We’ll start off by apologizing.  It’s not that what we’re going to say is offensive, but as good Canadians, we feel awkward about talking about our accomplishments.  So, we’re sorry if anything we say here makes you think “Someone thinks highly of themselves, don’t they?”

In general, Canadians can find it difficult to talk about success.  Pointing out when we’ve done something very well can come across like we’re highlighting that other people didn’t achieve the same results.  As a Canadian, that feels a bit rude and we tend to prefer people who just do their jobs well, who think that is how it should be and don’t make a big fuss out of it.

The real estate industry tends to take a very different approach than this and it could be one reason why real agents are sometimes viewed with a certain level of scepticism.  Constantly shouting about how great you are can make the general public wonder if its actually true.

There is a good reason why some real estate agents choose to aggressively promote their results and that’s because it is one way to stand out from the crowd when you’re working in an industry with lots of competition.

Take a look at the chart from Better Dwelling on the number of workers per real estate agents in a few selected geographies.  The below can make it seem as if we don’t have as many agents per the population as other areas, but it is actually the other way around.

As of the end of last year (December 30, 2021) there were 62,687 real estate agents licensed with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.  That means that 1 out of 59 workers in the GTA are working as Realtors.  In contrast, teachers make up 1 out of every 226 workers, so you’re about four times as likely to encounter a Realtor than a teacher.

If you leave the GTA, you start to encounter far fewer people working as a real estate agent.  For Canada as a whole, we have 1 out of every 146 people working as a Realtor.  If you pick a well-known US city like New York City (1 out of every 164 people) or Los Angeles (1 out of every 257 people), it is apparent we have more than enough Realtors to go around.  Feeling peckish?  Take two!

With competition, cost for services can lower, and real estate is no exception.  While there is no aggregate data on real estate commissions (check out our article here on the average commission in Ontario for more detail), there are lots of discount options out there.  A large number of those 63,000 Realtors are happy to sell your house for less than 5% commission.

We’re actually in favour of a range of options for sellers, including these lower-cost options.  Choice is a very good thing, whether it is where you want to eat, who you want to cut your hair, or who you hire to sell your house.

Where we find it difficult, as polite Canadians, is when people equate the results they can get with a low-cost option with the results they can get if they hire us.  We hope this doesn’t come across as impolite (sorry), but if you’re treating a service with varying aspects as if it is a product with no differences, then you’re making an error (sorry) and we think you should reconsider (sorry).

If you are buying a chocolate bar, then price is the only consideration.  Actually, let’s be specific.  If you are buying a Snickers chocolate bar, because you want a Snickers chocolate bar, and you have multiple places where you could buy it, and there is no difference in the process (in terms of proximity of the store to you, payment options, etc.) and no difference in the product (all are in pristine Snickers condition, not melted, not expired, etc.), then naturally you pick the cheapest option.

At the risk of being impolite, selling your house is not the same as buying a Snickers bar.  It involves many variables and if the agent you hire doesn’t price it properly, market it effectively and negotiate it aggressively, you end up with a worse result.

We choose to work within the Keller Williams real estate company, not just because it is the largest real estate company in the world (with all the benefits that brings to us as well as our clients), but because the training and approach our agents receive means we get the best results.  By best, we mean we sell real estate quicker and for more money.

You won’t see the below charts on any other real estate company’s website, because it makes them look bad.  We don’t blame them, it would be awkward to put up a chart that shows how they’re second place or worse.

First off, how much do you get when you sell with Keller Williams?

Let’s look at what percentage of sale price to list price different real estate brands were able to get their seller clients.  The below stats are for the last 12 months (October 2021 to September 2022) in the GTA.

We’re not permitted to actually put the other real estate companies that make up the six other firms on the above chart, but in alphabetical order, they are:

• Century 21
• Homelife
• Re/Max
• Right at Home
• Royal LePage
• Sutton Group

When you look at the numbers, the range doesn’t seem that huge.  The lowest place real estate brand sold for 107.95% of ask price on average, or put another way, their sellers got almost 8% over their asking price.

Keller Williams agents sold for 110.55% of ask price on average, so our clients get about 10.5% over their asking price.  With an average sale price in the GTA of $1,086,000 as of September, 2022, a relatively small difference in percentage over asking translates into big money.  How big?

If you hired a Keller Williams agent, you would have received, on average, $14,000 more on the sale of your home than if you hired the 2^nd best firm out there.  If you made the mistake of hiring the lowest achieving firm out there, you would have lost out on over $28,000 on your sale.

Sure, more is better, but how long did it take?

The next chart you won’t see anywhere else is the average days on market.  Again, the below stats are for sales in the last 12 months (October 2021 to September 2022) in the GTA.

