One of the challenges with talking about the real estate market is the idea that there is, in fact, “the” real estate market. The reality is that real estate markets differ considerably based on location, housing type, price ranges and attributes.

Despite this, the way the media – and some real estate agents – present real estate news is often in the context of what’s happening in “the” market. This means that the overall impression most people have of what’s happening in real estate is based on averages across multiple geographies and housing types with a wide range of prices as well as attributes.

Even the more nuanced stories typically only go down a level. A headline that says “Condo prices plummet” may have detail about the average price for the market and then break it down further into what condo apartment units are selling for on average. The same article would likely not make any distinction between the attributes of condo units and how those attributes change the average selling price. A person who owns a three-bedroom condo in Yorkville may wrongly assume that the value of their unit has collapsed, when it is in fact the one-bedroom units in Liberty Village that have seen their average price drop dramatically.

When we work with clients who are buying or selling real estate in the high-end market, the headlines and stories about “the” market are almost completely irrelevant. For properties in the $5M-plus range, it is a completely different market than the one discussed in most real estate news articles.

Let’s take a look at what’s going on in the high-end market in Toronto.

Wait, is there such a thing as the high-end market?

Right off the bat, we almost fell prey to the same issue we discussed above. As of the end of August 2026, there are 234 freehold homes for sale in Toronto for over $5M. Actually, scratch that. One of those properties is the most expensive home on the market right now, listed at a cool $989M. It was previously listed at $899,000, so it appears the listing agent made a mistake and added a few extra zeros when he adjusted the price.

So, we have 233 freehold homes for sale in Toronto for over $5M. The problem with drawing any inferences from what’s happening in “the” high-end market for the entire city is the range of properties within that dataset.

• One of the homes is listed for $48M and one is listed for $5M. The $5M home is a three-bedroom, three-washroom house at Sheppard and Midland, while the $48M home sits on more than six acres of ravine land in the Bridle Path neighbourhood of Toronto. Both are technically redevelopment opportunities, but whatever is happening at the $5M level is far different than the market at the close-to-$50M level.
• The 233 homes for sale over $5M are spread across 38 neighbourhoods of Toronto, but almost half of them are in just three neighbourhoods. Bridlepath-Sunnybrook-York Mills accounts for 22% of the dataset, St Andrews-Windfields is 12% of the dataset and Forest Hill South is also 12% of the dataset. While we could talk about what “the” $5M-plus market is doing in Toronto, if we applied that logic to Long Branch or Guildwood or any of the 24 neighbourhoods with just one or two of those listings, it wouldn’t be very accurate.
• Even the type and style of the homes for sale over $5M vary considerably. While almost all are detached homes (with just a sprinkling of multiplexes and vacant land in the mix), some are two-storey homes, some are three-storey homes and some are bungalows. They have five bedrooms on average, but one is a multiplex with 21 bedrooms and another is a tear-down with just one bedroom!

With such a range of price points, locations and types of homes, there is no one buyer for “the” high-end market in Toronto. We can feel pretty confident in making that statement, but it isn’t helpful for a seller who is considering putting their singular home up for sale.

Whenever we work with clients in the high-end market, we do a deep dive into the stats and comparables to be able to tell them what’s actually happening with homes similar to their place. Here’s an example of what that looks like with the neighbourhood of Lawrence Park South.

Oh, what a year!

The high-end market can be slower moving than the market as a whole. There are simply fewer buyers who are looking for homes over $5M than who are looking in the $1M range. While sellers benefit from less competition than at lower price points, there are correspondingly fewer buyers as well. As such, whenever we are working with a high-end seller client, we look back at what’s happened in their area in the past year.

In Lawrence Park South, we had 81 MLS listings with activity in the past year (September 2025 to August 2026) on the MLS system. Activity can be a listing, a sale or everything in between. That seems like a lot of activity for homes over $5M in one neighbourhood of Toronto, so let’s dig in a bit deeper.

Who wants to sell anyway?

With 81 individual MLS listings for over $5M in Lawrence Park South in the past year, it’s not a surprise that some didn’t sell. The level of failed sales, though, might surprise you, as 47 of those 81 MLS listings were terminated without selling. That’s 58% of the activity on the market. If you took your family into an apple orchard to pick your own apples, and 58 of the 100 trees had signs on them saying “NOT FOR PICKING”, you’d certainly come away with the perception that there aren’t actually many trees available, despite the size of the orchard. If we add in the expired listings (10 out of the 81) and the suspended listing (just one out of the 81), there’s another 14% of the market that isn’t actually available or sold. The apple orchard just added another 14 trees to the “no picking” section, so now 72 out of the 100 trees are unavailable.

Surely there are some places that sold?

Just 11 out of the 81 listings actually sold in the past year. That means about 14% of all of the activity on the market resulted in sales. One example we looked at had been on the market for six years with the same agent, so it’s clear that the prestige of listing a high-end home doesn’t always – or quickly – translate into sale commissions. Out of the 100 trees in our apple orchard, there are 13 bare trees that people had picked clean.

You’ve got dozens of choices. Well, one dozen.

There are 11 properties for sale over $5M in Lawrence Park South at their original list price, plus one more that has changed its price since listing. That’s an even dozen options in the neighbourhood (about 15% of the 81 MLS listings with activity) and, to use that apple orchard analogy again, it means that only 15 out of the 100 apple trees are actually available for picking.

Enough with the apple trees.

Analogies can be useful, but they can also break down when we get into the real analysis of what happened. Let’s talk specifics about the activity in this $5M-plus market of Lawrence Park South over the past year and what it means.

Despite having 81 MLS listings with activity in the past year, a number of those listings are for the same property. While it appears we’ve had a lot of things happening with over 80 MLS listings showing up in the search, when we filter for terminations, relistings and other changes, we actually just had 39 properties that were active in the past year in Lawrence Park South.

As we discussed above, 11 sold while still listed at $5M or more, while two more eventually sold after being relisted below $5M. In terms of the 39 properties, once we filter out the noise, it means that 13 sold over the course of the year, which is just 33% of the market. Put another way, one in three properties successfully transacted.

There are 12 houses out of the 39 properties that are still for sale, though if we include the ones that have relisted and dropped their list price below $5M, we have two more. With 14 out of 39 properties still for sale, that means that 36% of properties continue to try to sell.

The remaining 12 properties in our activity pool are now all off the market in various fashions. Seven of them were terminated and are not coming back on the market, with four more that expired with no further reappearance. This is largely just a technical difference, as a termination is an active cancellation of a listing, versus an expiry, which is an automatic removal from active listing when the contract term ends. Finally, we had one listing that was suspended, which is required when a seller needs to stop showings for more than a day or two. The property in question has been suspended for more than two months, so it might be an unofficial termination that just hasn’t been properly updated. Put these off-the-market properties together and they equal about another 31% of the market.

Here’s what “the” high-end market in Lawrence Park South looks like.

While it isn’t exactly 33/33/33, the review of the $5M-plus market in Lawrence Park South over the past year basically shows that a third of the properties sold, a third are still for sale and a third gave up and are off the market.

The properties that sold ended up selling for about 87% of their original list price, and five of them required multiple listing attempts to sell. They took about 60 days to sell on average, including any relisting attempts.

For the places still for sale, the current average days on market is 213 days, with a range of 12 days to 468 days. This is markedly different from the 60 days on average for homes that did sell, so we see that when the pricing is off, properties at this price point can sit a long, long time. Right now, nine of the 14 properties for sale have been listed for more than 180 days.

This sort of analysis is very specific to a given neighbourhood and needs to take into account lots of different factors. If you’re considering buying or selling in the $5M price range, you need to work with agents who know how to tell you what your market is doing, rather than just talking about the market. If that sounds appealing, then get in touch with us!

We’ve written a few times over the years about exclusive listings. Back in 2020 we talked about the different approaches to selling depending on how many agents are involved.  Then in 2022 we talked about reasons why you might want to list exclusively.  In 2024 we talked about the new rules (well, new back then) about how agents can market exclusive listings.

We recently talked about how we find the stats on off-market listings, but we’ve been getting questions since then about how we handle exclusive listings, or as we prefer to think of it, our private sale approach.

The below framework is one we use with our clients who want the privacy of an exclusive listing without sacrificing results. It involves three key pillars, and it is this structure that makes the difference between an exclusive listing and a private sale.

• Intelligence determines how to position the home
• Reach determines who to pursue
• Control determines exposure, access and timing

Let’s get to it.

INTELLIGENCE

The better the intelligence, the sharper the positioning.

The last number of years has seen an explosion in the type of market data available to us as real estate agents, as well as the ability to analyze it. While AI-driven models are often technically correct, the answers they provide are flawed without direction and refinement from a real estate expert.

Our first pillar of our private sale program involves gathering intelligence to understand the entire market, both public and private, and then determining how best to position the property.

Public Market

We dive deep into what the visible market is telling us, including:

• Comparable MLS sales
• Current competition
• Failed and terminated listings
• Market conditions and trends
• Pricing and buyer behaviour

This analysis goes beyond just selecting comparable properties; it tells us what is happening and what it means for our private sale.

