Toronto Real Estate

The truth about BULLY OFFERS

A bully offer is an offer to buy a house before the stated offer date.

The current market in Toronto is a seller's market. This means a seller can list their home and delay accepting offers until a specific date. Often 7 days after the house goes on the market.

This strategy prompts multiple offers on the same day, hoping to drive up the ultimate selling price by having multiple bids.

The more buyers submitting an offer generally means a higher selling price.

This strategy's effective because it usually yields a higher selling price than waiting to deal with offers one at a time. The traditional sale method.

It's often challenging for buyers to compete in a seller's market. As a result buyers then tend to submit an offer before the stated offer date.

A bully. .

These buyers don't want to compete and risk driving up the purchase price.

A bully offer is based on the idea that the offer on the table's sweet/enticing enough for the seller to accept and not to wait until their offer date.

Essentially by jumping the line, fewer other buyers may be prepared to react quickly enough to get to the table with a competitive offer themselves.

Fewer buyers competing at the offer table means a lower selling price.

Read that last sentence again.

In a sellers market there're always buyer agents who want to be aggressive by getting their offers in early. When I'm working with buyers you can count me among this group.

As a listing agent it's very rarely in the seller's best interest to accept a bully offer.

If a buyer's hot and bothered enough to want to make a bully offer, then they'll still be excited about your home a few days later on the offer date.

I had a listing where a bully offer came in at a record price for the neighborhood. We didn't take it.

On our stated offer date that same buyer offered $50,000 more than their own bully offer price and they still weren't the top offer.

A bully offer gets the house sold fast. In a heated market like we have in Toronto, it generally means the seller has left money on the table.

Isn't the goal of every listing to sell for the most amount of money?

When choosing to renovate your home, do it for you and not the next buyer.

I’m often asked how future buyers would value a renovation.

If you’re planning to stay for more than 7 years then you should absolutely do the reno that will make you enjoy your home more.

Don't do it for your next buyers.

Will adding a double sink vanity in the master bedroom add value? Likely. But it will make the house much more enjoyable for you to live in while you are there.

Will hardwood floors get a higher return than carpet? Probably. But if you want carpets then you’re going to resent walking on those floors for the next 10 years and that isn’t productive.

You need to enjoy living where you are. Renovate to your taste today.

I’m the cook in my household.

I find it a big challenge. Everyone in my house has a different palate.

My wife isn’t vegetarian but she prefers to eat vegetarian dishes. Once she saw a truck full of pigs and since then she refuses to eat any pork product.

My daughter’s sensitive to textures. I’m still unsure what about the textures affects her but I generally have a sense of what foods she doesn’t like.

She also rejects vegetables.

My son is a vacuum. He’ll eat almost anything. I love that about him. He’s equally content with cereal as he is with a 3 course French meal.

He really enjoys good cuisine which is fun for me because I do too. He’ll try almost anything and is quite adventurous.

The challenge is to find meals that everyone will enjoy eating.

One of the things I do is to make a sauce. My daughter will get the plain meal and Ill add the sauce to make a dish a little more interesting for the rest of us.

I’d love to know how other home chefs keep meals interesting for both those eating the meal and the one cooking it. Let me know what your best meal hacks are.