It’s not a coincidence that Keller Williams again tops this list.  The longer a home sits on the market, the lower the price it receives.  While a day and half between us and the 2^nd place real estate company doesn’t seem like a lot, it translates to higher prices.  You can bet that the bottom achieving real estate company on the chart that takes 15 days to sell also gets less money for their clients.

There is a lot more to selling a home than simply uploading the listing to the MLS system.  Our clients choose to hire us to sell their homes because we price them properly, we market them effectively and we negotiate them aggressively.  If that sounds appealing to you, get in touch so we can talk about your next move.

Our real estate company, Keller Williams, has something called the KW Belief System.  It’s ten points that guide agents through the sometimes challenging world of real estate deals.  It was nine points, but in 2020, we added a new one in response to the growing recognition that it is not enough to refrain from exclusive and discriminatory practices.  The addition of “Equity:  Opportunities for All” is based on a mindset that we must all be engaged and active in the fight against exclusivity and discrimination.

The full belief system is laid out below.  All our important but today we wanted to focus on the first of the beliefs, Win-Win or No Deal.

Here is why approaching real estate deals from this perspective isn’t just a nice thing to do, it’s an extremely smart and effective way of making the best possible deal happen.

Let’s go.

What is it?

The first belief above is Win-Win or No Deal, which means we strive for a transaction where both parties consider the deal a good one and come out of it feeling pleased with the result.

It sounds great on paper but it also sounds like you might be giving up something on your side (whether you’re the buyer or seller) in order to make them happy as well.

Here’s three reasons why Win-Win or no deal actually results in the best possible deal for you.

It opens the door to better negotiations.

Without a certain level of trust and respect, negotiations can’t actually go anywhere.  If one side is convinced the other side is trying to take advantage or beat them down, negotiations quickly fall apart.

A good analogy would be when you play a game and you do so with a healthy level of competition and sportsmanship.  We aren’t going to cheat in order to win, but we are absolutely going to play at our highest, best level.  When we establish ourselves as reasonable, competent people with the agent and person on the other side of a transaction, we open the door to negotiating an amazing deal.

In negotiations, it is often overlooked that all parties don’t value all aspects the same.  If we don’t seek to understand what is important to the other side, we can miss opportunities to give them something they value in exchange for something we value.  We have seen many real estate transactions where factors like closing date, inclusions and rental contracts have different value to each side.

For example, when an earlier closing date saves a buyer tens of thousands of dollars in interest costs on their mortgage rate and costs a seller much less than that in temporary storage costs, there is an opportunity to come to an agreement that both parties find beneficial.

When we have a professional, cordial relationship with the other side, we can use our negotiating skill and experience to convince them to accept the deal we want by understanding the deal they want.  We frame it so they understand, we use logic to make them think and emotion to make them act.  We get the deal done.

Sometimes, you walk away rather than accept a Win-Lose deal.

The flip side of the coin is that when we are unable to establish a relationship and goal of a Win-Win deal with the other side, we sometimes have to walk away.

When we encounter agents or clients on the other side who interpret Win-Win as “I win, and also, I win.” then we need to be prepared to move on.

Understanding the benefit of a Win-Win situation means accepting the fact that not all agents and people approach deals that way.  When we see that there is no genuine intent to work together for a good deal, we are clear about that needing to change or no deal can take place.

Due to the fact that some real estate companies train their agents to aggressively and pointlessly resist what the other side wants, you can find yourself in a negotiation that is really not a negotiation.  Take it or leave it is a binary option that can come with unacceptable trade-offs.

Sometimes, the other side comes around when they realize they can’t take advantage of us and push us into a bad deal.  In other cases, they continue to try to get what they want at the expense of what we want and we make the decision to move on to another option.

If you beat someone, you better not need their good will later.

Finally, we come to the most often overlooked aspect of negotiating.

When a real estate deal is agreed upon, buyers don’t give the sellers a bag of money and receive the keys immediately.  It is often months later that the deal actually closes.

During this time, buyers and sellers continue to have interactions in the form of purchaser visits to the home, appraisals from lenders, insurance forms, utility transfers, items being left behind and many other questions and answers.

Ask any real estate lawyer and they will tell you that some real estate deals go sour and fail to close.  There are, of course, consequences, in the form of lawsuits, penalties and wasted time and money.

The harder we negotiate, the less likely it is that the other side will be helpful if we need a favour.  When a seller refuses to concede a negotiating point that costs them little but greatly impacts a buyer, it creates ill will and resentment.

Such feelings give rise to decisions, some big and some small, that can either derail a deal or make it a worse experience for the other side.  A seller can choose to do the bare minimum required by law in order to clean and empty the home.  A buyer can refuse to accommodate a last minute request to extend by a day due to a family emergency on the seller’s side.

By following the belief of Win-Win or No Deal, we avoid circumstances later on that can make the deal problematic or even result in the transaction not closing.