Private Market

We next investigate what the visible market does not tell us, using the land registry and AI to determine:

• Registered transfers, cross-referenced with MLS
• Genuine off-market sales
• Frequency and value of private transactions
• Relevant private-sale patterns
• Who was involved, where identifiable

The difficulty in determining what is happening “off-market” doesn’t negate the need to analyze it. This work is challenging, but it is a crucial component of fully understanding the market.

Positioning

Data without context and insight is useless, so we take the current situation in the public and private real estate market for the home and we decide upon:

• Where the property fits competitively
• Which properties buyers will compare it against
• Appropriate exclusive pricing
• What makes the property scarce or compelling
• Which characteristics should drive our campaign

With an approach based on the full local market understanding in place, we move to the next pillar of our private sale program.

REACH

Local knowledge matters, but local reach isn’t enough.

The biggest limitation with a private sale is that with privacy comes limited reach. No exclusive listing program can reach as many people as the broad-based MLS listing approach. While this is true, the goal shouldn’t be reaching as many agents and buyers as possible – it’s reaching the right agents and buyers. Here’s the three steps we follow to make that happen.

Buyer Targeting

A common argument for hiring a neighbourhood agent is that they “know everyone” locally and therefore know the buyers. For a private sale, we think that’s too limited an approach. After all, the objective isn’t to reach the most local buyers, it’s to reach the most likely buyers. We do so by undertaking the following activities:

• Likely buyer profiles
• Move-up and lateral buyers
• Feeder neighbourhoods and markets
• Relevant price brackets
• Past clients and known prospects
• Buyers already active in comparable properties

The objective is not simply to find buyers nearby. It is to identify where the most likely buyers are actually coming from, whether they are around the corner, elsewhere in Toronto and the GTA, or even further afield.

Agent Mapping

Rather than having one agent who is active in the local market, we identify and find the right agents both locally and elsewhere who represent the buyer pool we’re targeting. We do so by using our network and research to map:

• Buyer agents from comparable transactions
• Agents currently active with buyers at the relevant price point
• Agents in important feeder markets
• Agents who repeatedly represent—not merely list—similar properties
• Agents associated with relevant off-market transactions, where identifiable

A local agent’s network is only one part of the potential market. The right buyer may live somewhere else and be represented by an agent who rarely works in the property’s immediate neighbourhood.

Pursuit

Nothing good happens without effort, so once we have the right buyers targeted and the right agents identified, we actively pursue the people who can help us find the buyer for the property. This includes:

• One-to-one agent contact
• Direct buyer contact, where appropriate
• Internal brokerage networks
• Personal introductions and private previews
• Individual follow-up
• Ongoing buyer matching as new opportunities emerge

An exclusive listing cannot depend on buyers simply finding the property. We systematically pursue the buyers and agents most likely to produce a sale, rather than relying on who we happen to know. Throughout the entire process, we exercise tight control over the listing.

CONTROL

We deliberately manage what the market sees, who gets access and how the process progresses.

Any MLS listing involves giving up control over certain aspects of the sale. Once publicly listed, you can no longer control who sees the listing, how outside agents promote the property and who is granted access to your home. Our private sale approach means that we deliberately manage what the market sees, who gets access and how the entire process moves forward.

Exposure

With a private sale, we control the market-facing side of the sale to a much larger extent. While some of the activities undertaken to properly present your property are similar, the tone, focus and timing are chosen differently. Our work in this area includes:

• High-end photography, video and floor plans
• Property materials and storytelling
• Consistent positioning and messaging
• What information is released
• When information is released
• How broadly the opportunity is distributed

We believe that an exclusive listing does not mean the property should be presented less effectively. It means its exposure is deliberate rather than indiscriminate.

Access

In addition to controlling the market-facing side of exposure, we also have the ability to control the people-facing side of the sale. Rather than your listing being open to the entire world, we choose who is given access. This means we consider aspects such as:

• Qualifying prospects
• Appointment-only showings
• Seller-approved access
• Controlled photography and video
• Privacy and security
• Private showing experience
• Confidentiality measures where warranted

For many of our private sale clients, it is very appealing to be able to control who receives detailed information, who comes through the property and under what circumstances.

Timing

Finally, we control the process and keep the strategy moving. A private sale can feel less stressful for the sellers due to more control over the process, but that does not mean that time is not of the essence. During the entire process of a private sale, we:

• Establish clear stages and decision points
• Track contacts and responses
• Review buyer and agent feedback
• Monitor showings, repeat visits and offer activity
• Provide regular seller reporting
• Adjust price, positioning or approach when warranted
• Determine when to continue privately, expand the campaign or move to MLS

Our goal is not to exclusively list the home; it is to make a private sale happen. The first is an ongoing activity of indeterminate length; the second is a goal to be achieved. As such, we establish clear timelines, review evidence and make deliberate decisions about what happens in each stage of the process.

If you’re interested in selling your home and you want to maintain privacy and control over access and the sale while still achieving your desired result, then we’d love to talk further. Get in touch with us so that we can explain how Refined Private would work for your home.

Most homes sold in Toronto, the GTA and Ontario as a whole are listed on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) system. They are advertised publicly, buyers arrange showings, offers are submitted and the eventual sale becomes part of the market data used by agents, appraisers, lenders, buyers and sellers.

Not every property is sold this way though, and some owners find buyers privately, while others are approached by neighbours, friends or agents with interested clients. The property may never be advertised, photographed or opened to the public.

These are commonly called “off market” sales and while the term sounds exclusive and potentially lucrative, particularly to buyers hoping to purchase a home before anyone else hears about it, that isn’t always the case.  Sometimes that opportunity is real and other times, it simply means a seller accepted an offer without finding out what the broader market might have paid.

So, are we on or off?

An on market property is listed on MLS and made available to the agents and buyers using that system, while an off market sale takes place without that public exposure.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that no real estate agents were involved in the deal. An agent may approach an owner on behalf of a buyer, market a property quietly within their network or help negotiate a deal after the seller has already found someone. The buyer and seller could also handle the transaction privately through their lawyers.

The important distinction isn’t whether someone earned a commission but whether the property was exposed to the broader market.  If it was, then it was on market; if not, then it was off market.

Why stay off the MLS?

Selling a home can involve repairs, painting, decluttering, staging, photography, showings and open houses, so there are sellers who are quite happy to skip the process if a buyer is willing to purchase the property as-is, offer a convenient closing date and let them leave behind whatever they don’t want.

Privacy can also matter because a public listing announces that the owner is selling, places photographs of the home online and makes the eventual sale relatively easy to find. Other sellers are attracted by the possibility of avoiding commission, although saving on the cost of selling doesn’t help much if the property also sells for substantially less than it could have.

There can be perfectly reasonable reasons to sell off market, but the convenience needs to be weighed against what the seller may be giving up.

Wait, what would I be giving up?

MLS is an advertising system, but it is also a price discovery system because buyers see the property, compare it with the alternatives and decide what they are prepared to pay. If several buyers are interested, they may compete with one another and if nobody is interested, the seller receives a fairly direct message about the price.

An off market seller doesn’t get the same test and while they may receive an excellent offer, perhaps even more than the property would have sold for publicly, they can’t know with much confidence whether another buyer would have paid more.

The seller is trading competition for some combination of privacy, convenience and certainty. That may be worthwhile, but it should be a conscious decision rather than an assumption that a private offer must be a good one.

Off market also doesn’t automatically mean below market. A private property can sell for less than market value, more than market value or somewhere in between, but without public exposure we have less evidence of what the rest of the market might have done.

At the end of the day, if a seller has a price in mind they consider fair, an off market sale that achieves that price may still be considered a success by that seller.

Pick an area, any area.

In order to see how many off market deals are taking place in a given area, we look at what has taken place on the MLS system as well as what is showing up on the Land Registry. If there were no off market deals, then the two would match perfectly. If we see more sales on the Land Registry than show up on MLS, we know that some deals took place off market and won’t show up in any of the “official” market data from TRREB.

We’ve chosen the Kingsway South MLS Community in west Toronto. Broadly speaking, this neighbourhood is bounded by Bloor Street West at the south, Montgomery Road to the west, Dundas Street West to the north and the Kingsway and Kingsway Crescent to the east.

Know your limits.

While we can see information in the Land Registry, it is more limited than what we see in the MLS system. This is due both to the nature of the transactions as well as by design.

Deals can be registered through lawyers to mask the actual sale price, while some transfers are recorded for $0 or $2 because the property is moving between spouses, family members, estates, corporations or related parties rather than being sold conventionally. Properties can also have more than one parcel identification number, or PIN, which can cause one transaction to appear more than once.

Land Registry information, which Realtors commonly access through Teranet’s GeoWarehouse platform, also tell us much less about the property and the transaction because we don’t see the listing history, photographs, room details, condition, days on market or offer process. We may see an address, registration date and amount of consideration, but not much of the story behind them.

There can also be a delay before a completed transaction appears in GeoWarehouse, so we can’t count every row as a separate arm’s-length sale and declare everything without an immediate MLS match to be off market. It would give us a nice clean answer, but it wouldn’t be a particularly accurate one.

