say things like, listen, I'm not gonna let it die on my operating table. Agents say things like, in order to get a deal done, I need to have something for my clients to sign. If you would like for my clients to sign an offer, I have to have one to give them. I explained this to the agent and the agent was so dug in. No, it's our offer night. No one signs back on an offer night. We have leverage. He lost me at leverage. I said, what leverage do you have? We have leverage. We have a listing. We have an offer date. And you can see how this is kind of circular, so I'll sum it up. But it went on until eventually he said, we're done here and hung up on me. The next day, he called me three o'clock. Are your clients still interested in the house? Hey, he's doing the right thing. Some contrition. Yes. Not much has changed since last night. And he said, well, the door's still open if they want to resubmit. Oh, man. I thought he was going to come back to me and say, hey, listen, cooler heads have prevailed. We're giving you a sign back of$1,250,000. See what you can do. We're giving you a sign back of$1,300,000. See what you can do. Hey, we're giving you a sign back of$1,220,000. It's our absolute rock bottom. If you like it, take it. If you don't, send it back. None of that happened. Fear, inexperience, confusion, those three things. So I said, okay, yeah, great, thanks very much. And guess what I did? I asked my clients if they're still interested and they said, yeah, we are, but there's these other properties out there that we wanna see. So that night I went and I showed them two other houses, very comparable, both of them listed low with offer dates. And then an agent called me and here's where we return to the feedback loop. This is a very experienced real estate agent, a lady that I have known my whole career. I would say I've probably done 10 to 12 transactions with this agent. There's a mutual respect. She called me. How's it going? How are you finding the market? She asked me about my kids. Now say what you want. Call her a schmooze. She's doing her job. We probably talked for 10 minutes before she said, so how was the showing? And I said, you know what? They like it. It's a great house. Last night, you wouldn't believe the situation I had. And then I told her the story that I just told you guys. And she said, well, listen, David, I understand what the market is and we're certainly not there. I'm happy to work with you. And I said, yeah. I mean, do you have an idea on price? There. Right there. There's where deals are made and there's where deals were lost. And I will come back to this in a moment. Do you have an idea on price? Fear, inexperience, confusion. Those three things are making most real estate agents right there just stop in their tracks. Or if it's 2022, which I'll explain in a few moments, you're taking a different strategy. She said to me, well, listen, I think my clients would love$1,250,000. Their floor is$1,200,000. I don't know, David, something in between. Boom. There. There, that's how you get deals done. So some of the people watching this on both sides of the argument are gonna say, I can't believe she sold out her clients. Why would she give you that information? Some of the other ones are gonna say, it's so nice to finally see agents being honest and open and none of this under list with offer date nonsense. I took this back to my clients and I said, guys, they have told me what they're expecting. They would be open to a preemptive offer. Now, could they get a million three on offer night? Maybe. Probably not. Would they sell for less than 1.2? They absolutely don't have to. My client said, you know what? We like that other house, the one on which they bid 1.1 million, and we probably would have gone to 1,250,000 for that. What if we could get this house for 1,220,000? I said, yeah, listen, they said they're rock bottoms 1-2. They'd really like 1-2-5. Would you guys pay 1-2-2? Yeah, we would. We could offer one, two and see what they do with it. No, you know what? For 20 grand, this is a way better house. The next morning they went and they got a deposit check. They drafted an offer. They submitted it for one, two, two. The listing agent said, thank you so much. You rock. This is great. I'll see what I can do. The page through broker bay went out and it says one offer registered preemptive because technically they have an offer date. That's how you know you're in business and the property sold. My clients bought a property. That agent got that deal done. Three days later, I get a call from the other agent. Mr. This is how an offer night works. And he said to me, we're going to be relisting, but I wanted to see if your people want to take another run at it. So I didn't tell him that I had already sold my clients a property. I said, what are you relisting at? Do you think he told me? He said, well, that's between me and the seller. I said, would you like to give me a range so that I can discuss it with my clients? He said, no, if you know what properties are worth in