Win-Win or No Deal is not simply a nice way to behave, it’s a model that allows for fierce negotiations based on a reasonable level of trust.  It gives us the ability to recognize situations that we cannot and should not accept and move on to other options.  Finally, it means that the deal we negotiate actually closes and that there are no unpleasant or expensive surprises along the way.

If someone you like has had a bad experience in the real estate world, we’d ask you to pass on this article.  Whether it’s buying or selling, we believe that everyone deserve to work with agents who understand the reality of the industry but also see a way forward that is better for everyone involved.  If that sounds like a Win-Win to you, get in touch.

In a hot real estate market like we’ve been experiencing in the GTA for the last while, it can seem like who you hire to sell a property has little impact on the sale.

If that was true, then it makes tremendous sense to simply hire the real estate company that charges the lowest commission.  Cutting your costs while maintaining the same result is always a good idea.

While every real estate agent and company will offer up arguments as to why they are worth their commission, there are stats that show how much over asking each real estate company gets for their clients.  This is actual data that specifies the average sale to list price ratio achieved by agents with these real estate companies.

Put simply, it answers the question – does it matter which agent I hire to sell my home?  The answer is a definitive yes.  We’re not permitted to disclose the names and statistics of the other real estate companies in the dataset, but we can tell you about our real estate company, Keller Williams.

Let’s review the data.

The Players

Within the GTA, there are seven major real estate companies that do significant volume of business.  How significant?  Each of the below companies transacted over $8 billion dollars worth of real estate in the GTA in the past twelve months (January 2021 to January 2022).  Here they are, in alphabetical order:

• Century 21
• Homelife
• Keller Williams
• Re/Max
• Right At Home
• Royal LePage
• Sutton Group

It is worth noting that there are hundreds of smaller real estate companies that collectively transact significant volumes within the GTA.  While as a group those small, individual brokerages do lots of business, it is the seven companies listed above that are the largest within the GTA and they account for about half of all of the real estate transactions that take place in the GTA.

110.07% Over Asking

When we look at the average sale to list price ratio in the GTA over the past twelve months (January 2021 to January 2022), here’s what we see.

Within the seven major real estate companies in the GTA, the average sold to list price ratio is very good news for sellers.  Six of the seven companies have a range that is between 107.5% and 108.7%, meaning these companies make their clients between 7.5% to 8.7% more than the list price on average.

The outlier in this group of seven is Keller Williams, which comes in at 110.07% on average.  That’s 1.31% more than the next highest result and a whopping 2.55% higher than the lowest average return amongst these companies.

Put simply, if you hire an agent from Keller Williams, on average you’d make at least 1.3% more than any other agent, and you could make up to 2.5% more than if you’d hired an agent from another company.

Make Between $14K to $28K More

If we use the average sale price in the GTA over the past twelve months of $1.127M, that means that Keller Williams agents, on average, make their clients almost $15K more than the second best performing company and over $28,000 than the lowest performing major real estate company in the GTA.

That may not feel like much when you look at the sale prices we’re seeing these days, but look at it this way – hire an agent from KW and whatever high price you sell your home for, add between $15,000 to $28,000 extra.  When it comes to selling real estate, more money is almost always better.

Hire a KW Agent and Sale Commission is Effectively Zero

That 2.55% difference in average sale to list price ratio from the lowest ranking real estate company to Keller Williams is a definitive answer as to whether your listing agent makes a difference to your sale price.

It matters who you hire.  It just does.

With a typical listing commission of 2.5% on the sale side – and KW agents selling for between 1.31% to 2.55% higher than all of the other agents of major companies in the GTA – if you hire an agent from Keller Williams it could effectively cost you nothing to pay them their commission.

The next time you see ads for discounted commissions for a listing agent, think about whether they would be willing to discount their commission to nothing, or even pay you for the privilege of selling your home.  They would say no, but if you hire a KW agent, the increased sale price means they are literally earning you the money to pay most or all of the commission to sell your home.

Not just better, quicker.

As a final added bonus, when we look at the average days on market it takes for a home to sell, Keller Williams also leads the pack, taking 11.1 days on average to sell a home in the GTA.  The next quickest result is 12 days and the slowest is 13.6 days.

Just like with the sale to list price ratio, Keller Williams is a significant outlier and the only real estate company to sell for less than 12 days.  A speedy sale at a higher price?  That sounds like a pretty good result.

It can be hard to tell whether there are genuine differences between real estate agents and whether one real estate company is a better hire than another.  These stats prove that when it comes to selling a home, if you want to sell for significantly more than you would get with another agent, and quicker to boot, you should hire an agent from Keller Williams.

We’re proud to be part of the number one real estate company in the world, with the largest number of agents doing the highest volume of deals, and if you want to see your home sell for the most money, in the quickest amount of time, get in touch!