Eighty-two versus eighty-two.

Our MLS search produced 82 sales, with an average sale price of $2,685,780 and a median of $2,515,500.

GeoWarehouse also returned 82 records, which looked like a perfect match until we compared the actual properties and found that only 44 appeared in both searches. There were 38 properties found only in the MLS results and 36 found only in GeoWarehouse.

The GeoWarehouse list included 11 transfers registered for either $0 or $2, along with duplicate or related entries. One property on Queen Marys Drive appeared first as a $0 transfer and then two days later as a $3.8-million transfer under the same PIN, while a property on Kingsway Crescent appeared twice at $4 million because two PINs were involved.

Once we removed the nominal transfers and accounted for the duplicate records, GeoWarehouse contained approximately 70 unique properties with meaningful reported consideration. Both searches may have started with 82 rows, but they were clearly not describing the same 82 transactions.

Sold and closed aren’t the same thing.

MLS normally records when a deal becomes firm, while the Land Registry records when ownership is transferred, usually on closing, and those dates can be separated by weeks or months.

A house on The Kingsway was reported sold on MLS in April 2026 for $1.65 million, with the transfer appearing in May. A property on Willingdon Boulevard sold in March for $2.51 million, but the transfer wasn’t registered until June, while a house on Strath Avenue sold in October 2025 for $5.75 million and didn’t appear in the Land Registry until March 2026.

That difference matters when we look at any specific period because a property can sell through MLS before the beginning of our search and close after the period begins, causing it to appear only in GeoWarehouse. At the other end, a property may sell through MLS near the end of the period but not yet have closed, so it won’t appear in GeoWarehouse at all.

Several of the MLS-only properties sold in June and July 2026, so the most likely explanation is not that GeoWarehouse missed a completed sale but that those deals hadn’t closed when we pulled the report.

Even the reported prices didn’t always match. A house on Shand Avenue was reported sold on MLS for $3.45 million, while GeoWarehouse showed $3.4 million, and a house on King Georges Road sold on MLS for $4.15 million compared with registered consideration of $4.12 million.

Matching the two systems therefore requires more than looking for the same price in the same month.

So, how many were off market?

After removing nominal transfers, duplicate records and unusual transactions, we were left with approximately two dozen residential properties that appeared in GeoWarehouse but not in our original one-year MLS search.

Those are possible off market sales, not two dozen confirmed private deals. Some may have sold through MLS before the beginning of our search period and closed afterward, while others may have address variations or registration details that make the match less obvious.

If every remaining candidate had sold off market, they would account for roughly 23% of the combined conventional sales identified through the two searches. That is the highest plausible figure rather than the final answer, and it will fall as earlier MLS sales are matched to later Land Registry transfers.

What the comparison does show is that MLS captures the large majority of ordinary residential sales in Kingsway South, while a smaller but still meaningful number of properties appear to change hands privately. It also shows why claims about large numbers of hidden sales need to be treated cautiously because Land Registry records include genuine private deals, but they also include delayed closings, family transfers, nominal transactions and properties with more than one PIN.

What disappears from the market statistics?

A genuine off market sale won’t appear in TRREB’s sales volume, average price, median price, sale-to-list ratio or days-on-market figures, so the published statistics don’t include every conventional property sale.

That doesn’t make the data unreliable though, as the MLS still captures most normal transactions and provides considerably more information about each one. It simply means we need to understand what is included before deciding what the numbers are telling us.

Should you be on or off?

For most sellers trying to achieve the highest possible price, public MLS exposure remains the sensible starting point because it puts the property in front of the largest pool of buyers and gives those buyers an opportunity to compete.

An off market sale may still make sense when a seller values privacy, certainty or convenience more than testing the full market. For buyers, it can provide access to a property with less competition, but “off market” is not another way of saying “bargain.”

Convenience has value and so does competition, which means both sides should understand what they may be giving up before choosing one over the other.

If you’re considering selling a home and aren’t sure which approach works best for you, then we’d be happy to look at what’s happening in your market (both publicly and privately) and give you our thoughts.  Similarly, if you’ve been looking for a home and wonder if there are options you just aren’t seeing, talk to us about how we track down opportunities like that for our buyer clients.  In either case, get in touch with us to arrange a time to chat!

In real estate, we sometimes refer to the rental market as the Wild West.  While it is heavily regulated, rentals involve a different and sometimes overlapping set of rules governing landlords, tenants and real estate agents.  This leads to confusion and differences in approaches to handling rental listings and reviewing and approving tenants.

If a landlord chooses to rent a property outside of the MLS system and not use agents to represent them or tenants, then things can get even messier.  There are dozens of free or paid sites for rental properties that operate outside of the purview of organized real estate.  With no real estate agent involved – and therefore not the same requirements on disclosure, honesty or consumer protection – there are lots of stories about scams and misrepresentation in that part of the rental market.

If the rental market as a whole is the wild west, then furnished rentals are the town where the sheriff is missing, the saloon is on fire and horses are running down people in the street.

Let’s talk about how furnished rentals work and the challenges inherent in such transactions.

More stuff, more money?

Furnishing a rental property seems like a fairly obvious way to make more money.  Put in a couch, a bed, a television and some dishes, then charge the tenant more each month.  Simple.

Except the furniture costs money, it needs to be maintained and oh, right, it actually eliminates a large portion of the tenants who would otherwise consider the property.  So, perhaps not quite that simple.

Many landlords are drawn to owning income properties because they can be relatively passive investments.  With the help of your trusty real estate agent, you find a tenant, they move in and rental income starts flowing.  Eventually they move out and the process takes place again.  It involves some effort each time a vacancy is coming up, but if the right tenant is in place, during tenancy it can be largely passive.

With furnished rentals, there is the additional challenge of having to manage both the initial furnishing of the property plus dealing with any issues during the tenancy.  If you’re renting an unfurnished property, you (or your property manager) will get calls if the fridge breaks or the AC stops working, but if their couch starts to sag or they decide they need a home office, it’s not your problem.  The landlord of a furnished rental has to deal with questions or issues related to the furniture in the property and the tricky question of standards often comes into play.

If you look around your home, you probably have some furnishings you’ll replace at some point, but only when you feel like it.  That pan that doesn’t have much of the non-stick left on it may still get used, and you just put a blanket over that stain on the couch.  It is a universal truth that when someone doesn’t have to pay for something to be fixed, their standards rise and their patience for waiting drops.

Given the additional challenges in renting out a furnished property, do many people do it?

It’s about 15% to 20% of the rental market.

As of July 17, 2026, there are 6,348 properties for rent in Toronto.  The vast majority of those are available unfurnished, with about 85% being listed as not coming with any furniture.  The remaining 15% are listed as either partially furnished or furnished.

Put another way, if you’re looking for a place to rent, you’ve got over 5,300 options in the city if you’re bringing your own furniture and about 1,000 if you want it to come furnished.

As is indicated by the existence of “partially furnished” as well as “furnished”, there is no universally understood definition of what a furnished place includes.  One landlord may describe a unit as furnished because it contains a bed, a sofa and a dining table. Another may provide furniture, linens, cookware, dishes, small appliances, a television, artwork and everything else a tenant needs apart from their clothing and toothbrush.  Those are not the same product.

There are many different attempts to establish what is being offered by using particular descriptions.  A fully furnished property logically has more than a furnished property, but what specifically?  Is a turn-key furnished property even more than fully furnished, or a bit less?  Where does partially furnished come into play?  Does that mean there is whatever the landlord let the previous tenant leave, or is it beds and couches, but not tables?

The issue of standards comes into play again here, because what is a fully furnished unit to one person may be woefully under furnished to another.  With no universally agreed upon definition of the differences between the types of furnished properties, misunderstandings and unmet expectations are commonplace.

To sum it up, the landlord has not simply rented a unit to a tenant.  In essence they have entered the hospitality business, just without room service or the tiny bottles of shampoo.

If we’re clear on the challenges of renting out furnished properties, the question becomes, do those landlords who take the plunge make a killing?

The few, the proud, the marginally more expensive.

Even if only 15% to 20% of the rental market are comprised of furnished properties, there has to be a reason in the form of additional rent for a landlord to take on the extra work.

When we look at the asking rent for the properties currently on the market that we described above, we see it isn’t much of a premium.

• Unfurnished rentals (5,347 of them) are asking an average of $2,762 per month.
• Furnished rentals (720 of them) are asking about 7% more on average, or $2,950 per month.
• Partially furnished rentals (just 281 of them) are actually asking about 4% less! Their average list price is $2,650, so about $110 less than the average price for an unfurnished unit.

This is just one snapshot of what we’re currently seeing in Toronto and we’d definitely urge caution before assuming that holds true in other markets or at other times.

In fact, the available Canadian data on furnished rentals are far less decisive than we would like.

Back in 2021, the good folks at Rentals.ca examined apartment and condominium listings and found that furnished units in Ontario had an average asking rent 8% higher than unfurnished units.  That’s pretty close to what we found in our review but when they looked at it on a per-square-foot basis, the difference was 14%.  Keep in mind that data was from early 2021 and COVID was still very much impacting the rental market.

