April 23, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode of The Last Honest Realtor, host David Fleming asks a question that says more about the market than you’d think: Where did all the sockless realtors go? And more importantly—what does their disappearance say about Toronto real estate in 2025?
What starts as a joke turns into a look back at the peak years of hype: pre-construction mania, staged social media hustle, and the agents who disappeared when the market got real. David walks through the signs we ignored, the lessons we’re still learning, and what’s left now that the dust has settled.
In This Episode:
- Why the sockless realtor became a symbol of the boom years
- What actually happened to pre-construction—and why it matters
- The Real Estate Bitcoin & Wealth Expo, in hindsight
- A $15,000 personal loss that hits a little too close to today
- Who’s still here in 2025, and why that’s probably a good thing
Timestamps:
00:00 – Where Have All the Sockless Realtors Gone?
05:00 – The Disappearance of Social Media Real Estate Stars
10:00 – Pre-Con's Collapse and the Fallout
16:00 – The Real Estate Bitcoin & Wealth Expo: Yes, That Happened
25:00 – David’s $15,000 Lesson from Nortel
30:00 – Investor-Built Cities and What They Left Behind
35:00 – What Real Professionals Are Doing Now
40:00 – Who’s Actually Buying and Selling in 2025?
Also in This Episode:
- David breaks down how a bank draft photo, a Rolex, and a Mercedes became the defining image of an entire era
- Why hype is so easy to believe when everyone else is making money
- A straight-up look at what it takes to succeed in a market that isn’t doing anyone any favours
Subscribe to The Last Honest Realtor on YouTube or your preferred podcast app. Drop a comment if you lived through the sockless era—or if you’re just glad we’ve moved on.
Bosley Real Estate: Family-owned since 1928, delivering trusted real estate services across Ontario.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
I was chatting with a friend of mine last week, and
he posed a very important realestate question.
Where have all the socklessrealtors gone?
Hello folks and welcome back tothe Last Honest Realtor podcast.
I'm your host David Fleming.
Thank you so much for joining metoday as we ask and answer this
question in all seriousness as away to sort of look at, gauge
and evaluate the market inToronto as it is today.
(00:22):
Who are the players, the buyers,the sellers, the agents, the
other market participants andthen we compare and contrast
with who they were say threeyears, five years or ten years
ago and put this all together toask how has the market changed
and most importantly why.
Then you can evaluate whatmistakes have we made, and of
course, there are many, and howcan we use that information
(00:43):
moving forward.
Now, the story I told at theopening is a true one.
I was texting with a colleagueof mine who actually watched
last week's podcast.
He said, how are you?
Great job.
We got to chatting.
And of course, once he saidthat, he told me that I have to
give him credit for it.
Yes, it's your friend and myfriend, James Benson, fantastic
real estate agent, who textedme, and I'm going to say exactly
(01:04):
what he said.
I'm just wondering...
Where all the dudes withoutsocks in their suits and loafers
are right now because they'renot taking pictures with their
fancy cars.
Now, on its own, it's kind offunny.
It's just like, yeah, that's apretty funny observation, James
and David.
But here's the thing.
If you dig a little bit deeper,and trust me, I did because I'm
doing an entire podcast about ittoday, I think this speaks to a
(01:25):
microcosm of where the industrywas and how it's changed since
then.
Because it got me thinking thatif a professional like James or
myself is taking a backseat tosome of these sockless realtors,
you know, your bro who just gothis real estate license and has
a really great idea on how youcan not get rich quick, but make
a lot of money fast, this is howyou know that we have a problem.
(01:47):
And this working backwardsshould have been one of the
warning signs.
So more on this in a moment, butin 2025 right now, This isn't
just the market is changing.
This is the market has changed.
And in a changing market, youcould almost sort of say, hey,
it's changing, which is to saythat, listen, it could be going
forwards, going backwards.
(02:08):
We're not really sure.
The market's changed.
We know this as a fact.
I make no bones about the factthat sales are at an all-time
low.
And I say this, of course, whenthe Bank of Canada has reduced
interest rates.
So I could still make a verypositive argument for all things
real estate.
Now is not the time tonecessarily do that.
But point is, everything isdifferent.
And the way that we transact,the way that we prospect as
(02:31):
agents, the way that we marketproperties, the way that we sell
actively or passively, the waythat buyers buy, the way that
sellers sell, Every single thinghas changed.
The participants have changed aswell.
The buyers, the sellers, thelisting agents, the buyer
agents, the pre-con agents, nowait, pre-con agents, they're
literally like, you know thatWikipedia page for all of the
(02:53):
different occupations that nolonger exist?
You know, like the tool and diemaker from 1800s.
Yeah, I think they're addingpre-construction VVIP agent
platinum to that.
That's another joke, which Ithought was really funny.
Everything has changed.
So what I wanna know today ishow did we get to this point
What were the warning signs andwhy were the warning signs
missed?
Because that's incrediblyimportant and I'm going to get
(03:15):
ahead of this and tell you thatI don't want this to come off as
self-congratulatory, but I amgoing to talk about some of the
warning signs and I am going tomention that I shared them and a
lot of people didn't necessarilylisten.
But again, we have the benefitof hindsight, which is so
incredibly amazing.
So first, where are we?
We're in a market that'schanged.
Now, this market has changed notonly from, let's say, the
(03:36):
post-2022 peak when interestrates went up, post-COVID, but
this market has also changedfrom 2018 and 2019, which a lot
of people forget about.
And I take this for grantedsometimes.
Not everyone lives and breathesreal estate.
A lot of Torontonians do.
But if you were to break ourentire last 25 years down in
these little three-yearsegments, we came off of a peak
(03:58):
in April of 2017, whichironically felt very similar to
the peak in February of 2022,only five years later, except in
April of 2017, that peak wasafter four months of run-up,
where housing pricesskyrocketed, and then the
government stepped in.
They didn't actually really doanything.
If you lived through this, theyjust kind of made a series of
announcements about, we need todo something about home prices.
(04:20):
We need to cool the market.
Cool the market.
That's what you need to do.
Okay, interesting, free marketand government intervention,
which actually doesn't reallymake it free as far as the
definition of a market goes,topic for another day, but they
did cool the market and pricesdropped.
2022, same thing, except thistime they actually did
something.
They raised interest rates at anunprecedented rate.
(04:42):
So in 2017, after that peakrolled off, 2018, 2019,
pre-COVID, those were very, verybusy years.
In the real estate market, thedowntown condo market, and of
course, your friend, my enemy,the pre-construction market.
Now, this time, incredibly busy,pre-construction dominating,
(05:04):
absolutely everything.
And I'm going to talk to you, ohgosh, I cannot wait for you to
hear all about, should I spoilit?
The Real Estate Bitcoin andWealth Expo.
from April of 2018.
More on that in a moment.
Now, pre-construction, it'sdead.
The house of cards, it folded.
I have been talking about thisso much in the last four months.
(05:26):
If you're not familiar with mywork, I started writing my blog
in 2007 and immediately startedsaying, this is insanity.
It makes no sense.
I take little pleasure.
Actually, that's not true.
I do take a lot of pleasure, notnecessarily in the misfortunes
of people that lost everythingin the pre-construction world,
but I do take pleasure in thefact that eventually, finally,
(05:46):
it was sort of like, okay, thankyou.
Thank you.
We were right on this.
Guys like me and Ben Rabideau,who have been talking about this
forever while people continue tobuy at inflated prices, are now
looking at this and saying,okay, yeah, we called this.
We wish that more people hadlistened.
I could do an entire podcast onwhat happened in
pre-construction, butessentially when you're selling
(06:07):
$800 a square foot condos for$1,200 a square foot in
pre-construction, the market hadbetter rise.
Or else, if it doesn't, you'rebehind by 400 a square foot.
And God forbid, if it declines,you're behind by even more.
Now people are walking away fromdeposits.
Developers are suing thesefolks.
People can't close.
You've got banks giving blanketappraisals, which circumvents
(06:28):
the Bank Act.
It's a freaking mess.
That is what's happened inpre-con.
That is where we are.
But I want to go back to wherewe were.
And if you like my analogy aboutthe sockless realtor, you're
going to love this one.
I'm gonna sum up theridiculousness of where we were
with an image.
(06:49):
On your friend's social media oron some random agent's social
media, there's a photo of a bankdraft for$200,000 and it's a
caption that says, just closedanother deal, congrats to my
happy buyers.
But it's not just a photo ofthat bank draft because that
photo shows the bank draft beingheld by a person wearing a Rolex
(07:12):
strategically showcasing thecheck on the steering wheel of
their Mercedes.
I cannot tell you how many timesI saw a photo like this, and I
can't tell you how many times,and James Benson said, you know,
posing in front of their fancycars, how many times I've seen
people doing this 2018 through2022, 2023 maybe even, and to
(07:37):
James's point, where are thesepeople now?
because it's gross.