this area, I wouldn't have to tell you. I said, so you're calling me, you're asking me to bring an offer. I brought you an offer already. I've given you opportunity to sign it back to me. You haven't done that. And now you're calling me and asking me to bring you an offer, not just moving the goalposts, but changing the complete game here, whatever analogy you want. And he said, listen, you have one more chance at this before we relist. And I said, okay, I'll talk to my clients. I hung up and I never called him back because my clients already bought a property. And if you're asking me, why didn't I feel the need to tell him that? Because I don't care. The minute I feel the need to show somebody, I know better than they are. And that property is relisted for a million 299 and it's still on the market. So that was a long story. That was a long tangent. I told you I was going to go off on a tangent. But the point to this story is that that was based in fear, inexperience, and confusion among that listing agent. That listing agent didn't sign my offer back. Not because he's a jerk. I mean, he was a jerk. Not because he's greedy or has an ego. Probably both those things. But because of the fear. That agent's afraid of doing something he's never done before. That agent doesn't want to sign it back because it might be too low, it might be too high. Never having done it, not having worked in the market, doesn't understand. That is how so many deals are being lost in this market, is this fear and this inexperience and this confusion. So that story is based on the sell side. I want to return back to the buy side. where I mentioned the concept of patience versus inaction. Buyers out there right now are dividing themselves into these two camps. There are those that are strategically waiting because they are patient, and there are those that are waiting because of inaction, and that is based in fear, confusion, and inexperience. Now, I'll tell you another story here, because I seem to be full of them, which underscores the market that we are in. We have a development site. Absolutely gorgeous. 17 luxury townhouses and every weekend we're there and we see buyers come through. The buyers are so excited and the feedback is incredible. Unbelievable finishes, nothing like this in the area, no objections to the price. It's condominium, but the fees are only$300 a month for two and a half million dollar townhouses, two underground parking spaces, direct access to the unit. All the feedback is amazing. Every weekend, there's an agent that comes through with a buyer and says, I'm going to call you on Monday. This is great. Every weekend, there's a random buyer that says, well, and this is verbatim last weekend, we will be in touch this week. We want to decide which unit we want, and then we'll move forward. This isn't like when you go out on a date with somebody and you're like, I'll call you and you don't mean it. These are people that are legitimately telling me, we're going to let you know which one. We're going to sit down and we're going to decide. I don't think that they need to lie to me as my analogy of going on a date. They just turn around and say thank you and walk out. But every weekend, it's followed up with an action. So why? Is it based on fear and experience and confusion, or is it based on this informational, strategic desire among the buyer pool to wait? I would say once again, buyers fall into two different buckets. Now, I continue to get emails from people that have come through once, twice, or three times that say things like, hi, David, do you have an updated availability list? They're just keeping an eye. Now, if I send them a list and unit nine sold and unit two sold, they write back, they're like, okay, appreciate it, thanks. What is it that they're trying to do there? They're keeping an eye on it. They're interested, but they just can't move right now. Can't or won't and why? And that's what I want to get into next. Now, I'm a numbers guy. I'm a data nerd. When I look at our listings, there are a couple of different measures and I track these and share them with the sellers. The first is the overall number of showings. The second is requests for the home inspection. So the first is an indicator of interest, just basically how many people have come through. The second is an indicator of further interest or next step, if you will, which is to reach out and ask for a copy of the home inspection. So as I've mentioned on, I think it was a few podcasts ago, it's getting a lot harder to predict. I wrote a blog post once years ago where i looked at and there were condos in this example too so as opposed to asking for a copy of the home inspection it will be asking for a copy of the condominium status certificate remember when we used to list condos low set offer dates and get 10 offers so in this blog post i looked at the number of showings the number of requests then the number of offers and looked for a correlation and what i found in that market was we were getting 60 showings And then we