Another data source comes from the website liv.rent, which reported that in June 2026, furnished one-bedroom units in Toronto averaged $1,929 per month, while unfurnished units averaged $1,970.  That’s a far cry from a 7% to 8% premium and in general, we believe that the relationship changes from month to month.

Statistics Canada found that furniture was included in only 4% of Canadian rents in its 2021 Canadian Housing Survey. The study also warned that rents are difficult to compare without accounting for differences in the property, location and everything included in the monthly payment.

In our experience, sometimes furnished units show a modest premium and sometimes they show a discount.  That does not mean that furniture has no value, but it does tell us that a straight comparison between all furnished and unfurnished listings can be misleading.

After all, the furnished units may be located in different neighbourhoods than where unfurnished units are located.  They may be smaller, larger, newer or older than what’s in the unfurnished rental market.  They may include utilities, parking or internet at a higher rate than unfurnished rentals, or they may not.

In other words, there is no reliable rule that says adding furniture increases the rent by 7% or any other convenient number.  Unfortunately, the market is seldom that cooperative.  We say “the” market, but make no mistake, the furnished rental market is fundamentally a different market than the unfurnished rental market.

Different tenants, different needs, different length of stay.

The type of tenant who is interested in a furnished rental is very different than someone interested in an unfurnished rental.  While there may be the occasional person who is open to either, it is typically a binary situation – either you have furniture or you need it.

In our experience, there are a number of different reasons why some tenants look for a place that comes furnished.

• Corporate transferees
• People working in the GTA on temporary assignments
• Newcomers who have not yet purchased furniture
• People completing renovations to their own homes
• Couples who have recently separated
• Students or faculty at nearby schools
• Tenants who expect to move again within a relatively short period

Renting a furnished unit is very much a temporary situation.  While there are many cases of renters being at the same place for years or even decades, this doesn’t happen in the furnished rental market.  While not all furnished rental units are available for short-term (one month or longer) rentals, they do share a prospective tenant pool in common with short-term rentals.

These renters may be willing to pay more for a furnished place because furnishing a home for a temporary stay makes little financial sense.  After all, buying a sofa, mattress, dining table and basic household supplies is expensive and so is moving them.

While there are definitely challenges with renting out a furnished property, it can be a smart approach if handled correctly and everything aligns.  We’ve helped a number of landlord clients with furnished rentals and we know the hurdles and how to handle them.  Whether it’s a prospective tenant asking if the landlord won’t just remove the furniture (completely or in part), the move in inspection and inventory report or the suitability of certain properties (and unsuitability of others!) we’ve dealt with it all.  If you’re considering renting out a furnished property, or you’re looking to rent one yourself, get in touch with us!

The real estate industry generates an awful lot of statistics.  While average days on market, sale to list price ratios and other stats offer useful insight into what’s going on in a given market, it’s prices that really command attention.

Whenever you see headlines about prices rising or falling, they are based on stats.  The biggest provider of those stats are real estate boards and they do their best to provide accurate information.  Sometimes, however, the data can be skewed by inaccuracies – and sometimes they’re inaccurate on purpose.

It’s time to talk about that perineal favourite word in real estate – location.

Location, location…wait, what was the third thing?

While the old adage about real estate being about “location, location, location” may still have some truth to it, you can also say that all listings have three locations.  This is because when it comes to the Multiple Listing Service (or MLS) where listings are posted, each property has three location designations.

The first is MLS Area, which is the broadest and largest geography.  Within the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board’s boundaries, we have seven of these MLS areas – Toronto, Peel, Halton, York, Durham, Dufferin and Simcoe.

Each MLS Area then has smaller districts within it, called the MLS Municipality.  Despite the name, many MLS Municipalities are not in fact municipalities.  If you look within Toronto, there are dozens of MLS Municipalities, following numbered naming conventions based on which part of the city they are located.  All areas in the east of the city start with E0 followed by a number, central locations are C0 followed by a number and western areas are called – you guessed it – W0 followed by a number.  Outside of Toronto the municipality tag makes more sense, as they do somewhat correspond.  For example, the MLS Area of Peel has three MLS Municipalities – Brampton, Mississauga and Caledon.

Finally, the smallest, most local MLS segments are MLS Communities.  If you’re looking in Toronto or other densely populated areas, these MLS Communities are recognizable neighbourhoods, such as Mimico, the Beaches, or Bayview Village.  Outside of urban centres, however, the MLS Community may be an entire town or city.  For example, Georgetown is an MLS Community and there isn’t any smaller segmentation in the data provided by TRREB.

Below is a map that gives you a sense of what these MLS segments look like across the GTA.

Get to the teleporting building already.

Now that we’re clear on the idea of MLS Areas, Municipalities and Communities, let’s talk about why real estate agents sometimes put the wrong designation on their listing.

Below is a picture of 500 St. Clair Avenue West.  It’s a lovely condo building located on the corner of Bathurst and St. Clair in Toronto.

IMAGE COURTESY OF CONDOS.CA

It’s located at the intersection of two MLS Municipalities (C03 and C02) and four MLS Communities (Humewood-Cedarvale, Forest Hill South, Casa Loma and Wychwood).  While it may be right beside another MLS Municipality and bounded by three other MLS Communities, make no mistake, 500 St. Clair Avenue West is located in C03, Humewood-Cedarvale.

We have a client who we’ve helped buy in the building who’s considering selling their unit.  As part of our research into determining the value of the unit, we looked at the 10 most recent sales in the building.  Seven of the listings correctly identified the unit as being located in Humewood-Cedarvale, while three of them had the MLS Community listed as Forest Hill South.

Did these three units somehow teleport to the eastern side of Bathurst?  Perhaps they all had very large balconies that were built across the street so they technically were partially in Forest Hill South?  Sadly, the answer is no, and the reason these units were misrepresented as being in another MLS Community was for just one reason – price.

So, you’re 6’2 on your online dating profile but 5’9 in real life?

Much like the person pretending to be something they aren’t in order to attract attention, some real estate agents choose to misrepresent the location of their listing to make them appear more valuable.

Let’s look at the differences between Humewood-Cedarvale and Forest Hill South.

First, here’s the stats for the sales of condo units in Humewood-Cedarvale so far in 2026.

• Average sale price: $454,909
• Average days on market: 46.7 days
• Sale-to-list price: 96.5%

Compare that against the stats for sales of condo units up to May 30, 2026 in Forest Hill South.

• Average sale price: $1,229,287
• Average days on market: 28.9 days
• Sale-to-list price: 97.8%

If you could wave a wand and move your condo unit from Humewood-Cedarvale to Forest Hill South, it would be very helpful!  You’d sell for about $775K more, it would take about 18 days less to sell and you’d get 1.4% closer to your list price.

But it’s the same location!

Despite some agents choosing to misrepresent the location of their property for sale, it isn’t actually in another MLS Community.  It’s not as if a buyer thinks they’re buying in Forest Hill South when they’re really buying in Humewood-Cedarvale, right?

The reason some agents take this approach is to appeal to a presumably more affluential buyer pool.  While anyone searching for condo units for sale in the building would see all of the units, regardless of what MLS Community they’re listed under, anyone who is looking for a condo unit in Forest Hill South would see inaccurately listed units in their search results.

It is questionable as to how impactful such deceitful location listings are in terms of sale price.  After all, while it may encourage some buyers from the neighbouring MLS Community to cross the border and view the listing, the reverse is true for buyers searching in the accurate MLS Community.  It seems likely that buyers looking in the actual area you’re located within would be more eager to purchase the unit.  At the end of the day, one thing is certain – it makes the data less accurate for everyone.  How inaccurate?  Let’s check.

It’s just $177,000 off, what’s the big deal?

When we looked at the data for one month when two of these misrepresented listings were sold, here’s what we found.

The data showed six sales in Forest Hill South, which an average sale price of $1,045,000.  Two of those sales were in fact in Humewood-Cedarvale and shouldn’t have been included in the dataset.  When we remove those, the average price rose to $1,223,000.  That means the average sale price was under reported to the tune of about $177,000.  This is just one month in one MLS Community and it is unknown how prevalent this practice is on MLS listings.

Given the importance of real estate stats in both reporting on the market and calculating current values for real estate, such misrepresentations of location do tremendous harm to the accuracy of the data.  We’ve only ever seen this take place where an agent is pretending it is located in a higher-priced MLS Community, so it just serves to bring down the average in those higher-priced areas and under-report the actual sales taking place in the real MLS Community the property within which it is actually located.

The ability of unethical agents to misrepresent their properties has persisted for a long time and it is our hope that the loophole will be changed soon.  While it may have been onerous in the past to have someone check each MLS listing to ensure accuracy of the location, it seems simple enough now given the technology we have available.

Whether you’re buying or selling, experienced agents know that things aren’t always what they appear.  In our work with our clients on both sides, we make sure that the data we’re relying on to inform our decisions is accurate.  If that sounds appealing to you, get in touch with us to discuss how we can help you buy or sell!