It was gross then and it's grossnow.
I've never taken a picture of abank draft.
I don't wear a watch, first ofall.
Somebody that I used to know waslike, man, if I was you, I'd
have a thousand Rolexes.
I tell time by looking at thesun, okay?
I don't wear a watch.
And if I did, it probablywouldn't be a Rolex.
And I do drive a Lexus, butthat's because it's a great car.
(08:01):
I don't need a Maserati or aLamborghini like the people
taking photos in social media,and putting it up there bragging
about how awesome they are.
And you know as well as I do,it's image.
Most of it's not true.
One of the best real estateagents in our office drives a
Mazda.
He's one of the top 10 agentshere and he drives a Mazda.
(08:22):
He's just an awesome dude.
He's smart as hell, he'shardworking, he's great working
with listings, great workingwith buyers, drives a Mazda.
But to sum it all up guys,that's where we were.
That's where we were for five orsix years.
You'd go on to social media andit was just a contest to see who
could act like they were workingthe hardest.
Now, where we were, peoplespeculating on Calgary real
(08:43):
estate when they've never beento Calgary.
You know your friend that'slike, yeah, I just picked up a
couple of towns in Calgary.
Towns?
Yeah, a couple townhouses.
I got a contact out there.
He was able to skip the line forme.
You what?
You bought two pre-constructiontownhouses in Calgary?
You've never been west ofThunder Bay.
(09:04):
Yes, that's what was happening.
And looking back on it now, itseems exactly crazy.
I will say I do have one clientwho's a professional real estate
investor who bought propertiesin Calgary.
But he's brilliant.
And the average person doingthat is not.
Speculating on pre-constructiontowns in Calgary.
(09:24):
Oh my goodness.
So real estate transitioningfrom...
Its primary function as aprimary residence towards
investment, another thing thathappened.
Now, I'm going to take a tangenthere for a moment to essentially
blame the way that we have builtthe city of Toronto, which is to
say that we need condos.
Developers don't want to pay tobuild them, so they'll borrow
(09:45):
money from a bank, but the bankdoesn't want to lend that money
to developers who have sold themall, but you're selling
something that doesn't exist.
So what we'll do is we'll sellpre-construction condos, and
then as prices go up, and weknow that investors are the ones
that are buying these andbasically investors are
financing them, we'll just keepshrinking the units over and
over and over so we can keep theabsolute price the same and the
(10:07):
units get smaller.
And that is how all of Toronto'sdowntown core was built over the
last 20 years, ergo, it wasbuilt by investors.
And the worst part is, downtownToronto was, I wanna say
designed by, it was shaped byinvestors.
There was no grand plan.
There was no city planner thatsaid, hey, here's what we'll
(10:28):
build.
There was no conglomerate ofcondominium developers that
said, here's what we'll do.
It was investors buying unitscompletely speculatively that
drove prices up and shrunk thesize of condos.
And even when, even when youhave people that are looking to
buy real estate as a primaryresidence, they're still so
(10:49):
obsessed with the investmentportion Remember, it's a portion
of the investment.
You wanna go buy stocks?
Fine, that's an investment.
But when you're buying a house,you're living in there, you're
sleeping in there, you'reraising your kids in there,
you're decorating your Christmastree in there, you're having
grandma's 90th birthday inthere.
A portion is investment.
And we reached a point where thecomponent went to the entire
(11:12):
thing.
So I'm gonna give you an exampleof what's been happening over
the last little while.
I got a call from a young personwho lives in Sarnia, whose
friend was a real estate agentfrom London, who told him to buy
a pre-construction condo as acamp miss, and you know where
this is going, and I wrote aboutthis on my blog the other day,
(11:32):
and he called me basically, hisfriend's no longer in real
estate, of course, but this was,as he said, about six months
after they finished university,his friend got his real estate
license, and it was kind of sad,but also kind of awesome,
because he said to me, we alldecided as a group, they were in
business school, we all decidedthat whatever careers we had, we
would always support each other,which is amazing.
(11:53):
And these guys finished schooland this guy's buddy went into
real estate and he called himone day and he said, I've got a
can't miss for you.
And he sold a pre-constructioncondo in downtown Toronto.
The guy from Sarnia who lives inSarnia, who went to school, I
won't say where, but then theagent lives in London and he's
no longer in the business.
And he basically sold him thisplace for not tomorrow's price
today, but like eight years fromnow's price today.
(12:15):
Well, actually now would be like15 years.
So say the kid paid 700,000 fora studio that's now worth maybe
five and a quarter.
That's where we were.
Okay, another story, and thisone, you ready for this, is
gonna take you back a quarter ofa century.
Taking the glasses off foreffect certainly helped.
Now, infamously, in my familyand my friend circle, and
sometimes on Toronto RealtyBlog, I have told this story
(12:38):
over and over.
In 2001, I was an intern atCelestica, in between third and
fourth year university, and Iwas a young business student
working for a facelesscorporation, which of course
made me the man I am todaybecause I realized I did not to
work for a faceless corporation.
Was not set out for thecorporate world, goes without
saying, but while I was there, Ifound myself.
(12:58):
And I took all the businessacumen, and while I might say
this, the sort of you're bornwith it entrepreneurial spirit,
and I started to do things tomake money, to take what I had
learned and make profits, absorblosses, revenues, expenses.
One of those things was usingthis magical new website that
was only two years old calledeBay.
And I bought and sold concertand sporting event tickets.
(13:21):
Now, in 2025, I recognizeTicketmaster controls it.
They're virtual tickets.
And I'm pretty sure that the CRAis involved.
Back then, you could do whateveryou wanted.
Paper tickets, Britney Spears,Christina Aguilera, Toronto
Maple Leafs, whatever it is.
Here's my point, guys.
I was working in a company withall kinds of other employees who
(13:41):
were grown men and womenemployees.
watching what the kid interndid, and some of them tried to
emulate it.
Now, I'm not trying to toot myown horn.
I lost money on events.
I actually went down to scalpJanet Jackson at Cop's Coliseum
and lost my shirt.
But the point is, over theyears, I refined it.
I learned wins, losses.
And one day, a colleague of minewho's a 45-year-old man with a
(14:03):
wife and two kids comes to mecrying.
He says, I need your help.
I said, what?
He says, well, I saw what youwere doing, and I bought four
tickets to Paul McCartney in LosAngeles, and I can't sell them.
You did what?
He tells me he spent$1,000 aticket on Paul McCartney in Los
Angeles.
His wife went absolutely crazywhen she saw them and he's
(14:25):
freaking out.
Okay, why did you do that?
Listen, far be it for me to sayat the time when I was 21 years
old, I knew that people watchingPaul McCartney aren't on eBay.
They barely know the internetexists and you can't make a
profit on tickets that were$1,000.
Best event I ever had, Zwan, itwas a side project by Billy
Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.
Tickets were like$20.
(14:46):
Crazy people were paying 500bucks for them.
So the point of this story, asit is a tangent but hopefully a
fun one, is that all of theseother people in this actual
company that was responsible formaking electronics and they were
like real ass adults, they werewatching what this 21-year-old
kid was doing.
They tried to emulate it.
And that's exactly what peopledid in the real estate market
(15:07):
between 2018 and 2023.
Everyone was watching everyoneelse and saying, I can do that
too.
And saying, it doesn't matter.
I don't need experience.
I don't need knowledge.
I'm just going to do it.
And so excuse the story there.
I hope it was fun.
Yeah, I still drive by Don Millsin Edmonton every once in a
while and remember when.
But that to me is...
an analogy for you, if you will.
(15:28):
And I'm drawing on my personalexperience there, but I see so
many similarities between what'shappened over the last few
years.
People just getting in overtheir heads, people that are
making moves without thinking,and I'm not just talking about
the people buyingpre-construction, I'm talking
about real estate agents sellingit, and I'm talking about the
real estate agents getting intothe business in general.
Now, I wanna go to the warningsigns, and this is going to be
(15:50):
so amazing, folks.
I mention this.
The Real Estate, Bitcoin, andWealth Expo.
I'm gonna warn you, there'sgoing to be a lot of sarcasm, so
just hang on and bear with me.
But with the benefit ofhindsight, we can look back at
this and think it's crazy.
Here comes thatself-congratulatory moment.
(16:13):
I was asked by Toronto Life in2018 to be part of a panel.
A paying audience came to watcha bunch of speakers.
I put together an entirepresentation called Don't
Believe the Hype.
This was seven years ago.
The warning signs were there.
We just missed them or ignoredthem.
(16:35):
This is in NOW Magazine, theReal Estate, Bitcoin, and Wealth
Expo, Canada's largestmoney-making expo.
No, it says that, guys.
Hollywood icon SylvesterStallone, baseball legend Alex
Rodriguez, Shark Tank's DaymondJohn, Dragon Den's Manjeet
Minhas, and all these otherpeople.
