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Under-Asking Miracles
Bargains are suddenly everywhere, with sellers eager to sweeten the deal. Here, three case studies of the new rules of the game By Bert Archer
A FIXER-UPPER: 56 Indian Rd.
Original asking: $649,000
Sold for: $559,000
Days on the market: 68
Highest recent nearby sale: 71 Indian Rd., $1.2 million, July 2008
Last April, this 1920s triplex in High Park went up for $649,000 (it had been assessed at $621,000 by MPAC at the beginning of the still upward-trending year). By that month, the bloom was already off the boom, but agents and sellers were in denial. The silence that greeted the house was deafening. Seller Anthony James and agent Graham Reid of Coldwell Banker Terrequity decided to pull the listing on May 3. By October, two of the three tenants had moved out, and James was getting antsy. The house went back on the market on September 3 for $599,900. Open houses weren’t practical, because of the remaining tenant, so Reid, who got his licence in 1988 and knew a thing or two about market crashes, went into his client’s MLS listing every day and changed a little something—the wording, the angle of the pitch, or even just punctuation—thereby throwing it to the top of the new listings. James got one offer for $535,000. Way too low. On October 20, he reduced the price to $569,900, a five per cent drop from the most recent asking, and 12 per cent less than the original price in the spring. The guy who had made the first rejected offer raised his bid to $559,000, and James accepted it. In the end, the house sold for $90,000 less than the original listing price, but still $110,000 more than James paid for it in 2004.
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