Every once in a while, an MLS listing includes something that makes us wonder whether we’ve had too much coffee.

At 385 Centennial Road in Scarborough, it isn’t the number of bedrooms. There are none. It isn’t the renovated kitchen either, because there is no kitchen.  It’s the seller, which is listed as follows.

His Majesty the King in right of Ontario as represented by the Minister of Infrastructure

Apparently, the King owns an acre of vacant land in Port Union.

Before picturing him reviewing offers at Buckingham Palace, let’s explain what is actually going on—and whether anyone could build something there.

Long live the legal entity!

Let’s start with the disappointing news.  The King does not personally own this property.  “His Majesty the King in right of Ontario” is the legal name used when the Province of Ontario owns real estate. The words “in right of Ontario” mean the Crown is acting as the provincial government, not as the monarch’s private real estate holding company.

The Minister of Infrastructure represents Ontario in the sale, Infrastructure Ontario manages the provincial real estate process, and a real estate brokerage (CBRE) is marketing the property.

The land registry actually still uses the former wording, “Her Majesty the Queen in right of Ontario.” That doesn’t mean the property was recently transferred between members of the Royal Family. The Crown continues when the monarch changes, so the wording around ownership simply changes along with it.

This also helps explain why the MLS listing shows annual property taxes of one cent. The Province is tax-exempt.  Sadly, the buyer does not inherit the royal tax plan.

Why does Ontario own it?

The property is a wooded, irregularly shaped parcel of approximately 1.08 acres beside Highway 2A and close to Highway 401.  Governments regularly buy land for highways, road widening, drainage, utilities and other infrastructure.

Once the work is finished, they can be left with oddly shaped pieces that are no longer needed.  That is very much what happened here given the shape of the property and its location beside a highway corridor.

I know times are tough, but why’s the government selling it?

When Ontario no longer needs a property, it can declare the land surplus. The property is generally offered through government and public-sector channels first. If nobody there buys it, Ontario can put it on the open market.

That’s how a provincial property eventually appears on MLS with the King as seller and a commercial real estate brokerage handling the listing. The land is now listed for $445,000, down from its original asking price of $750,000.  More than an acre in Toronto for less than the price of a condominium sounds like a tremendous deal, but there’s a catch – the zoning.

Can you build a house on it?

Not under the current zoning.

The property is zoned “Open Space–Natural”, which is intended mainly for natural and open-space uses. A detached house is not currently permitted. Neither are townhouses, condominiums or a conventional subdivision.  As such, this isn’t a matter of buying the land, choosing a floor plan and asking the King where to send the deposit.

The zoning is more supportive of uses such as parks, natural areas, agriculture, community gardens, certain outdoor recreation or education uses, public utilities and transportation-related uses.

A neighbouring owner might also buy it for additional privacy, outdoor space or control over what happens next door. That would not automatically turn the land into a residential building lot, but it could still have value to the right person.

Sure, sure, but everything eventually has housing built on it, right?

While the current zoning doesn’t allow it, it is true that a buyer could try to change the zoning and other planning permissions.  It isn’t going to be easy, however.  That process would require environmental, transportation, servicing and natural-heritage studies. The property is beside a highway, heavily wooded and irregularly shaped, so even if some development were eventually approved, the entire acre might not be usable.

As such, we’d say that rather than approved development land, this is land with a possible development theory.

The difference is several years, a collection of consultants, a substantial amount of money and no guarantee the City will say yes.

Is anyone actually going to buy it?

With a public listing history going back to November, 2023, this clearly isn’t a piece of land that’s moving quickly.  The most likely buyer is someone who sees value beyond building a house tomorrow.  That could be a neighbouring owner, a conservation organization, a public agency, a utility, an urban agricultural operator or a developer comfortable taking on significant planning risk.

For everyone else, it could become a $445,000 place to admire squirrels.

The King’s name makes the listing entertaining, but it doesn’t determine the property’s value – the zoning does.  Vacant land is not valuable simply because there is a lot of it and its value depends on what can legally, physically and economically be done with it.  In real estate we sometimes refer to that as the highest, best use.  In this case, the highest, best use is quite limited, so the price reflects that reality.

At the end of the day, the Crown ownership tells us who is selling, the land registry gives us clues about where the property came from and the zoning explains why an acre of Toronto land is available for $445,000.  Despite the name on the listing, calling the King probably won’t help you build a house there anytime soon.

If you’re curious about the idea of buying vacant land and building a home on it, then understanding what is possible is a crucial part of the process.  We love working with clients who are exploring this idea and if that sounds like you, get in touch with us to discuss working together!

Selling a house looks easy from the outside.

You sign some paperwork, take some photos, put the home on MLS, have a few showings, receive an offer, and then wait for closing.

If that was all it took, then real estate agents would be hanging out with travel agents and milk delivery men and lamenting the passage of time.

The real version has a lot more going on.

A successful sale involves pricing, paperwork, preparation, photography, marketing, showings, agent outreach, feedback, offer strategy, conditions, lawyers, deposits, closing details, and a surprising number of small things that can go sideways if nobody is paying attention.

So, what does it really take to sell a house?

Let’s get into it.

#1 – First, We Need to Understand the Property

Before anything is listed, signed, or photographed, we need to understand what we are actually selling.

That sounds obvious, but it is where a lot of mistakes start. A house is not worth a certain amount just because a similar-looking house sold nearby. Buyers care about details, and those details can change the result.

At this stage, we are looking at things like:

• Property type
• Neighbourhood
• Lot
• Condition of the home
• Recent comparable sales
• Current competition
• Active listings
• Expired listings
• Buyer demand
• Timing
• Likely buyer objections
• Whether repairs or preparation make sense
• Whether the home has features that need to be explained properly

This is also where we talk about the seller’s goals.

Some sellers want the highest possible price and are willing to do more preparation. Some need a particular closing date. Some want the least disruption possible. Some are selling a vacant property and can be more flexible with timing and showings. Some are living in the home with children, pets, work schedules, and actual lives that need to be managed.

The strategy should match the seller, not just the house.

#2 – Then We Build the Pricing Strategy

 Pricing is not just picking a number that feels good.

A proper pricing strategy should answer three questions:

1. What is the property likely worth?
2. How will buyers see it compared to the competition?
3. What listing strategy gives the seller the best chance of a strong result?

That usually means reviewing:

• Comparable sold properties
• Current active listings
• Similar homes that failed to sell
• Market direction
• Days on market
• Sale-to-list ratios
• Buyer behaviour in that price range
• Whether offer dates are working
• Whether buyers are negotiating aggressively
• Whether the property should be priced at market value or positioned more aggressively

This is where the valuation work matters. It is not just a stack of comparable sales. It is the basis for the actual plan.

The wrong price can cost a seller money in two different ways. Price too low without a real strategy and you may leave money on the table. Price too high and the listing can sit, become stale, and eventually require a price reduction.  Do either of those two sound ideal to you?

#3 – Paperwork Starts Earlier Than Most Sellers Expect

 Once the seller decides to move forward, the paperwork begins.

This part is not exciting, but it matters. A listing is a legal relationship, and the documents need to be accurate.

Seller paperwork may include:

• Listing agreement
• RECO Information Guide
• FINTRAC identification forms including Politically exposed person forms
• MLS data forms
• Schedules and clauses
• Brokerage documents
• Disclosure documents, where applicable
• Condo-related documents, where applicable
• Spousal consent, where required
• Special instructions about inclusions, exclusions, access, or commission

Details need to be checked carefully, including:

• Seller legal names
• Property address
• Ownership details
• Listing price
• Commission, including Co-operating brokerage commission
• Listing start date
• Listing expiry date
• Holdover period
• Included items
• Excluded items
• Special terms
• Signatures and initials

This is one of those areas where sellers usually only notice the work if something goes wrong.

A typo in a name, a wrong date, a missing initial, an unclear inclusion, or a poorly drafted schedule can create real problems later. Good paperwork does not sell the house by itself, but bad paperwork can absolutely make the sale harder than it needs to be.

#4 – The Home Has to Be Prepared Before It Goes Public

 A good listing launch does not happen on listing day. It happens before listing day.

Before the home goes live, there is often a preparation stage. Depending on the property, that can include:

• Repairs
• Painting
• Cleaning
• Window cleaning
• Landscaping
• Decluttering
• Staging
• Handyman work
• Pre-list inspection
• Floor plan preparation
• Condo status certificate ordering
• Sign installation
• Lockbox installation
• Key organization
• Access planning
• Showing instruction planning

This does not mean every seller should spend a fortune preparing their home.

Some improvements are worth doing. Some are not. The goal is to decide what will actually help the sale.

There is a big difference between spending money to improve the result and spending money because everyone feels vaguely anxious before listing. The first one is strategy. The second one is just expensive stress.

#5 – The Listing Calendar Needs to Be Managed

Selling a house involves a lot of scheduling. Like, a lot of scheduling.

Before the listing goes live, the timing needs to be coordinated for:

• Cleaners
• Painters
• Repairs
• Staging
• Photography
• Video
• Floor plans
• Sign installation
• Pre-list inspection
• Open houses
• MLS launch
• Offer date, if there is one
• Status certificate timing, for condos
• Showing availability

If one step is delayed, it can affect everything else.

