It’s generally true that being a real estate agent means you work unusual hours.  Whether it is showing properties in the evening or on weekends, or negotiating deals until the middle of the night, it is definitely not a 9-to-5 job.

That being said, despite the occasional rumour to the contrary, real estate agents are actually people, and they do take some time off.  Those times tend to align with when buyers and sellers aren’t interested in transacting, such as Spring Break, just before school starts and of course, holidays.

On December 25, 2024, there were a grand total of 11 properties sold in the entirety of the Greater Toronto Area.  That means, out of the approximately 76,000 real estate agents licensed with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, there were twenty-two agents who were negotiating a real estate deal on Christmas.  To be clear, they didn’t close on Christmas as that requires real estate brokerages, law offices and banks being open, but a deal agreement was made!

We were not involved in any of those deals, as it generally takes a lot of things coming together to have a buyer and a seller, as well as their agents, want to conduct business on a holiday.  It does happen though, so let’s take a look at the Pros and Cons of getting a deal done on a holiday.

The Pros

In any real estate deal, regardless of when it is done, there needs to be both a buyer and a seller who agree to terms.  Whether those are good terms for all parties involved or more lop-sided in favour of either the buyer or seller depends on a lot of factors.

If you’re selling your home on Christmas Day, here are the positives:

• Motivated Buyer – Regardless of what the offer looks like, any buyer who is working with their agent on a holiday to submit an offer and negotiate a sale is likely serious about trying to get it done. Sure, they may be doing so in the hopes of getting a great deal for themselves, but if you’re on the fence about a property or not that serious about actually buying, you don’t tend to try to buy on a holiday.  It’s just harder to get everyone involved to agree to work on it.  For the 11 deals we saw this year on Christmas Day, the average days on market was 46 days, which means the buyers chose to wait to offer until Christmas.  Aggressive?  Interested in getting a deal done?  Absolutely.
• Better Planning for the New Year – In the very quiet weeks leading up to the holidays, sellers resign themselves to the fact that their home will not get sold this year. Many also know that January is typically quite a slow month and given a typical 45 to 60 day closing period, sellers who haven’t sold by the end of the year know that they won’t be able to make firm plans for their next steps until well into the new year.  Getting your home sold on Christmas means that you have a much better idea of when you’ll be getting the proceeds of that sale and how much you’ll have available.  The quiet times over the holidays can now be filled with making plans and decisions about what comes next, rather than worrying about when it will happen.

If you’re buying a home on Christmas Day, here’s what works in your favour:

• Limited Competition – If you and your agent are willing to do paperwork and negotiate a deal on Christmas Day, you are one of the very few people who do so. If the seller and their agent agree to entertain your offer, they’d likely let every other agent who has shown the property know that they received an offer and will be reviewing it at a certain time.  If that date is January 5^th, you may see competing offers come to the table, but by choosing December 25^th, there are lots of buyers and their agents who just aren’t willing to do it on Christmas Day.
• Motivated Seller – The reality is that some sellers just aren’t that motivated to sell their home. They have a price in mind and no pressing need to sell, and if it is inconvenient to review or negotiate an offer, they just refuse to do so.  If you’re making an offer on Christmas Day and the seller and their agent agree to deal with it then, they are not messing around.  They want to sell and whenever you have a motivated seller, the chances of getting a deal done increase dramatically.

Now that we’ve made our case for why it can be a good thing for a buyer or a seller to do a deal on Christmas Day, let’s flip the view and look at why it can be a terrible idea.

The Cons

If you’re selling your home on Christmas Day, here’s why it can be a terrible experience:

• Low Ball Offers – While we maintain a buyer who is trying to buy your home on a holiday is serious, they are also choosing that day for a reason. In a very real sense, submitting an offer to a listing agent on Christmas day is testing to see how eager the seller is to get the home sold.  An agent who doesn’t reply or says my client isn’t interested, come back after the holidays, is clearly indicating that motivation is not high to get a sale done.  When an agent submits a buyer’s offer and the listing agent is willing to deal with it, there is an inherent benefit to the buyer in knowing the seller could be pushed on price to a greater extent.
• The Unknown Future – When a seller receives an offer on Christmas Day, they don’t know what is coming over the next number of weeks or months. While this is true at various times of the year, the holidays and January are the worst time for certainty about finding a buyer for your home.  The timing of an offer on a holiday also means that other agents and buyers who might be interested aren’t working or responding to being told about an offer being in play for the home.  It can be very uncomfortable for a seller when they get an offer on Christmas, their agent can’t get a hold of other agents who said their clients were thinking about, and the seller has to make a decision without knowing if there is someone who might offer a better deal in the upcoming weeks.  Put simply, it’s an uncomfortable situation filled with as many “what ifs” as there are Christmas cookies.

What about the buy side?  Anything wrong with trying to buy a home on Christmas day?  Yes, and here they are:

• High Emotions – The holidays are a time of great joy and also great stress for many people. Getting a deal done involves having both the buyer and seller agree on terms, and we have a saying in real estate about getting into your feelings.  “Logic makes you think, emotions make you act.”  When you submit an offer on Christmas Day to buy a home, you face a much great chance of irritating and annoying the listing agent and the seller.  Whether they are enjoying the time with their family and this is a very unwelcome interruption, or whether they’re already stressed and your offer is just another thing to put pressure on them on Christmas Day, expect to have a very poor reaction to your offer from most listing agents and sellers.
• Limited Resources – During negotiations for a purchase of a home, buyers often need to speak with professionals about if something works. Good luck getting a hold of your mortgage broker or your bank on Christmas Day if you need to know if you can do an extra $20K over the approved limit for your mortgage.  Similarly, if you wanted to get a sense of how big a deal that foundation crack was, or replacing the plumbing stack, it will be hard to talk to a home inspector or plumber that day.  When that happens, you either have to risk committing to a deal that is going to be hard to close on, or take on potentially higher costs without knowing the numbers.  In either case, it is stressful to have to make a decision without all the knowledge, and that is much more likely to happen on Christmas Day than any other day of the year.