(16:58):
Live performance by Pitbull,who's a musician but then
started telling people how tomake money.
I think at one point he said, Ishould have bought Napster.
Hundreds of opportunities inreal estate, investing, and
wealth making.
Was this not a sign?
They were asking$1,500 perticket.
(17:18):
And I remember saying, when youput together real estate,
Bitcoin, and wealth, this ishype.
This is FOMO.
You are selling fear of missingout.
And this isn't a get-rich-quickscheme.
It's just a fantastic way tomake a lot of money and fast.
Now they also, are you ready forthis, threw in cannabis.
(17:40):
What?
Could they not have thrown inBriex stock?
Some of you don't get thatreference.
It's a very famous stock thatwent bust in the early 2000s.
Now, I have here a picture,which I'm going to show for
those of you watching.
The real estate...
Wealth Expo with SylvesterStallone, Daymond John, and Alex
(18:01):
Rodriguez, who probably had tolook up Toronto on a map.
I have here one of the graphicsshown during the presentation.
Alex Rodriguez winning in everystage of the game, which is
ironic considering he's a careercheater who took steroids and
had the longest suspension inthe history of baseball.
Here's a picture of anadvertisement in the subway.
(18:22):
Celebrity millionaires teach youhow to get rich.
Sylvester Stallone's knockoutstrategies.
Pitbull telling you how to gofrom negative to positive.
All right.
The Real Estate, Bitcoin, andWealth Expo.
Network, learn, profit.
Get your tickets now.
$1,500 each.
I have here a photo of some ofthe other speakers.
(18:44):
The billion-dollar marijuanamarket.
Hot properties.
Flipping apartment buildings.
Who's flipping apartmentbuildings?
The entire purpose of buying anapartment building is to keep it
for the long term because thereturn is so small and the
expenses are so high.
The cap rates are non-existentand the way that you fund these
(19:04):
is not like residential.
It is an absolute expert fieldand you're talking about
flipping apartment buildings?
Guys, I did a presentation in2018.
I went up on stage and I toldpeople, don't believe the hype.
And I don't think anyone there,well, some people there probably
listened.
But after that, we know that somany people just ran around and
(19:24):
bought pre-cons and you'relooking at Calgary townhouses
and you've never actually beenthere.
My goodness, guys, the warningsigns were there.
It was FOMO.
But the best lessons ininvesting are are learned by
doing, experiencing, winning,and losing, and most
importantly, takingresponsibility.
Now, I paid$15,000 for thegreatest lesson I ever learned,
(19:50):
and I'm gonna tell you all aboutit.
I didn't pay$15,000 for thelesson.
I lost$15,000 at 21 years old.
It was my life savings.
1999, I wanna take you back tothe tech era.
Boom.
And for those of you that didn'tlive through it, let me explain.
(20:11):
The internet really only becamemainstream around that time.
I went to school in 1998.
I still have the dial-up modem.
That's how far back we are.
Now, every single tech stock wasgoing crazy on the exchanges.
You could literally take thispen, go and bookmark pens.com,
and then you could say, mybusiness model is we're going to
(20:32):
sell pens on the internet.
And you know what?
There's probably a venturecapitalist out there that'll
throw$200 million to fund thatidea.
That is, as history has shown,how crazy the tech boom was.
And guess what?
A young enterprising man namedDavid Fleming wanted to get in
on the action.
19 years old, I went downtown tomeet in person my father's
(20:54):
stockbroker to say, I want to bea player.
And I took my life savings,$15,000.
Actually, it was$17,500.
That's every penny I ever madefrom my first job making shish
kebabs at Bruno's, from pumpinggas at Sunoco, to bartending at
Shark City, to waiting tables atEastside Mario, the fish market
(21:14):
at Metro, back then Dominion.
And I wrote a check for$17,500to a gentleman at RBC Dominion
Securities.
And it just sat in my account.
And I went every single day.
And I looked online to see whatwas moving up, what was moving
down.
Everything was moving up.
To not get in would have beencrazy.
And one day I called him and hesaid, I'm buying Nortel
(21:36):
Networks.
Some of you right now arecringing.
Some of you have no idea whatI'm talking about.
Maybe you're Googling NortelNetworks.
Don't leave.
I'm gonna tell you whathappened.
So Nortel Networks was tradingat$50 a share at that time.
And my stockbroker, this is aperson that was in his probably
late 60s that had been throughmany different market cycles
that should have known the basicfundamentals of investing.
(21:59):
told me to put everything intoone stock.
I know you're going to say thisis hard to believe.
I know you're going to say,well, I would never do that.
And that's the first rule.
I am telling you, a person whotrades stocks for a living, who
has been through every up anddown, took a 19-year-old kid,
actually I was 20 at the time,and said, you have$17,500.
I would buy 300 shares of thisstock at$50 a share.
(22:22):
He told me to take all of mymoney and put it in one stock.
So naturally I did.
And guess what?
It went up to$51.
I had just made$300.
In fact, it went up to$53.
That was$900 of profit.
And I was walking aroundMcMaster University feeling like
an absolute king.
I could not believe the factthat I used to pump gas for$6 an
(22:46):
hour, and I just made 900 bucksinvesting in stock.
Then, of course, it went to 52,and then 51, and then 50.
And at 49, it hurt a little bit.
And it dropped down to 45.
Now, at 45, well,$5 times 300shares, I was down$1,500, which
is what I used to take home froman entire summer of making shish
(23:07):
kebabs, pumping gas, waitingtables, or whatever it was.
Now, I specifically remembercalling my stockbroker at 49, at
47, at 45, and saying, whatshould we do?
Do you know what his advice was?
Hang on.
That was his advice.
Hang on.
It's like how when Trumpannounced tariffs and the stock
market went to heck, everysingle person out there said,
(23:30):
don't look at it.
Don't look at your statements.
Don't look at it.
That is the worst possibleadvice.
You should look at it all thetime.
You should know exactly what'shappening.
And I hear people out theretoday telling their clients,
don't look at it.
It doesn't matter.
It's the same thing mystockbroker told me in 1999,
2000.
Don't look at it, he said.
It's just a paper loss.
A paper loss?
Well, that's interesting.
(23:51):
He said it's not a real lossuntil you actually exercise it,
and why would you do that?
Now, when the stock dropped in asingle day from$45 to$30, that
represented two things.
Number one, it was the day I setmy bench press record at The
Pulse, which was the name of thegym at McMaster University,
because I was so incrediblyangry.
(24:12):
It was also the day that Irealized I had lost$4,500 on
paper in a single day.
Now, my broker did not tell meto sell it at 30 or 29 or 28 or
27 or 25 or 24.
You know where this is going.
I got a phone call from him oneday when I was at the
aforementioned Celestica in 2001when the stock was trading at
(24:34):
about$2.
Oh, yeah, because he never toldme to sell.
And he said, I'm going to giveyou an early Christmas gift.
I'm going to sell you a thousandshares of Nortel at a dollar.
I said, what?
He said, don't ask.
Don't ask.
Just take it.
Just take it.
I said, okay.
He said, can I exercise thetrade?
And by then I had already set uplike, you know, an E-Trade
(24:55):
portfolio and I was doing my ownthing, which again, I don't
think anyone should do, but Iwas 20.
So he sells me the shares for adollar.
And I turn around and I sellthem for$2.
So I made$1,000.
And in the process, I sold the300 shares that he had sold me.
And I locked in that$48 pershare loss.
(25:17):
I love telling that story.
It's my favorite story.
And it's really hard because, Imean, I was there.
You ever think back to whenyou're younger and you're like,
I was there.
I was there when my father saidto me, Dave, this is the best
lesson you're ever gonna learn.
Because he saw a statement atthe house and he opened it
thinking it was for him.
(25:37):
And it was showing that I hadlost about 14,000 of my$15,000.
And he said he was gutted.
He felt sick.
He couldn't believe it.
And, you know, his words, thisis the best lesson you'll ever
learn at the time fell on deafears.
But the truth is that experiencemade me the person I am today
because I learned from it.
I don't trust anybody.
(25:57):
I really don't.
That was a stockbroker with allthe experience in the world,
been through every single marketcycle, and he took a kid and
told him to put his entire lifesavings into one stock and then
never told him to sell it.
You learn by doing.
You learn by winning.
You learn by losing.
And hopefully, cumulatively, youcome out ahead.
But I learned at the time thereality is retail investing is
(26:21):
for suckers.
Absolute suckers, and I knowyou're different.
You trade on your Questrade.
You're literally in theadvertisement where they show
you can get rich sooner and youcan retire sooner and all the
fees and all that.
Absolute nonsense.
I am very happy to pay extremelyhigh fees with somebody that
does this for a living.
(26:41):
My money is with a familymember.
They probably charge the biggestfees in the world, and I do not
care because that's what they dofor a living.
I don't trade on Scottrade.