For example, if the cleaners are late, the photos may need to be moved. If the photos are delayed, the MLS launch may need to be pushed. If the MLS launch moves, the open house timing may change. If the offer date changes, the whole marketing plan may need to be adjusted.

This is why a good listing process has a calendar, not just a vague hope that everything will somehow come together.

#6 – Photography, Video and Floor Plans Are Not Just “Marketing Extras”

Most buyers see the home online before they ever see it in person.

That means photography, video, floor plans, and listing presentation matter.

This stage can include:

• Booking professional photography
• Preparing the home for photos
• Reviewing the photos
• Selecting the best MLS photos
• Putting the photos in the right order, so it makes sense to someone clicking through
• Checking the virtual tour
• Reviewing the floor plans
• Making sure the marketing reflects the property accurately
• Preparing feature sheets
• Preparing social media material
• Preparing agent outreach material

The goal is not to make the house look like something it is not. That just creates disappointment at showings.  Believe it or not, if a buyer and their agent shows up to find that the listing agent “tweaked” photos and catfished you into the showing, the result isn’t an eager buyer ready to submit an offer.

The goal is to show the property at its best, make the layout easy to understand, highlight the right features, and give buyers a reason to book a showing.

Bad photos can make a good house look forgettable. Good photos cannot fix a bad property, but they can make sure the right buyers actually notice it.

#7 – The MLS Listing Has to Be Built Carefully

The MLS listing is where a lot of buyers and agents form their first real opinion of the property.

It needs to be accurate, complete, and strategic.

That means checking:

• Price
• Address
• Property type
• Taxes
• Lot size
• Room measurements
• Bedrooms
• Bathrooms
• Parking
• Locker information, if applicable
• Condo fees, if applicable
• Inclusions
• Exclusions
• Rental items
• Showing instructions
• Offer instructions
• Remarks
• Attachments
• Schedules
• Photos
• Floor plans
• Virtual tour links

This is also where we need to avoid creating confusion.

If the listing says one thing and the feature sheet says another, buyers notice. If the room measurements are wrong, agents notice. If the inclusions are unclear, it can become an issue during negotiations.

The MLS listing is not just data entry. It is the public version of the sale.

#8 – Listing Day Is a Launch, Not a Button

 Listing day is when the property officially hits the market, but there is more to it than pressing “submit.”

On listing day, the following needs to be checked:

• MLS listing is live
• Realtor.ca is displaying properly
• Photos are showing correctly
• Virtual tour link works
• Showing instructions are correct
• Lockbox is installed and working
• Seller is receiving showing notifications
• Showing system is configured properly
• Sign is installed
• Marketing materials are ready
• Brokerage and agent promotion is underway
• Open house information is correct, if applicable

This is also when the seller should receive the key links and information, including:

• MLS listing link
• Realtor.ca link
• Virtual tour link
• Showing instructions
• Sign photo, where relevant
• Open house details, if planned

A bad launch can waste the first and most important days of market exposure.

That does not mean every listing sells in the first few days. It means that when a listing goes live, it should be ready.

#9 –  Showings Are…Challenging

 Showings can become the biggest pain point for sellers, especially if they are still living in the property.

When the home is on the market, sellers may be dealing with:

• Last-minute showing requests
• Buyers arriving late
• Agents cancelling
• Overlapping appointments
• Requests during dinner
• Requests during work calls
• Requests during children’s nap times
• Pets that need to be removed
• Lights, doors, and alarms
• Cleaning before every appointment
• Keeping the house looking ready all the time

For someone selling privately, this can become exhausting very quickly.

A showing plan needs to answer practical questions, including:

• When are showings allowed?
• How much notice is required?
• Are showings automatically confirmed or manually approved?
• Are there any blocked-off times?
• How do agents access the property?
• Where is the lockbox?
• What should agents know before entering?
• Are there pets?
• Should lights be left on or off?
• Should shoes be removed?
• Are there alarm instructions?
• Are there rooms, doors, gates, or garages with special instructions?
• Can showings overlap?
• How is feedback collected?
• What happens if a buyer wants a second showing?

This matters because access affects results.

If a property is too hard to show, some buyers will skip it. If showings are completely unmanaged, the seller may feel like they are living in a hotel lobby.

The goal is to make the home easy enough to see without making the seller’s life miserable.

#10 – Showing Feedback Has to Be Tracked and Interpreted

Once showings begin, the market starts giving feedback.

That feedback is not always direct, and it is not always useful, but it needs to be reviewed.

We are looking at things like:

• How many showings are happening
• How quickly buyers are booking
• Whether buyers are coming back for second showings
• What agents are saying
• What buyers are objecting to
• Whether the price is being questioned
• Whether the condition is being questioned
• Whether the layout is causing concern
• Whether the location is a sticking point
• Whether buyers are comparing it to another property
• Whether new competition has appeared
• Whether similar homes have sold

The important part is not to overreact to one random comment.

One buyer saying the kitchen is small may mean nothing. Ten buyers saying the kitchen is small probably means something. No showings at all means something else entirely.

A listing should not just sit online while everyone hopes for the best. It needs to be actively managed.

#11–  Weekly Updates Keeps Everyone Informed

A seller should not have to wonder what is happening.

During the listing, there should be regular updates on:

• Showing activity
• Buyer feedback
• Agent feedback
• Competing listings
• Recent sales
• Changes in market conditions
• Open house results
• Online activity, where useful
• Whether the current strategy is working
• Whether a change is needed

This is where the conversation needs to be honest.

If the listing is getting good showings but no offers, that tells us one thing. If it is getting very few showings, that tells us something else. If buyers are repeatedly objecting to the same issue, we need to deal with that reality.

Sellers do not need cheerleading. They need useful information.

#12 – Open Houses and Agent Outreach Still Matter

Open houses are not magic, but they can be useful.

Depending on the property, the strategy may include:

• Public open houses
• Agent open houses
• Brokerage promotion
• Email promotion to agents
• Social media promotion
• Direct outreach to agents with active buyers
• Follow-up with agents who have shown the property

The point is not simply to say, “We did an open house.”

The point is to increase exposure, collect feedback, create urgency, and make sure the right buyers and agents know the property exists.

Sometimes open houses directly produce the buyer. Sometimes they help create momentum. Sometimes they reveal that buyers are reacting differently than expected.

All of that is useful.

#13 – Sometimes the Strategy Needs to Change

Not every property sells right away.

That does not automatically mean something went wrong, but it does mean the strategy needs to be reviewed.

Possible adjustments may include:

• Changing the price
• Updating the photos
• Changing the order of photos
• Revising the MLS remarks
• Changing showing instructions
• Improving access
• Refreshing marketing materials
• Increasing agent outreach
• Following up with previous showings
• Relisting, where appropriate
• Changing the offer strategy
• Dealing with a condition or objection that keeps coming up

A stale listing is not usually fixed by ignoring it.

The market is allowed to disagree with the original plan. When it does, the seller needs clear advice on what to do next.

#14 – Offers Are About More Than Price

When an offer comes in, price is important, but it is not the only thing that matters.

A seller needs to understand the full offer, including:

• Purchase price
• Deposit amount
• Closing date
• Conditions
• Inclusions
• Exclusions
• Irrevocable time
• Buyer financing risk
• Inspection terms
• Status certificate terms, for condos
• Sale of buyer’s property condition, if included
• Unusual clauses
• Missing schedules
• Mistakes or unclear wording

The seller also needs advice on the strategy:

1. Accept the offer.
2. Reject the offer.
3. Sign the offer back.
4. Wait for another offer, if that is realistic.
5. Use the offer to create leverage, if the rules and circumstances allow it.

The best offer is not always the highest offer.

A slightly lower firm offer with a strong deposit and clean closing may be better than a higher conditional offer with weak terms. It depends on the seller’s priorities and the risk in the offer.

#15 – Conditional Sales Need to Be Managed Carefully

If the property sells conditionally, it is not sold firm yet.

Common buyer conditions include:

• Financing
• Home inspection
• Insurance
• Lawyer review
• Status certificate review
• Sale of the buyer’s property

During the conditional period, someone needs to track:

• Condition deadlines
• Deposit receipt
• Required documents
• Access for inspections
• Access for appraisals
• Status certificate delivery, if applicable
• Notices of fulfillment
• Waivers
• Amendments
• Communication with the buyer’s agent
• Whether the deal is becoming firm or falling apart

This is a time-sensitive part of the process.

If the buyer waives or fulfills the conditions properly, the deal becomes firm. If they do not, the property may need to go back on the market.

That is why the details matter.

#16 –  Sold Firm Is Not the Same as Finished

Once the deal is firm, the seller can breathe a little easier, but the work is not done.

After a firm sale, the process may include:

• Marking the property sold
• Confirming the deposit
• Updating showing instructions
• Changing lockbox access
• Installing a sold sign or sold rider
• Removing or collecting marketing materials
• Sending paperwork to the lawyers
• Confirming seller and buyer lawyer details
• Arranging purchaser visits
• Preparing closing instructions
• Organizing signed documents
• Preparing internal trade and brokerage paperwork
• Tracking the closing date

This stage is less visible to the public, but it is still important.