get 10 offers. Okay, so what's that as a percent? One sixth, what is that, 18%? So then I would say, all right, of those 60 showings, we got 15 requests for a home inspection or a status certificate. And you know, half of those people ended up making offers. So what's that, six, seven, eight? This is what the blog post was about. And there wasn't the biggest correlation in there, but it was enough to suggest that these are reasonable measures of the market. Number of showings is down substantially. So I once had over 100 showings in a week on a condo at 311 Richmond Street East. It was absolutely ridiculous, 100 showings. When the market was really busy on a freehold, you would expect to have 50, 60, 70, maybe even 80 showings. In 2024, when things slowed down, you would expect to have 40 showings. With what I've seen so far this year in this sort of million one to million four entry level freehold, we're seeing 25 showings. There's a measure of the market. You're sharing that with the seller and you're using that to adjust expectations accordingly. Request for a home inspection, 25 showings, five requests for the inspection. Then along comes the offer, Nate, and what? indeterminate you can have zero offers one offer or two offers an example i told you earlier guy was priced at 9.99 for one two five one three house we have the only offer doesn't mean it's worth 9.99 let alone one one as i explained it's just me kind of introducing this concept of why buyers are employing this wait and see strategy there are a lot of buyers now that are targeting houses that don't sell on offer dates now there's always exceptions to the rule A house on Plater, beautiful area, Jackman School District, north of Danforth, 235 list, seven offers, sells for 275, 400,000 over list. And that thing was a gut. There's a beautiful house up the road on Browning. Now it's a three-story, it's only a semi, but it's gorgeous. I think it was listed at 2526, sold for just shy of 3 million. And then I mentioned the one on Bastido. There are always going to be those houses. But in a pocket, as I mentioned, the 1-1 to 1-4 entry level, in a pocket that's saturated with inventory, buyers are taking this wait and see approach. So for us as listing agents to use metrics like the number of showings and the number of home inspection requests as any sort of indication as the amount of interest, unfortunately, we're not able to do that anymore. Now, those showings are down. The engagement with the buyer pool has changed substantially. The listing agents need to change with it. They need to explain the difference in the market condition to the seller, not just during the course of the listing, but in advance. And then they have to be able to adjust on the fly. The agent that I mentioned in the story that called me, made some small talk, told me to bring an offer, rolled out the red carpet, that's how you're getting deals done. The agent that I mentioned that sat back, waited for offer night, was arrogant, annoying, rude, and then clueless and careless and... mired in confusion uncertainty inexperience and fear not how you get deals done but the buyer pool the buyer pool this is why i'm trying to talk to you about today and i keep going back to the agents the buyer pool are being patient the wait and see strategy five houses come out in a week and you're looking at all five and you're like geez i could buy any of these now i would say probably want to pick the one that you love the most and if you got to pay a little bit more for it fine but there are buyers that are being opportunistic this wait and see approach take out the platers and the brownings what was the other one and the bastidos five houses go to offer night one of themselves four of them are sitting thereafter that is the opportunity for the buyer pool now as i mentioned and i'm going to keep hitting this point over and over is this based on Patience, is this based on inaction? These particular buyers, this is based on patience. These buyers are strategically saying, we like these houses, let's see what happens after offer date. Because if 80% of houses in that price point on the east side of Toronto, let's say, are failing their offer nights, then those buyers are able to go in after the fact and sort of pick and choose. For the folks where inaction is the reason they're not doing something right, it's a completely different conversation. And I don't want to sound like a salesperson here and say that 18 months from now, those folks are going to wish that they had acted. But I will say that there are a lot of reasons for that inaction. Now let's call these contributing factors. The first one I would say is information saturation. The buyers are absorbing more upfront and they're feeling less need to interact with the listing agents, have their agents interact with the listing agents. The listing agents are soliciting feedback. The buyer agents aren't necessarily getting it because these buyers are slow rolling and they are slow playing. There's a decision fatigue. So with