Oh my God, that's how old I am.
Questrade, Robinhood, whateverit is.
Different schools of thought,but I'm also a full-service real
estate agent who believes inthat value.
So my point, guys, is that whileI am talking about all of the
(27:04):
signs here, the Real EstateBitcoin and Wealth Expo, the
people that boughtpre-construction townhouses in
Calgary when they've never beenwest of Thunder Bay, the kid
that bought the pre-con inToronto when he's from Sarnia
and his buddy is from London,FOMO.
and I too fell into the trap.
I was 20 years old, I'm notimmune, I'm no different than
anybody else.
(27:25):
But I have spent all of my timein real estate since I started
the blog in 07, encouragingpeople to not fall into the same
trap.
And this is exactly what hashappened over the last decade.
So who were the players then, asI say?
I'm gonna give you anotheranecdote.
A colleague of mine was sayingthat he recently spoke to what
(27:45):
he calls pre-con mom.
She has 12 pre-cons closing thisyear.
This is right out of the bigshort.
She has 12 pre-cons closing thisyear and she does not know what
to do.
She's a mom, you know, and I'mnot trying to make this sexist.
It could be a stay-at-home dad,but it sounds to me like maybe
she was bored and neededsomething to do, bought a
(28:06):
pre-con, liked it, boughtanother one, made some money,
flipped it.
She got 12 pre-cons closing thisyear if they close.
That is an idea that is ananecdote of who the players were
back then.
How about the sellers?
How about the fact that for along time when offshore money,
and I've told you guys manytimes, I think the whole foreign
(28:27):
buyer situation was reallyoverestimated, but at the same
time, there were so many foreigndeals where they were assigning
the pre-con and they were nevertaxed on the money.
that they made.
Think about it.
You buy a pre-con for$400,000,then you assign it for$500,000.
The buyer that buys it from youfor$500,000, they close, they
(28:47):
pay land transfer tax with thegovernment and all those
wonderful things.
But that portion in the meantimewas never taxed.
And I bet there are tens ofbillions of dollars, maybe
hundreds of billions of dollarsout there from, I don't know,
the year 2004 through...
you know, 2020, whenever thissort of music stopped, that went
untaxed.
To me, when I think of theplayers, specifically these
sellers, I think of flippers, Ithink of speculators, I think of
(29:10):
these assigners with theiruntaxed revenue, I think of
folks that were looking at theinvestment portion of real
estate and it became theentirety.
And it's not just the flippers,it's not just the speculators,
it's not just the people thatare going to the real estate and
Bitcoin Wealth Expo, the guysthat say let's buy a house,
renovate it, and flip it formore money.
I also think the people thatwere actually doing it as a
(29:32):
primary residence also startedto think just about the
investment potential when theyshould be thinking about the
school district.
They should be thinking abouthow long it takes to drive to
work, or to their mom's house,and we all got carried away in
that.
Now when it comes to the agents,I think the players then
represented the worst of theworst.
I think that that idea of thebank draft being held on the
(29:53):
steering wheel while showing offthe Rolex and the Mercedes logo,
to me really underscoreseverything that was wrong with
real estate.
And it became this contest onsocial media, this sort of
culture of looking busy.
You think about a typical videoof a real estate agent that
starts with their alarm clock at5.30, and it's like them like,
early bird gets the worm andthen they like make some shake
(30:14):
out of kale and whatever.
And then they go to theirworkout class.
Then they're in the office atlike seven 30 in the morning,
which is total nonsense.
Cause nobody in real estate doesthat.
And then they just have thismontage of how busy they are.
And then it ends with like aphoto of their laptop on their
steering wheel.
Like that's a totally normalthing.
And it's like 1145, like longday.
(30:34):
Can't wait to do it againtomorrow.
Like, How many times did we seethat on social media?
And I'm not even a big socialmedia person.
But that, to me, is when I thinkreal estate agent 2018 to 2023,
that is what I think of.
And that is that FOMO, that isthat nonsense, that is that
social media nonsense fakeculture that everyone bought
(30:55):
into and everyone got carriedaway with.
And it's part of the reason thatwe find ourselves here today.
And I think back, I wrote a blogpost about how a colleague of
mine who's really big in socialmedia, was approached by a media
company that wanted her to doads for Humber College to make
real estate look cool, get morepeople licensed.
Humber College is running abusiness.
(31:17):
And at the end of the day, theReal Estate Council of Ontario
took the education away from theOntario Real Estate Association
and gave it to Humber College.
Well, Humber College...
They need people to sign up.
That's how they make money.
So a marketing company goes outand says, hey, you're cool.
You're on social media.
Will you do some ads with us tohelp make real estate as a
career look cool and get morepeople licensed?
(31:38):
Are you kidding me?
Is it any wonder we ended uphere?
Now, all these new agents whohave absolutely no clue, they're
selling pre-construction,they're making promises they
can't keep, they're tellingpeople, buy this
pre-construction now, you don'thave to close.
In fact, there was an article inthe newspaper where there's an
actual quote from a guy that gotburned saying, I knew I wouldn't
be able to get the mortgage, butmy friend, the real estate agent
(32:01):
told me, don't worry, you'll beable to assign it.
Did you have a backup plan?
Did you have a plan B?
And where is that real estateagent now?
Not in the real estate industry,I can tell you that.
The discount agents, thefly-by-night agents, all of
these guys were able to, if theygot a listing, hold an offer
night, do a really terrible jobat it, be really unprofessional,
(32:22):
but they were able to get theproperty sold because the market
was so hot back then, you couldsell absolutely anything.
So that was then.
How has it changed?
I gave you so many anecdotesback then.
and so many stories andanalogies dating back to my days
as a 19-year-old during the techboom, seriously.
(32:42):
Yeah, we've come full circlenow.
It's 2025.
I'm looking at the last five,six, well, back to say 2017,
2018, when this boom of realestate agents came in and fear
of missing out took over and theReal Estate, Bitcoin, and Wealth
Expo.
What is it like in 2025 and whoare the players?
The buyers...
(33:04):
There are people that want tobuy a home.
There are people that want tomove into it.
There are families that arelooking to upsize.
There are people moving toToronto or to Canada.
They are buying homes to live inthem.
And yes, there are still someinvestors out there.
It's the sharps.
It's a gambling term.
(33:24):
I don't gamble, but it's a funnyterm.
The sharps are out there andthey're subscribing to buy while
others are selling and sellwhere others are buying.
The Sharps are out there rightnow and they're saying, okay, if
I could get an absolute steal,I'll buy this place.
Big money.
Institutional money will follownext.
That's who's buying.
And dare I say, at least in theformer category there, the folks
(33:45):
that are buying to actually livein the houses, that is kind of
what real estate was intended tobe.
Now, I'm not an anti-capitalist.
I do believe if someone wants toinvest, sure, absolutely go for
it.
But that should represent aportion of the market and not
the driving factor behind realestate.
Now it takes guts.
It takes guts to buy right now.
(34:06):
But fortune favors the bold.
And honestly, you have to thinkabout the time horizon.
So I need to address a pointhere.
And this is in spirit ofhonesty, because I haven't been
honest enough telling you aboutlosing my life savings at 20
years old.
I'm no different than theaverage agent that had a client
buy in 2022 at the market peak,who now has a client whose house
(34:28):
isn't worth as much.
That's what markets do.
The difference between me andother folks, whether it's James
Benson, who I mentioned at theonset, and other agents, is that
we weren't day trading homes.
A client of mine that bought in2022, sure, they've got a
25-year timeline.
They just bought a four-bed,four-bath in Leaside for$3
million by selling their semi.
(34:50):
Their kids were three and five.
They're going to be there untilthey finish high school.
We weren't day trading homes.
And that's how you ensure thatyou don't get burned.
Markets go up, markets go down.
And the real estate market hasalways gone up on a long enough
time horizon, and it willcontinue to.
But I'm not gonna say, oh, noone has ever lost money when
I've sold them a house.
No, markets go up and down.
But that is the difference.
(35:11):
And I'm gonna make a point in amoment that all of this And for
those of you listening, youcan't see, I'm waving my hand on
all of these images of SylvesterStallone and Pitbull and
cryptocurrency and cannabis asit relates to real estate, even
though it shouldn't becausethey're completely different
industries.
This is gone, man.
This, hopefully, will be just adistant memory as we move
forward and people learn fromtheir mistakes, as I learned as
(35:34):
a 19-year-old losing his lifesavings on Nortel Networks.
Now, who are the players fromthe seller perspective?
Well, at the most basic level,they're the folks that are
selling in this market, whichmeans fair market value, which
means understanding the currentdynamics and not thinking it's
something else.
Of course, there are a lot ofthose folks.
(35:54):
And I use the example of if atree falls in the woods and no
one's around to hear it, does itmake a sound?
Okay, well, there's a lot ofthose listings on the market
right now.