Remember, a firm sale still needs to close!

#17 – Purchaser Visits and Closing Preparation Need Organization

Most agreements allow the buyer to visit the property before closing.

Those visits need to be scheduled and managed. They may be used for:

• Measuring rooms
• Getting contractor quotes
• Showing family members
• Planning furniture
• Checking the property before closing

The seller also needs to prepare for closing by dealing with:

• Keys
• Fobs
• Remotes
• Mail keys
• Alarm codes
• Appliance manuals
• Warranties
• Rental contracts
• Utility accounts
• Moving arrangements
• Final cleaning
• Vacant possession, where required
• Any agreed repairs or items

This is where organization matters.  Nobody wants to be searching for a garage remote or condo fob at the last minute.

#18 – Closing Day Is a Legal Event, Not Just Moving Day

On closing day, the lawyers complete the transfer.

The buyer’s funds are sent. The seller’s lawyer deals with payouts, adjustments, title transfer, and release of keys. Once the deal has officially closed, the property belongs to the buyer.

The seller should not hand over keys directly unless instructed to do so by the lawyer or unless the proper process has been arranged.

Closing day can feel simple if everything has been prepared properly. If it has not, it can be stressful.

The key things to confirm are:

• Lawyer has what they need
• Property is ready for vacant possession, if required
• Keys and access items are ready
• Seller understands when property is officially closed
• Funds have been received
• Final adjustments are handled by the lawyers

Once the lawyer confirms closing, the sale is complete.

#19 – Even After Closing, There Are Still Final Details

After closing, there are still a few loose ends.  These may include:

• Confirming the transaction closed
• Confirming funds were received
• Confirming commission and brokerage paperwork
• Saving final documents
• Sending the seller a transaction summary with all the documents of the sale in one place
• Updating client records
• Following up after the move to ensure no questions or issues remain

The seller should also keep a record of:

• Agreement of purchase and sale
• Amendments
• Waivers or notices of fulfillment
• Lawyer closing documents
• Statement of adjustments
• Commission statement
• Receipts for moving or sale-related expenses, where relevant

The house may be sold, but the paperwork should not disappear into the abyss.

As we hope the above lengthy list of activities shows, selling a house is not one job. It is a long list of connected jobs, and each one affects the next.

A good sale depends on:

1. Pricing the property properly
2. Preparing it intelligently
3. Launching it cleanly
4. Managing showings without chaos
5. Tracking feedback honestly
6. Marketing it effectively
7. Negotiating aggressively
8. Managing conditions and deadlines
9. Coordinating lawyers and closing details
10. Keeping the seller informed throughout the process

It’s true that from the outside, selling a house can look like putting a sign on the lawn and waiting for a buyer.  Sadly, some sellers have experienced such a haphazard approach and the results are always less than optimal.

Our clients choose to work with us to sell their homes because they get that there is a lot happening behind the scenes. Our goal is not just to get the home sold. Our goal is to minimize the possibility of mistakes, manage the stress, protect our seller client, and get the best result possible.  If that sounds appealing to you, then get in touch with us to talk further!

We’re starting to see some bidding wars and homes selling over list price in certain areas we’re working in with clients, and we thought it was worth examining how common that is these days.

We pulled the data for freehold properties in Toronto, York, Peel, Durham, Halton, Dufferin and Simcoe to see exactly where these three day markets exist and to what extent.  Let’s get into it.

Toronto – Home of the 11%

When we look at the City of Toronto, it is by far the place where the three day market is most prevalent.

As of April 17, 2026, there have been 2,465 sales in Toronto so far this year.  276 of these sales happened in three days or less, which means that 11% of the Toronto market transacted that quickly.  The homes are generally three bedroom, three washroom houses.

The average sale to list price for these 276 homes was 106%, so these sellers received, on average, about $76,000 more than their list price.  Whether this was a result of the sellers holding back offers until a certain date and then receiving a bully offer they accepted, or simply a quick acting buyer who offered more than list price shortly after listing, Toronto was one of two parts of the GTA where these quick sales also netted sellers more than list price.

Durham – 2^nd Place Ain’t Bad

The only other part of the GTA that saw an average sale to list price of over 100% was Durham.

As of April 17, 2026, Durham has had 1,608 sales in the region so far, and 106 of those sales happened in three days or less on market.  This means about 7% of all of the sales in 2026 in Durham happened on a very quick basis, and the average sale to list price was about 102%.

With an average list price in Durham of about $910,000 for these quick sales, it means that these sellers not only sold quickly, they made about $14K more than their list price.  Just like Toronto, these homes had three bedrooms and three washrooms, which means they’re quite suitable for a family.

York – Close, but No Cigar

While all five of the remaining areas with the GTA saw a number of these quick sales, none of them had a sale to list price ratio of over 100%.  York came closest to the mark of these five, with a sale to list price ratio of just under 100%.

There were 1,917 sales in York Region in 2026 as of April 17, 2026, and about 5% of these sales happened in three days or less.  These 96 homes sold for, on average, about $6,000 less than their list price, so while they sold quickly, it wasn’t the same sort of market where sellers got more in a very quick fashion.  They were slightly larger homes than we saw in Toronto and Durham, with four bedrooms and four washrooms on average.

Peel – 92 sales and 95% over Three Days

As of April 17, 2026, Peel has seen 1,883 sales this year and just 92 of those sales took place in three days or less.  That works out to about 5% of the total sales, and on average, the sellers of these four bedroom, three washroom homes got about $10K less than their list price.  With 95% of properties selling over that three day window, the Peel market was definitely not the hottest in the GTA.

Halton – 1% Under List Price

Halton is our first part of the GTA to see a list to sale price ratio of 99%, which worked out to sellers taking about $11K less than the list price.  As of April 17, 2026, Halton has seen 1,187 sales and just 71 of those of those homes sold in three days or less.  That means that just 6% of the properties sold so far this year (which were three bedroom, three washroom homes on average) sold in a very speedy fashion.

Simcoe – The Second Smallest Level of Sales and the Smallest Homes

Simcoe has had 1,475 sales in 2026 as of April 17, 2026, with just 3% of those sales taking place in three days or less.  These 40 homes were also the smallest homes to sell in that timeframe in all of the GTA, with an average size of three bedrooms and two washrooms.  They sold for about $8K less than list price, but with the lowest average sale price in the GTA, that number below list isn’t too surprising.

Dufferin – Just Three Houses Sold in Under Three Days

Our final area to review is Dufferin, which saw just three of the 148 sales so far this year (as of April 17, 2026) sell in under three days.  That works out to 2% of the total sales and while the sale to list price ration was 96%, with just three sales, that number isn’t reliable.  Similarly, the $27K under list price that these sellers took in order to sell so quickly seems reflective more of buyers pushing hard, rather than a hot market.

Nobody buys or sells the market as a whole.  Whether you’re looking to purchase a property or sell one – or both – you’re always dealing with a specific housing type, area and price point.  While what is happening in “the” market can be interesting, it is often not the same as what is happening in any of these sub-markets.  We hope you found this review helpful, and that seeing which parts of the GTA have been seeing some quick sales – and the impact that has had on the prices for these sales – gave you a better understanding of the differing markets we’re seeing.

If you are thinking about making a move, then you need to know what’s happening in your market, not the market.  Get in touch with us and we’ll show you exactly what is happening where you live and where you want to live.

Every couple of years we seem to see Toronto increasing their municipal land transfer tax (LTT) on luxury properties.  It happened back in 2024, when increased rates were imposed upon sales in Toronto of properties over $3M, and it’s just happened again.

As of April 1, 2026, we have new rates for the LTT on the sale of properties over $3M in Toronto.  The provincial land transfer tax has not made any similar changes at any point, but the city of Toronto is rapidly increasing the cost to buy within the Toronto boundaries.

We looked at the anticipated increased revenue the city would make when they did this back at the start of 2024, we said they’d bring in about $27M in additional revenue as a result of the increases.  That sounds like a pretty significant amount, but keep in mind that back in late 2023, the City of Toronto’s updated Long Term Financial Plan and staff report showed an estimated $1.5 billion starting pressure for the 2024 operating budget and $29.5 billion in capital needs, which both form part of a $46.5 billion shortfall over the next 10 years.  The forecasted $27M would have brought in less than 2% of the amount needed to address the operating budget shortfall.

Given the city remains in difficult financial circumstances, it is clear that the increased tax didn’t help in a material fashion.  The latest increase is actually going to be far less impactful, as it is mostly increases of around 1%  for those higher price bands.

Let’s look at the new changes and how much additional money it could bring in – plus how many deals need to be lost as buyers decide to purchase their high end homes outside of the city.

Apples to apples.