Like most things in life, whether something is good or bad depends on your perspective.  When it comes to buying or selling real estate on Christmas Day, it is very much a mixed bag.  It can work out, but in our experience, the odds of a deal happening on that day (or any other holiday) are less likely.

If you want to plan your approach to buying or selling real estate (hopefully not on a holiday), then get in touch with us!

If you’ve ever had a conversation with friends about their experiences with real estate agents, you’ve likely heard some horror stories about uninformed, unmotivated, and unprofessional agents.  When you delve into the specifics, the key failing is often a lack of specific knowledge that would have helped make the process go better for the client.

When it comes to real estate investment, the situation is similar, and is arguably even more pronounced.  Take a look at some of the key results of a survey of real estate investors by the Real Estate Council of Ontario.

• 21 per cent of investors wished they had looked at more properties.
• 26 per cent of investors wished they had a better grasp of the buying process.
• 32 per cent of first-time investors said they were not prepared or knowledgeable about the home buying process.
• 43 per cent of investors said there were sections of the real estate contract that they did not fully understand.

As we read the list above, one thing became abundantly clear – most investors are poorly served by their real estate agents.  Let’s reframe the points above from the perspective of how agents failed their clients.

• About 1 in 5 agents pressured their investor clients to buy a property early in the process rather than showing them more investment options.
• More than a quarter of agents couldn’t adequately explain the process of buying an income property.
• Almost 1 in 3 agents working with first-time investors didn’t prepare or educate those clients.
• Almost half of the agents involved in helping investors buy income properties had clients who didn’t fully understand the contract they signed.

The simple fact of the matter is that while all licensed real estate agents can help investors buy an income property, a lot of them shouldn’t be doing it.

The process, the terms, the calculations to determine which option is the best investment – these are all aspects of buying an investment property that can be confusing and intimidating.  Add in changes to government rules and regulations, financing qualifications and shifting markets and you have a challenging situation to handle properly.

The good news is that picking a real estate agent for your income property purchase isn’t rocket science.  It’s all about making sure that the person you’re trusting to help you navigate you through the process actually understands the process.  Without further adieu, here’s our three rules for picking an agent to buying an income property.

Rule #1 – The agent has to be an investor as well.

If the agent is not a real estate investor as well, don’t hire them to be your agent.  They don’t need to own a slew of properties, but if they haven’t bought and sold investment properties of their own, and if they haven’t owned and managed an investment property, don’t hire them.  An agent who is also an investor is able to bring that knowledge and perspective to the search for your investment property.  They’ve spent the time in the past to figure out how to do it properly, because they’ve actually put their own money on the line.

Within the Refined team, we have years and years of experience owning investment properties.  We’ve bought and sold our own investment properties, renovated to increase rents, found and on a few occasions evicted tenants and overseen property managers, contractors, and tradespeople.  Does that help when we work with investors?  Absolutely.

Rule # 2 – The agent has to be able to do the math.

If the agent can’t calculate cap rates, fill in all the pieces of the ROI formula and generally provide you with the information you need to compare properties and decide, then they aren’t doing their full job.  If you are the one struggling to gather this information and assess what it means, you will miss out on fast moving opportunities and won’t have the time to see as many options.  You don’t need your agent to be a tax accountant but they have to be very comfortable with the math.  It’s an investment of your funds and needs to be treated as such.

Within the Refined team, we have agents who have taken courses in statistics, financial statement analysis, macro economics, accounting, Canadian taxation, international taxation and intergalactic taxation.  Well, the last one we made up, but the rest is true.  We’re very comfortable with numbers and analyzing them and we have used that knowledge to create spreadsheets to analyze real estate investments quickly and thoroughly. 

Rule #3 – The agent has to see the big picture.

In any real estate purchase, an understanding of the overall market as well as specific neighbourhoods or streets is crucial.  For investment properties, the agent needs to be able to also consider macro economics of the region.  The strength or weakness of the area’s economy impacts rental rates and vacancy rates, which in turn impacts housing appreciation or depreciation.   When the provincial or federal government announces funding for a major project that creates thousands of jobs, those new jobholders need places to live and rental properties in that area are in demand.  When a major employer in a town closes down or lays off hundreds of people, those jobseekers move elsewhere and rental properties that used to rely on them are now vacant.  The agent you hire needs to be able to place the different real estate investment options in a bigger context than just the land and building.

Within the Refined team, we have access to detailed demographics and economic data for the various neighbourhoods, communities, and regions within the GTA.  When we combine that information with specific market conditions, rental rates, vacancy rates and purchase prices, we give our investor clients confidence in their decision to buy or pass on a given investment. 

As the survey we discussed shows, there are a lot of investors out there who, in a weak moment, choose a weak agent.  By following the above rules, you can make sure that doesn’t happen to you.  If you like the sound of that, then get in touch with us.  We’d love to make sure your next income property is a star in your portfolio!