I've got a conduit 579 that'sbeen listed for two months.
Why is the guy two floors up at679?
I'm not bragging about myability to give away real
estate.
I'm saying that there aresellers out there that they're
(36:16):
never gonna sell.
They're the trees falling in thewoods that no one's around.
That's what's happening in thismarket.
The sellers, not the would-besellers, the sellers that are
actually selling are those thataim to transact.
They are selling because they'redownsizing.
They bought a small condo andnow they're selling the big
house.
They are selling because they'reupsizing.
(36:37):
They bought a big house, they'removing in with their family
that's gonna grow into theproverbial Leaside four bed,
four bath, they're selling theirsemi.
This is different from theplayers then who were only
selling because they bought, whowere only selling to flip, who
were only selling because it wasspeculative in nature, who were
only selling because the entirepurpose of their purchase was to
(36:58):
eventually sell.
Now the last part of this, whoare the players now?
The agents.
They're the professionals.
They're the ones who made itthrough the war and came back.
And I mean that in a proverbialsense.
All apologies to the literalsense.
But that's effectively how I seethis, is that over the last six
(37:19):
or seven years, we have had somany people enter the business
for the wrong reasons.
We've had people that have hadsuccess, and by success I mean
for their own pocketbooks, notthe people that are calling me
now crying because they can'tsell their assignment and
they're$200,000 behind in theirpre-con, but those folks are
gone for the most part.
You're not gonna see photos nowon social media of real estate
(37:40):
agents throwing dollar dollarbills, y'all.
You're not gonna see it.
People want to hireprofessionals.
And I mentioned my friend JamesBenson at the beginning and I
said, if folks like James and Iare getting passed by, because
someone's yoga teacher has areal estate license and they
want them to sell a pre-con.
That was the sign then.
That was the warning sign thenthat was missed.
(38:03):
And now what I see is that thejob of a realtor in peak times
is more important than ever.
And I don't wanna talk aboutwhat we do.
I don't wanna talk about who Iam.
So I'm gonna tell you about someother agents that I admire.
Alex Brot, that's a brand.
People say an Alex Brott typelisting.
(38:23):
Do you know what that means?
Do you understand how powerfulthat is?
You see a listing on MLS and yousay, oh, that's an Alex Brott
type listing from the write-upto the photos to the staging.
Ralph and Corey, they've got abrand.
They've got a style.
People like it.
They're drawn to it.
They respect it.
A guy like Paul Johnston, UniqueUrban Homes, and I don't want to
speak out of school for Paul,but I don't know that Paul's
(38:46):
necessarily taking that crappytenanted place and city place.
His entire unique urban homes isthat these properties he lists
are amazing.
These are the agents.
These are the professionals.
And yes, I'm talking aboutmyself and my team as well.
But there are so many incredibleagents out there that do the
things that need to be done thatBecky, the part-time spin
(39:08):
instructor and coach, Somehowmagically working 85 hours a
week as a realtor and putting itall on social media for you to
see, getting up at 5.30 in themorning, drinking our kale
shake, going to bed at 11o'clock after a successful day
flogging 14 pre-cons.
Those days are gone, man.
We've got a listing we'reprepping right now.
We just put in new countertops.
(39:29):
We had a new sink installed.
We put in new floors.
We're painting everything.
We've got a long list of fixeson the outside of the house.
We're talking not necessarilyabout the fluff and pizzazz of
the house, but now we're talkingabout, and I mentioned this in a
previous podcast, the nuts andbolts, the unsexy things that
during the boom people didn'tcare about.
We have a new furnace, we have anew air conditioner, we put in a
backflow valve, we put in a sumppump.
(39:51):
This is what we're marketing.
We're getting that propertyready for sale by getting into
the weeds with the seller.
Replacing countertops, man.
Yeah, that's what you need to doin this market.
You need a real professional.
And that's what was missing.
for so long, because in 2019,you could have a fly-by-night
(40:11):
real estate agent take a C-minuslisting, put it on MLS, set an
offer date, and they're gonnaget their 10 offers.
Now, they're not gonna get theprice that myself or one of
these other agents could havegot, but the seller doesn't know
that, right?
They got a 1.5% discount oncommission, and they think
they've done such a good job,they're never gonna know the
difference.
But it was selling, they gottheir 10 offers.
(40:33):
You can't do that today.
The A's are selling incompetition, on offer nights.
The B's aren't, the C's aren't,and the D's sure as hell are
not.
And what has changed, theplayers that were in the game, I
might say dominating the game,at least from a social media and
from a loudest noise winsperspective, those folks, for
(40:54):
the most part, are gone.
The players have changed becausethe game has changed.
And we are now in a completelydifferent market than we were in
before.
And for the love of God, thereal estate Bitcoin and wealth
expo with a focus on cannabis.
For those of you guys thatdidn't live through that, you're
looking back now and you'resaying, God, it was so easy.
(41:14):
It was so easy to see thewarning signs.
Then how come so many otherpeople missed them?
Anyways, folks, I appreciate youwatching today.
And yes, with the benefit ofhindsight, you could of course
say, oh my God, David, you'redoing this now.
But as I mentioned, I've beenputting this in the blog for
quite some time.
I've been rallying against thepre-construction for many years.
(41:34):
I did this seminar for TorontoLife in 2018.
I talked about all of this.
And I am hoping the folks thatdidn't learn then are certainly
going to learn now.
So thank you so much forwatching.
As always, folks, I hope youenjoyed the many trips down
memory lane here.
If you're watching on YouTube,please feel free to drop me a
comment.
I always love reading those.
And please remember to like,comment, or subscribe wherever
(41:55):
you get your podcasts.
We'll see you here next time onThe Last Honest Realtor.
I was chatting with a friend of mine last week, and
he posed a very important realestate question.
Where have all the socklessrealtors gone?
Hello folks and welcome back tothe Last Honest Realtor podcast.
I'm your host David Fleming.
Thank you so much for joining metoday as we ask and answer this
question in all seriousness as away to sort of look at, gauge
and evaluate the market inToronto as it is today.
(00:22):
Who are the players, the buyers,the sellers, the agents, the
other market participants andthen we compare and contrast
with who they were say threeyears, five years or ten years
ago and put this all together toask how has the market changed
and most importantly why.
Then you can evaluate whatmistakes have we made, and of
course, there are many, and howcan we use that information
(00:43):
moving forward.
Now, the story I told at theopening is a true one.
I was texting with a colleagueof mine who actually watched
last week's podcast.
He said, how are you?
Great job.
We got to chatting.
And of course, once he saidthat, he told me that I have to
give him credit for it.
Yes, it's your friend and myfriend, James Benson, fantastic
real estate agent, who textedme, and I'm going to say exactly
(01:04):
what he said.
I'm just wondering...
Where all the dudes withoutsocks in their suits and loafers
are right now because they'renot taking pictures with their
fancy cars.
Now, on its own, it's kind offunny.
It's just like, yeah, that's apretty funny observation, James
and David.
But here's the thing.
If you dig a little bit deeper,and trust me, I did because I'm
doing an entire podcast about ittoday, I think this speaks to a
(01:25):
microcosm of where the industrywas and how it's changed since
then.
Because it got me thinking thatif a professional like James or
myself is taking a backseat tosome of these sockless realtors,
you know, your bro who just gothis real estate license and has
a really great idea on how youcan not get rich quick, but make
a lot of money fast, this is howyou know that we have a problem.
(01:47):
And this working backwardsshould have been one of the
warning signs.
So more on this in a moment, butin 2025 right now, This isn't
just the market is changing.
This is the market has changed.
And in a changing market, youcould almost sort of say, hey,
it's changing, which is to saythat, listen, it could be going
forwards, going backwards.
(02:08):
We're not really sure.
The market's changed.
We know this as a fact.
I make no bones about the factthat sales are at an all-time
low.
And I say this, of course, whenthe Bank of Canada has reduced
interest rates.
So I could still make a verypositive argument for all things
real estate.
Now is not the time tonecessarily do that.
But point is, everything isdifferent.
And the way that we transact,the way that we prospect as
(02:31):
agents, the way that we marketproperties, the way that we sell
actively or passively, the waythat buyers buy, the way that
sellers sell, Every single thinghas changed.
The participants have changed aswell.
The buyers, the sellers, thelisting agents, the buyer
agents, the pre-con agents, nowait, pre-con agents, they're
literally like, you know thatWikipedia page for all of the
(02:53):
different occupations that nolonger exist?
You know, like the tool and diemaker from 1800s.
Yeah, I think they're addingpre-construction VVIP agent
platinum to that.
That's another joke, which Ithought was really funny.
Everything has changed.
So what I wanna know today ishow did we get to this point
What were the warning signs andwhy were the warning signs
missed?