We’re primarily focused on resale properties in our team and the data we can access is largely limited to residential resale properties.  As such, all of our analyses below are based on that data.   We’re after some broad (but accurate) implications of the new LTT rates, but we aren’t considering:

• non-MLS transactions
• builder/direct new-home and new-condo closings
• commercial / industrial / multi-residential / vacant land transfers
• other taxable conveyances the City records but that do not show up in our records

While some of the specific numbers of the implications of the new LTT rates will be understated, our analysis does paint a clear picture of what it means to the resale market.  Now that we’re officially covered, let’s get into it.

First, a history lesson.

We’ve created a handy chart to show the recent history of the Toronto Land Transfer Tax.  The orange column is what it was for about six years, and the blue columns show the rate increase amount that was put into place as of January 1, 2024.  The green column is the brand new rate increase amounts that apply to properties bought in the city as of April 1, 2026.

There have been no changes made to the land transfer tax due on the purchase of any properties up to $3M, but if you’re at that level or higher, we saw it go from a flat rate of 2.5% on any amount above the $3M level, to a graduated system.  The higher the price point, the higher the rate you’re paying on that portion of your purchase.

The latest round of increases have added about 1% to most of the price bands, with a range from 0.9% to up to 1.1%.

It’s all marginal.

A reminder that the land transfer tax is a marginal tax bracket, which means that for any price above a threshold, you pay:

• The full tax from all lower brackets
• Plus the tax on the portion that falls inside the current bracket

For example, a $1.2 million purchase does not pay 2.0% on the full $1.2 million. Instead, it pays:

• 5% on the first $55,000 = $275
• 0% on the next $195,000 = $1,950
• 5% on the next $150,000 = $2,250
• 0% on the remaining $800,000 = $16,000
• Which would bring the total municipal land transfer tax to $20,475.

This is relevant as we look at what impact these higher tax brackets will have on the sales taking place moving forward.

The past ain’t the future.

A caveat we often give is that what happened in the past is not necessarily indicative of what will happen in the future.  That being said, we need to base our analysis on certain assumptions, so the big assumption in our analysis here is that we’ll see similar types of transactions and numbers of transactions in 2026 as we did in 2025.  Here’s how the 23,475 sales in the city of Toronto were spread across the various price bands.

A few things about the above data are very relevant to our review.

First, 97% of the sales that took place in Toronto in 2025 were under $3M, which means the change that just took place is utterly irrelevant to those sales.  The Toronto LTT rate for these properties has not changed since 2017 and they can go merrily about their business.

The next thing worth pointing out is that the 740 sales that were in the $3M plus price bands last year were mostly in the $3M to $5M range.  59% of the sales were in the $3M to $4M band and another 22% were in the $4M to $5M band, so over 80% of the sales were in that $3M to $5M range.

If we assume that 2026 will see a similar spread of deals as we saw in 2025, how are these higher land transfer tax rates in those price bands going to bring in to the city in increased revenue?

It’s more, but it’s not a lot more.

We pulled the average price for each of the price bands for the sales in 2025 and then calculated the Toronto LTT for each of those bands.  This is relying on averages within each price band so it will not be 100% accurate, but it is enough to give us an idea of what 2026 will look like for increased revenue with the new increased LTT rates.

The city would have brought in about $450M in municipal land transfer tax in 2025 based on these sales.  With the new higher rates for the higher end price points, that means an estimated revenue for 2026 of about $458M, which works out to about $8M more in land transfer tax revenue for the city.

As we see very few sales at the $5M or above price point, the bulk of this $8M comes from sales in the $3M to $5M range.

$8M is still better than a kick in the pants, right?

The final aspect of the new LTT tax rates worth discussing is the fact that our model makes the assumption that the same level of sales take place in Toronto despite increasing costs for those buyers.  While it may be unlikely that a lower price point buyer will choose to buy outside of the city to save on the land transfer tax, we have had clients who considered the difference in closing costs significant.

At the higher price points that this latest round of LTT rate increases impacts, the difference between what you pay in Toronto versus surrounding municipalities amounts to significant dollars.

For example, a $5 million buyer in Toronto would pay about $272K in total LTT, of which $112K is the provincial portion.  If the buyer chose to purchase instead in another city such as Oakville, they would save $160K on their closing costs.  That’s a significant amount of money and while the latest increase in Toronto’s LTT rates doesn’t materially change the amount they pay, it is reaching levels that could result in some buyers deciding they’d rather put that money into a home purchase outside of Toronto.

While it is complicated to project how many lost deals it would take for the city to not see that projected $8M increased LTT from high end sales, we know that any purchase that moves outside of the city loses the entirety of the MLTT, not just the portion at the higher end.  Our calculation is that it would take about 67 of these high end deals leaving the city for that projected $8M in extra LTT revenue to disappear completely.

We regularly work with buyers and sellers impacted by decisions like this latest Toronto LTT rate increases, and it’s important that your agent understands the factors that influence the high end and luxury market in the city.  If you’re looking to buy or sell in the $3M plus range and want agents that understand how that segment actually works, get in touch!

It’s pretty well known that real estate agents are somewhat prone to hyperbole.  We’ve written in the past about the secret codewords that agents use to try to convince buyers a home is appealing.

While people are pretty good at seeing past the flowery phrases dressing up the listing, it can be much harder to decipher the differences between two seemingly similar properties.  After all, numbers don’t lie, right?

So, numbers can lie.

Real estate is full of numbers and while the price is arguably the most important one, lots of the other numbers aren’t always what they seem.  Consider the following examples:

• Two 4-bedroom homes, where one has three good-sized bedrooms on the 2^nd floor and a spare bedroom (or den) on the ground floor. Suitable for a family with young kids, closets in all the rooms and able to fit beds, dressers and so forth.  The other property has one huge bedroom on the 2^nd floor, with massive walk in closets and a spa bathroom retreat and three smallish “bedrooms” in the basement, one of which has no windows.  Great for a couple with no kids who want hobby rooms in the basement.
• Two 785 sf condo units, each with two bedrooms and two washrooms. The first is a rectangular shaped split wing layout with two 10×12 bedrooms at either end of the condo, with ensuite washrooms off both, one of which opens to the hallway so guests can access it without going through a bedroom.  The other is a small L shape, with a full bathroom right beside the entrance door, a hallway leading down to a small bedroom with an angled wall, and a primary suite beside it with the washroom took into the other side of the angled wall.

Two properties can appear nearly identical on paper if you look at just the numbers, but there are often considerable differences between them when you look closer.

According to Webster’s Dictionary…

Numbers aren’t the only area where seemingly identical properties can differ significantly.  We have some standards that apply to how real estate agents can describe different attributes, but they aren’t always followed to the letter.  Some agents consider a kitchen “newly” renovated if it happened in the last five years, whereas others follow the more stringent approach of it literally just got renovated before we listed the home for sale.

While flat out misrepresentation is relatively rare, people can hold very different definitions of what certain descriptions mean.  Where do you fall on the below scales?

• Is a walk-in closet a large room with a dressing bench in the middle and custom shelving on all sides, or is a walk in closet any closet that has enough space for you to walk inside and cuddle your clothes?
• Is a family size kitchen a big room with tons of cabinetry, an extended island with spots for stools, as well as a separate eating area with a kitchen table? Or is it a narrow galley style that has a bistro table and two small chairs at the end beside the dishwasher?
• Are high-end appliances delivered from Europe and installed by a team of four who wear white booties when they enter your home, or are they a mismatched group of premium versions of different appliance brands that you see in most homes?
• Is the only hardwood that can be called hardwood flooring actual hardwood such as oak, hickory or maple, or is engineered hardwood with a thin layer of hardwood veneer also hardwood flooring?

We could go on and on, but when no specific details are provided on any claimed “feature” of a home, it is likely there are big differences between two listings who both claim they have it.

Where did I put my glasses?

Finally, there are homes that seem to have identical features as per the listing, but it turns out that not all things are created equal.  Which would you prefer?

• If you’re invited to enjoy your private backyard oasis with a pool and hot tub, do you envision an inground pool, with a hot tub section you can swim into from the pool? What if it is an aboveground pool with a hot tub in a different section of the backyard?
• Is it a media room if there are couches (that don’t come with the house) and a first generation low resolution digital projector (that is generously being included), or is a media room a custom built space with built-in furniture, sound baffling and a state of the art video and audio system?
• If both properties have a balcony, does it make a difference if one faces the Gardiner and is loud and dusty all year round, whereas the other faces the lake and views of the setting sun?

The above examples may seem pretty far fetched but trust us, they have all happened.  The quality, age and inclusions in a given attribute can make a huge difference in the value – or lack thereof – to potential buyers.

We’ve looked at a lot of properties for our clients and with our clients.  If we had to estimate the numbers, it would be somewhere between “too many” and a bazillion.  As a result, we’re very good at spotting differences that the numbers and images may not make clear to the general public.

This is surprisingly relevant on the sale side work we do, as a big part of setting your list price is comparing your home against other properties.  We often encounter situations where we see significant differences between our seller’s home and the recently sold and currently on the market competition.  This allows us to make sure we don’t leave money on the table, or mistakenly over price and not get the result our clients need.

If you’re looking to make a move and want to work with agents who know what to look for when comparing properties, get in touch with us!