more listings to process, a lot more buyers hesitate to emotionally commit. And I can tell you, I've told this story before. The first time my wife and I bid on a house, This is gut-wrenching. I can actually remember it. I called my wife and said, we didn't get it. And she was crying. And she said, get it back. I told this story in a podcast once before. And I said, I felt like less of a man because she was telling me to do something I couldn't do. She said, I'd already pictured our daughter's bedroom and how I would decorate it. I mean, the emotion within that and the fact that she was rocking our baby girl as I was telling her we didn't get the house. I don't know that that is existing as much in today's market. Buyers... are emotionally withdrawn, and there are exceptions to the rule, as I continue to mention over and over like a broken record, but I would say that some buyers are unable to emotionally commit, and then some buyers are strategically avoiding emotionally committing. Now, more to the point, the buyers are protecting themselves against the crazy sellers that want too much. So when you go into that 999 list and you know it's worth 125, it's not to say that seller isn't gonna relist at 14. I'm seeing this over and over. I don't want to tell tales out of school, but I talked to an agent that told me the other night he got four offers on his listing and the target was 1.6 million. They had an offer of a million 580. Four offers. This one was listed at a million 369. The seller turned it down. The risk reward scenario there, I just don't know that it works in that seller's favor. But there are some buyers out there that are protecting themselves against that. Now you didn't necessarily have that luxury when the market was red hot. You would protect yourself against the market. If you could, you might look at a house listed at a million 399 and think, wow, this is probably a one six house. And you know what? If someone pays one eight for it, there's nothing you could do. That emotional roller coaster was something that a lot of buyers went through and they just threw their hands up and said, I can't, I can't compete with this. That makes no sense. Those prices aren't based on comps. They're not based on any sort of valuation. You can't protect yourself from that. In this market today, there are a lot of sellers who that just will not accept market conditions, not accept price. And I've told the same stories over and over in the last few weeks, I feel like to death, but I've seen listings that I have, I don't wanna sound rude, turned down, or let's say listings where the potential client and I have not connected that are sitting on the market at prices that make absolutely no sense. And it's not to say I don't wanna work for them to get top dollar, but when I tell someone their house is worth 135 and they say, I need 16, and it's now listed at 1679, and it's been in the market for two months, Again, I mean, that doesn't make any sense. It's not rooted in reality. On the buy side, those buyers are trying to protect themselves against that when the property is underlisted for, say,$1,199,000, and it's worth$135,000, but the seller's going to want$16,000,$17,000. This is why so many buyers are just refusing to go to offer nights. This is why so many buyers are saying, here are the houses I like, let me know which ones don't sell on the offer night. Now, again, you do not have that luxury with a lot of houses, a lot of houses in a lot of areas. And I can tell you stories about, you know, one in Leaside listed for two, four. We thought, geez, that's kind of optimistic. It's got an offer date. They got a bully offer two, six, five. Depends on the type of property, depends on the amount of inventory that's out there. But if you're looking at a three bed, two bath semi in an area, where there's 50 of those and there used to only be six of those, that's where the buyers are afforded this opportunity to sit back, be strategic, and wait. So last point I want to make, and I keep going back to communication, communication between buyers and sellers via buyer agent and seller agent. Nobody did feedback calls when the market was hot. You just didn't. You had a listing. You had your 70 showings. You didn't get your 14 offers. As a listing agent, you don't need to call for feedback. What's the feedback? Sorry, I can't hear. It's so loud in here because there's 15 showings going on. You know what I mean. Now everyone's doing feedback calls. And as I said from the beginning, they're the agents that genuinely understand the objective of the feedback call. And there are those that just start barking down your throat for their property that's been on market for five weeks. It's overpriced. And they're going to tell you about comps and why you should pay 120% of fair market value. But the agents that are calling now to ask about price expectations, good for them and good for the agents on the list side that will entertain it. So let me give you an example. It's 2022. I have a property listed at, we'll