Because that's incrediblyimportant and I'm going to get
(03:15):
ahead of this and tell you thatI don't want this to come off as
self-congratulatory, but I amgoing to talk about some of the
warning signs and I am going tomention that I shared them and a
lot of people didn't necessarilylisten.
But again, we have the benefitof hindsight, which is so
incredibly amazing.
So first, where are we?
We're in a market that'schanged.
Now, this market has changed notonly from, let's say, the
(03:36):
post-2022 peak when interestrates went up, post-COVID, but
this market has also changedfrom 2018 and 2019, which a lot
of people forget about.
And I take this for grantedsometimes.
Not everyone lives and breathesreal estate.
A lot of Torontonians do.
But if you were to break ourentire last 25 years down in
these little three-yearsegments, we came off of a peak
(03:58):
in April of 2017, whichironically felt very similar to
the peak in February of 2022,only five years later, except in
April of 2017, that peak wasafter four months of run-up,
where housing pricesskyrocketed, and then the
government stepped in.
They didn't actually really doanything.
If you lived through this, theyjust kind of made a series of
announcements about, we need todo something about home prices.
(04:20):
We need to cool the market.
Cool the market.
That's what you need to do.
Okay, interesting, free marketand government intervention,
which actually doesn't reallymake it free as far as the
definition of a market goes,topic for another day, but they
did cool the market and pricesdropped.
2022, same thing, except thistime they actually did
something.
They raised interest rates at anunprecedented rate.
(04:42):
So in 2017, after that peakrolled off, 2018, 2019,
pre-COVID, those were very, verybusy years.
In the real estate market, thedowntown condo market, and of
course, your friend, my enemy,the pre-construction market.
Now, this time, incredibly busy,pre-construction dominating,
(05:04):
absolutely everything.
And I'm going to talk to you, ohgosh, I cannot wait for you to
hear all about, should I spoilit?
The Real Estate Bitcoin andWealth Expo.
from April of 2018.
More on that in a moment.
Now, pre-construction, it'sdead.
The house of cards, it folded.
I have been talking about thisso much in the last four months.
(05:26):
If you're not familiar with mywork, I started writing my blog
in 2007 and immediately startedsaying, this is insanity.
It makes no sense.
I take little pleasure.
Actually, that's not true.
I do take a lot of pleasure, notnecessarily in the misfortunes
of people that lost everythingin the pre-construction world,
but I do take pleasure in thefact that eventually, finally,
(05:46):
it was sort of like, okay, thankyou.
Thank you.
We were right on this.
Guys like me and Ben Rabideau,who have been talking about this
forever while people continue tobuy at inflated prices, are now
looking at this and saying,okay, yeah, we called this.
We wish that more people hadlistened.
I could do an entire podcast onwhat happened in
pre-construction, butessentially when you're selling
(06:07):
$800 a square foot condos for$1,200 a square foot in
pre-construction, the market hadbetter rise.
Or else, if it doesn't, you'rebehind by 400 a square foot.
And God forbid, if it declines,you're behind by even more.
Now people are walking away fromdeposits.
Developers are suing thesefolks.
People can't close.
You've got banks giving blanketappraisals, which circumvents
(06:28):
the Bank Act.
It's a freaking mess.
That is what's happened inpre-con.
That is where we are.
But I want to go back to wherewe were.
And if you like my analogy aboutthe sockless realtor, you're
going to love this one.
I'm gonna sum up theridiculousness of where we were
with an image.
(06:49):
On your friend's social media oron some random agent's social
media, there's a photo of a bankdraft for$200,000 and it's a
caption that says, just closedanother deal, congrats to my
happy buyers.
But it's not just a photo ofthat bank draft because that
photo shows the bank draft beingheld by a person wearing a Rolex
(07:12):
strategically showcasing thecheck on the steering wheel of
their Mercedes.
I cannot tell you how many timesI saw a photo like this, and I
can't tell you how many times,and James Benson said, you know,
posing in front of their fancycars, how many times I've seen
people doing this 2018 through2022, 2023 maybe even, and to
(07:37):
James's point, where are thesepeople now?
because it's gross.
It was gross then and it's grossnow.
I've never taken a picture of abank draft.
I don't wear a watch, first ofall.
Somebody that I used to know waslike, man, if I was you, I'd
have a thousand Rolexes.
I tell time by looking at thesun, okay?
I don't wear a watch.
And if I did, it probablywouldn't be a Rolex.
And I do drive a Lexus, butthat's because it's a great car.
(08:01):
I don't need a Maserati or aLamborghini like the people
taking photos in social media,and putting it up there bragging
about how awesome they are.
And you know as well as I do,it's image.
Most of it's not true.
One of the best real estateagents in our office drives a
Mazda.
He's one of the top 10 agentshere and he drives a Mazda.
(08:22):
He's just an awesome dude.
He's smart as hell, he'shardworking, he's great working
with listings, great workingwith buyers, drives a Mazda.
But to sum it all up guys,that's where we were.
That's where we were for five orsix years.
You'd go on to social media andit was just a contest to see who
could act like they were workingthe hardest.
Now, where we were, peoplespeculating on Calgary real
(08:43):
estate when they've never beento Calgary.
You know your friend that'slike, yeah, I just picked up a
couple of towns in Calgary.
Towns?
Yeah, a couple townhouses.
I got a contact out there.
He was able to skip the line forme.
You what?
You bought two pre-constructiontownhouses in Calgary?
You've never been west ofThunder Bay.
(09:04):
Yes, that's what was happening.
And looking back on it now, itseems exactly crazy.
I will say I do have one clientwho's a professional real estate
investor who bought propertiesin Calgary.
But he's brilliant.
And the average person doingthat is not.
Speculating on pre-constructiontowns in Calgary.
(09:24):
Oh my goodness.
So real estate transitioningfrom...
Its primary function as aprimary residence towards
investment, another thing thathappened.
Now, I'm going to take a tangenthere for a moment to essentially
blame the way that we have builtthe city of Toronto, which is to
say that we need condos.
Developers don't want to pay tobuild them, so they'll borrow
(09:45):
money from a bank, but the bankdoesn't want to lend that money
to developers who have sold themall, but you're selling
something that doesn't exist.
So what we'll do is we'll sellpre-construction condos, and
then as prices go up, and weknow that investors are the ones
that are buying these andbasically investors are
financing them, we'll just keepshrinking the units over and
over and over so we can keep theabsolute price the same and the
(10:07):
units get smaller.
And that is how all of Toronto'sdowntown core was built over the
last 20 years, ergo, it wasbuilt by investors.
And the worst part is, downtownToronto was, I wanna say
designed by, it was shaped byinvestors.
There was no grand plan.
There was no city planner thatsaid, hey, here's what we'll
(10:28):
build.
There was no conglomerate ofcondominium developers that
said, here's what we'll do.
It was investors buying unitscompletely speculatively that
drove prices up and shrunk thesize of condos.
And even when, even when youhave people that are looking to
buy real estate as a primaryresidence, they're still so
(10:49):
obsessed with the investmentportion Remember, it's a portion
of the investment.
You wanna go buy stocks?
Fine, that's an investment.
But when you're buying a house,you're living in there, you're
sleeping in there, you'reraising your kids in there,
you're decorating your Christmastree in there, you're having
grandma's 90th birthday inthere.
A portion is investment.
And we reached a point where thecomponent went to the entire
(11:12):
thing.
So I'm gonna give you an exampleof what's been happening over
the last little while.
I got a call from a young personwho lives in Sarnia, whose
friend was a real estate agentfrom London, who told him to buy
a pre-construction condo as acamp miss, and you know where
this is going, and I wrote aboutthis on my blog the other day,
(11:32):
and he called me basically, hisfriend's no longer in real
estate, of course, but this was,as he said, about six months
after they finished university,his friend got his real estate
license, and it was kind of sad,but also kind of awesome,
because he said to me, we alldecided as a group, they were in
business school, we all decidedthat whatever careers we had, we
would always support each other,which is amazing.
(11:53):
And these guys finished schooland this guy's buddy went into
real estate and he called himone day and he said, I've got a
can't miss for you.
And he sold a pre-constructioncondo in downtown Toronto.
The guy from Sarnia who lives inSarnia, who went to school, I
won't say where, but then theagent lives in London and he's
no longer in the business.
And he basically sold him thisplace for not tomorrow's price
today, but like eight years fromnow's price today.
(12:15):
Well, actually now would be like15 years.
So say the kid paid 700,000 fora studio that's now worth maybe
five and a quarter.
That's where we were.
Okay, another story, and thisone, you ready for this, is
gonna take you back a quarter ofa century.
Taking the glasses off foreffect certainly helped.
Now, infamously, in my familyand my friend circle, and
sometimes on Toronto RealtyBlog, I have told this story
(12:38):
over and over.
In 2001, I was an intern atCelestica, in between third and
fourth year university, and Iwas a young business student
working for a facelesscorporation, which of course
made me the man I am todaybecause I realized I did not to
work for a faceless corporation.
Was not set out for thecorporate world, goes without
saying, but while I was there, Ifound myself.
(12:58):
And I took all the businessacumen, and while I might say
this, the sort of you're bornwith it entrepreneurial spirit,
and I started to do things tomake money, to take what I had
learned and make profits, absorblosses, revenues, expenses.
One of those things was usingthis magical new website that
was only two years old calledeBay.
And I bought and sold concertand sporting event tickets.
(13:21):
Now, in 2025, I recognizeTicketmaster controls it.
They're virtual tickets.
And I'm pretty sure that the CRAis involved.
Back then, you could do whateveryou wanted.
Paper tickets, Britney Spears,Christina Aguilera, Toronto
Maple Leafs, whatever it is.
Here's my point, guys.
I was working in a company withall kinds of other employees who
(13:41):
were grown men and womenemployees.
watching what the kid interndid, and some of them tried to
emulate it.
Now, I'm not trying to toot myown horn.
I lost money on events.
I actually went down to scalpJanet Jackson at Cop's Coliseum
and lost my shirt.
But the point is, over theyears, I refined it.
I learned wins, losses.
And one day, a colleague of minewho's a 45-year-old man with a
(14:03):
wife and two kids comes to mecrying.
He says, I need your help.
I said, what?
He says, well, I saw what youwere doing, and I bought four
tickets to Paul McCartney in LosAngeles, and I can't sell them.
You did what?
He tells me he spent$1,000 aticket on Paul McCartney in Los
Angeles.
His wife went absolutely crazywhen she saw them and he's
(14:25):
freaking out.
Okay, why did you do that?
Listen, far be it for me to sayat the time when I was 21 years
old, I knew that people watchingPaul McCartney aren't on eBay.
They barely know the internetexists and you can't make a
profit on tickets that were$1,000.
Best event I ever had, Zwan, itwas a side project by Billy
Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.
Tickets were like$20.
(14:46):
Crazy people were paying 500bucks for them.
So the point of this story, asit is a tangent but hopefully a
fun one, is that all of theseother people in this actual
company that was responsible formaking electronics and they were
like real ass adults, they werewatching what this 21-year-old
kid was doing.
They tried to emulate it.
And that's exactly what peopledid in the real estate market
(15:07):
between 2018 and 2023.
Everyone was watching everyoneelse and saying, I can do that
too.
And saying, it doesn't matter.
I don't need experience.
I don't need knowledge.
I'm just going to do it.
And so excuse the story there.
I hope it was fun.
Yeah, I still drive by Don Millsin Edmonton every once in a
while and remember when.
But that to me is...
an analogy for you, if you will.
(15:28):
And I'm drawing on my personalexperience there, but I see so
many similarities between what'shappened over the last few
years.
People just getting in overtheir heads, people that are
making moves without thinking,and I'm not just talking about
the people buyingpre-construction, I'm talking
about real estate agents sellingit, and I'm talking about the
real estate agents getting intothe business in general.
Now, I wanna go to the warningsigns, and this is going to be
(15:50):
so amazing, folks.
I mention this.
The Real Estate, Bitcoin, andWealth Expo.
I'm gonna warn you, there'sgoing to be a lot of sarcasm, so
just hang on and bear with me.
But with the benefit ofhindsight, we can look back at
this and think it's crazy.
Here comes thatself-congratulatory moment.
(16:13):
I was asked by Toronto Life in2018 to be part of a panel.
A paying audience came to watcha bunch of speakers.
I put together an entirepresentation called Don't
Believe the Hype.
This was seven years ago.
The warning signs were there.
We just missed them or ignoredthem.
(16:35):
This is in NOW Magazine, theReal Estate, Bitcoin, and Wealth
Expo, Canada's largestmoney-making expo.
No, it says that, guys.
Hollywood icon SylvesterStallone, baseball legend Alex
Rodriguez, Shark Tank's DaymondJohn, Dragon Den's Manjeet
Minhas, and all these otherpeople.
(16:58):
Live performance by Pitbull,who's a musician but then
started telling people how tomake money.
I think at one point he said, Ishould have bought Napster.
Hundreds of opportunities inreal estate, investing, and
wealth making.
Was this not a sign?
They were asking$1,500 perticket.
(17:18):
And I remember saying, when youput together real estate,
Bitcoin, and wealth, this ishype.
This is FOMO.
You are selling fear of missingout.
And this isn't a get-rich-quickscheme.
It's just a fantastic way tomake a lot of money and fast.
Now they also, are you ready forthis, threw in cannabis.
(17:40):
What?
Could they not have thrown inBriex stock?
Some of you don't get thatreference.
It's a very famous stock thatwent bust in the early 2000s.
Now, I have here a picture,which I'm going to show for
those of you watching.
The real estate...
Wealth Expo with SylvesterStallone, Daymond John, and Alex
(18:01):
Rodriguez, who probably had tolook up Toronto on a map.
I have here one of the graphicsshown during the presentation.
Alex Rodriguez winning in everystage of the game, which is
ironic considering he's a careercheater who took steroids and
had the longest suspension inthe history of baseball.
Here's a picture of anadvertisement in the subway.
(18:22):
Celebrity millionaires teach youhow to get rich.
Sylvester Stallone's knockoutstrategies.
Pitbull telling you how to gofrom negative to positive.
All right.
The Real Estate, Bitcoin, andWealth Expo.
Network, learn, profit.
Get your tickets now.
$1,500 each.
I have here a photo of some ofthe other speakers.
(18:44):
The billion-dollar marijuanamarket.
Hot properties.
Flipping apartment buildings.
Who's flipping apartmentbuildings?
The entire purpose of buying anapartment building is to keep it
for the long term because thereturn is so small and the
expenses are so high.
The cap rates are non-existentand the way that you fund these
(19:04):
is not like residential.
It is an absolute expert fieldand you're talking about
flipping apartment buildings?
Guys, I did a presentation in2018.
I went up on stage and I toldpeople, don't believe the hype.
And I don't think anyone there,well, some people there probably
listened.
But after that, we know that somany people just ran around and
(19:24):
bought pre-cons and you'relooking at Calgary townhouses
and you've never actually beenthere.
My goodness, guys, the warningsigns were there.
It was FOMO.
But the best lessons ininvesting are are learned by
doing, experiencing, winning,and losing, and most
importantly, takingresponsibility.
Now, I paid$15,000 for thegreatest lesson I ever learned,
(19:50):
and I'm gonna tell you all aboutit.
I didn't pay$15,000 for thelesson.
I lost$15,000 at 21 years old.
It was my life savings.
1999, I wanna take you back tothe tech era.
Boom.
And for those of you that didn'tlive through it, let me explain.
(20:11):
The internet really only becamemainstream around that time.
I went to school in 1998.
I still have the dial-up modem.
That's how far back we are.
Now, every single tech stock wasgoing crazy on the exchanges.
You could literally take thispen, go and bookmark pens.com,
and then you could say, mybusiness model is we're going to
(20:32):
sell pens on the internet.
And you know what?
There's probably a venturecapitalist out there that'll
throw$200 million to fund thatidea.
That is, as history has shown,how crazy the tech boom was.
And guess what?
A young enterprising man namedDavid Fleming wanted to get in
on the action.
19 years old, I went downtown tomeet in person my father's
(20:54):
stockbroker to say, I want to bea player.
And I took my life savings,$15,000.
Actually, it was$17,500.
That's every penny I ever madefrom my first job making shish
kebabs at Bruno's, from pumpinggas at Sunoco, to bartending at
Shark City, to waiting tables atEastside Mario, the fish market
(21:14):
at Metro, back then Dominion.
And I wrote a check for$17,500to a gentleman at RBC Dominion
Securities.
And it just sat in my account.
And I went every single day.
And I looked online to see whatwas moving up, what was moving
down.
Everything was moving up.
To not get in would have beencrazy.
And one day I called him and hesaid, I'm buying Nortel
(21:36):
Networks.
Some of you right now arecringing.
Some of you have no idea whatI'm talking about.
Maybe you're Googling NortelNetworks.
Don't leave.
I'm gonna tell you whathappened.
So Nortel Networks was tradingat$50 a share at that time.
And my stockbroker, this is aperson that was in his probably
late 60s that had been throughmany different market cycles
that should have known the basicfundamentals of investing.
(21:59):
told me to put everything intoone stock.
I know you're going to say thisis hard to believe.
I know you're going to say,well, I would never do that.
And that's the first rule.
I am telling you, a person whotrades stocks for a living, who
has been through every up anddown, took a 19-year-old kid,
actually I was 20 at the time,and said, you have$17,500.
I would buy 300 shares of thisstock at$50 a share.
(22:22):
He told me to take all of mymoney and put it in one stock.
So naturally I did.
And guess what?
It went up to$51.
I had just made$300.
In fact, it went up to$53.