continue with the same numbers. I have a property listed at 999. I think I'm getting one four. An agent calls me and says, what's your client's expectation? There's absolutely positively no A, reason for me to answer that and B, way I'm going to do so. What do I say? I'm going to lose some of you here because I'm so dishonest and immoral. I'm going to say, well, you know, we'll see what we get on the offer night. I'm not answering the question. Well, what does your client expect? My client, they expect to sell. But what kind of price do they expect? God, I don't know, 10 million? I'm not answering the question because I don't have to. Because I am going to get what I get on the offer night. And the thing that you don't want me to say is that if that person wants to offer a dollar, fine, I need their offer. I need as many offers as I can get. So if that person were to say, would they consider taking$999? I'm not going to say no. It's not my job to educate that particular buyer about the price point in the market. And I need their offer on offer night. So how this has changed today is that I received a phone call the other day on a listing that I have. And the agent said to me, where do you think this price lands? So first thing I said was, I don't know, it's such a hard market. And I'll see if they'll come to me with the price. And they're like, yeah, I know it's tough out there, but like, do you have an idea? I'm still not gonna answer it directly, but I'll say, you know, in 2022, this thing was a one, four house. I don't know, maybe one, five. And they're like, yeah. So what do you think? At this point, I'm faced with a choice. I can continue to do what I would have done in 2022 and offer them absolutely zero insight and risk having them go call one of the many other agents that are out there, or I can work with them. And in that case, I said, listen, I think it's a one-three house. If we got a bully today at one-three, yeah, we would probably take that. If we got a one-two-five, I don't think they would, but on an offer night, yeah, they're gonna have to. So what have I done there? Have I just cost my client$50,000 by telling them it's a one-three house, we would take one-two-five on an offer night but not today? No, I'm trying to engage that agent. At the end of the day, it's the seller's decision to sign an offer or not, but I'm trying to engage that agent. the feedback loop has changed substantially. And there are still sellers, or sorry, seller agents out there that when you call them, and I'm not talking about the red hot listing. I'm talking about the one where I know it's likely not gonna sell on the offer date. There are those agents that when you call them, they're like, listen, I can't help you. And when the market was ripping in 2022, it did bother me when agents would call and say, what comparables have you used to price this? It's a 1-4 house and I'm priced at$9.99. I clearly haven't used any comparables because it's not worth$9.99. The question was sort of their way of digging and trying to ask and find. And like you might say cynically, comparables, I don't know, you have access to MLS. What comparables did you find? So not trying to contradict myself or sound hypocritical. I hope that this made sense. But there's this very, very small difference between what we did then and what we need to do now. And the difference is made in 10 seconds or less on that phone call. And that's the difference between getting a deal done or not. It's all about this feedback loop. So whereas the buyer agents used to call the seller agents to ask them, what's gonna happen on the offer night? What's your expectation? Now it's the seller agents that are calling the buyer agents. I see your book to showing, would you like to work with me? My sellers are eager to sell and so on and so forth. But when you do have a buyer agent that calls you and wants to engage, Are you going to act like it's 2022 and kick them in the teeth? Are you going to recognize it's 2025 and roll out the red carpet to work with them? So that's a lot guys. I think it's a lot of the inner workings of what's happening right now in the market. And I do like to tell stories and go off on what you might call tangents, but I think it adds color and everything that I tell you here is what's happening out there. I want to give you stories from the trenches. What is actually happening? What are the conversations that we're having? What do the statistics look like? What are the pain points? Where are the wins? Where are the losses? Where are the successes and where are the failures? Because the margin between success and failure is so small. It's one phone call. It's one conversation. It's one mistake or it's one opportunity. So folks, thank you so much for watching. As always, if you're on YouTube, feel free to drop me a comment. If you're listening on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, please remember to like, comment, or subscribe. And we'll see you here next time on The Last Honest Realtor.

People on this episode