That was$900 of profit.
And I was walking aroundMcMaster University feeling like
an absolute king.
I could not believe the factthat I used to pump gas for$6 an
(22:46):
hour, and I just made 900 bucksinvesting in stock.
Then, of course, it went to 52,and then 51, and then 50.
And at 49, it hurt a little bit.
And it dropped down to 45.
Now, at 45, well,$5 times 300shares, I was down$1,500, which
is what I used to take home froman entire summer of making shish
(23:07):
kebabs, pumping gas, waitingtables, or whatever it was.
Now, I specifically remembercalling my stockbroker at 49, at
47, at 45, and saying, whatshould we do?
Do you know what his advice was?
Hang on.
That was his advice.
Hang on.
It's like how when Trumpannounced tariffs and the stock
market went to heck, everysingle person out there said,
(23:30):
don't look at it.
Don't look at your statements.
Don't look at it.
That is the worst possibleadvice.
You should look at it all thetime.
You should know exactly what'shappening.
And I hear people out theretoday telling their clients,
don't look at it.
It doesn't matter.
It's the same thing mystockbroker told me in 1999,
2000.
Don't look at it, he said.
It's just a paper loss.
A paper loss?
Well, that's interesting.
(23:51):
He said it's not a real lossuntil you actually exercise it,
and why would you do that?
Now, when the stock dropped in asingle day from$45 to$30, that
represented two things.
Number one, it was the day I setmy bench press record at The
Pulse, which was the name of thegym at McMaster University,
because I was so incrediblyangry.
(24:12):
It was also the day that Irealized I had lost$4,500 on
paper in a single day.
Now, my broker did not tell meto sell it at 30 or 29 or 28 or
27 or 25 or 24.
You know where this is going.
I got a phone call from him oneday when I was at the
aforementioned Celestica in 2001when the stock was trading at
(24:34):
about$2.
Oh, yeah, because he never toldme to sell.
And he said, I'm going to giveyou an early Christmas gift.
I'm going to sell you a thousandshares of Nortel at a dollar.
I said, what?
He said, don't ask.
Don't ask.
Just take it.
Just take it.
I said, okay.
He said, can I exercise thetrade?
And by then I had already set uplike, you know, an E-Trade
(24:55):
portfolio and I was doing my ownthing, which again, I don't
think anyone should do, but Iwas 20.
So he sells me the shares for adollar.
And I turn around and I sellthem for$2.
So I made$1,000.
And in the process, I sold the300 shares that he had sold me.
And I locked in that$48 pershare loss.
(25:17):
I love telling that story.
It's my favorite story.
And it's really hard because, Imean, I was there.
You ever think back to whenyou're younger and you're like,
I was there.
I was there when my father saidto me, Dave, this is the best
lesson you're ever gonna learn.
Because he saw a statement atthe house and he opened it
thinking it was for him.
(25:37):
And it was showing that I hadlost about 14,000 of my$15,000.
And he said he was gutted.
He felt sick.
He couldn't believe it.
And, you know, his words, thisis the best lesson you'll ever
learn at the time fell on deafears.
But the truth is that experiencemade me the person I am today
because I learned from it.
I don't trust anybody.
(25:57):
I really don't.
That was a stockbroker with allthe experience in the world,
been through every single marketcycle, and he took a kid and
told him to put his entire lifesavings into one stock and then
never told him to sell it.
You learn by doing.
You learn by winning.
You learn by losing.
And hopefully, cumulatively, youcome out ahead.
But I learned at the time thereality is retail investing is
(26:21):
for suckers.
Absolute suckers, and I knowyou're different.
You trade on your Questrade.
You're literally in theadvertisement where they show
you can get rich sooner and youcan retire sooner and all the
fees and all that.
Absolute nonsense.
I am very happy to pay extremelyhigh fees with somebody that
does this for a living.
(26:41):
My money is with a familymember.
They probably charge the biggestfees in the world, and I do not
care because that's what they dofor a living.
I don't trade on Scottrade.
Oh my God, that's how old I am.
Questrade, Robinhood, whateverit is.
Different schools of thought,but I'm also a full-service real
estate agent who believes inthat value.
So my point, guys, is that whileI am talking about all of the
(27:04):
signs here, the Real EstateBitcoin and Wealth Expo, the
people that boughtpre-construction townhouses in
Calgary when they've never beenwest of Thunder Bay, the kid
that bought the pre-con inToronto when he's from Sarnia
and his buddy is from London,FOMO.
and I too fell into the trap.
I was 20 years old, I'm notimmune, I'm no different than
anybody else.
(27:25):
But I have spent all of my timein real estate since I started
the blog in 07, encouragingpeople to not fall into the same
trap.
And this is exactly what hashappened over the last decade.
So who were the players then, asI say?
I'm gonna give you anotheranecdote.
A colleague of mine was sayingthat he recently spoke to what
(27:45):
he calls pre-con mom.
She has 12 pre-cons closing thisyear.
This is right out of the bigshort.
She has 12 pre-cons closing thisyear and she does not know what
to do.
She's a mom, you know, and I'mnot trying to make this sexist.
It could be a stay-at-home dad,but it sounds to me like maybe
she was bored and neededsomething to do, bought a
(28:06):
pre-con, liked it, boughtanother one, made some money,
flipped it.
She got 12 pre-cons closing thisyear if they close.
That is an idea that is ananecdote of who the players were
back then.
How about the sellers?
How about the fact that for along time when offshore money,
and I've told you guys manytimes, I think the whole foreign
(28:27):
buyer situation was reallyoverestimated, but at the same
time, there were so many foreigndeals where they were assigning
the pre-con and they were nevertaxed on the money.
that they made.
Think about it.
You buy a pre-con for$400,000,then you assign it for$500,000.
The buyer that buys it from youfor$500,000, they close, they
(28:47):
pay land transfer tax with thegovernment and all those
wonderful things.
But that portion in the meantimewas never taxed.
And I bet there are tens ofbillions of dollars, maybe
hundreds of billions of dollarsout there from, I don't know,
the year 2004 through...
you know, 2020, whenever thissort of music stopped, that went
untaxed.
To me, when I think of theplayers, specifically these
sellers, I think of flippers, Ithink of speculators, I think of
(29:10):
these assigners with theiruntaxed revenue, I think of
folks that were looking at theinvestment portion of real
estate and it became theentirety.
And it's not just the flippers,it's not just the speculators,
it's not just the people thatare going to the real estate and
Bitcoin Wealth Expo, the guysthat say let's buy a house,
renovate it, and flip it formore money.
I also think the people thatwere actually doing it as a
(29:32):
primary residence also startedto think just about the
investment potential when theyshould be thinking about the
school district.
They should be thinking abouthow long it takes to drive to
work, or to their mom's house,and we all got carried away in
that.
Now when it comes to the agents,I think the players then
represented the worst of theworst.
I think that that idea of thebank draft being held on the
(29:53):
steering wheel while showing offthe Rolex and the Mercedes logo,
to me really underscoreseverything that was wrong with
real estate.
And it became this contest onsocial media, this sort of
culture of looking busy.
You think about a typical videoof a real estate agent that
starts with their alarm clock at5.30, and it's like them like,
early bird gets the worm andthen they like make some shake
(30:14):
out of kale and whatever.
And then they go to theirworkout class.
Then they're in the office atlike seven 30 in the morning,
which is total nonsense.
Cause nobody in real estate doesthat.
And then they just have thismontage of how busy they are.
And then it ends with like aphoto of their laptop on their
steering wheel.
Like that's a totally normalthing.
And it's like 1145, like longday.
(30:34):
Can't wait to do it againtomorrow.
Like, How many times did we seethat on social media?
And I'm not even a big socialmedia person.
But that, to me, is when I thinkreal estate agent 2018 to 2023,
that is what I think of.
And that is that FOMO, that isthat nonsense, that is that
social media nonsense fakeculture that everyone bought
(30:55):
into and everyone got carriedaway with.
And it's part of the reason thatwe find ourselves here today.
And I think back, I wrote a blogpost about how a colleague of
mine who's really big in socialmedia, was approached by a media
company that wanted her to doads for Humber College to make
real estate look cool, get morepeople licensed.
Humber College is running abusiness.
(31:17):
And at the end of the day, theReal Estate Council of Ontario
took the education away from theOntario Real Estate Association
and gave it to Humber College.
Well, Humber College...
They need people to sign up.
That's how they make money.
So a marketing company goes outand says, hey, you're cool.
You're on social media.
Will you do some ads with us tohelp make real estate as a
career look cool and get morepeople licensed?
(31:38):
Are you kidding me?
Is it any wonder we ended uphere?
Now, all these new agents whohave absolutely no clue, they're
selling pre-construction,they're making promises they
can't keep, they're tellingpeople, buy this
pre-construction now, you don'thave to close.
In fact, there was an article inthe newspaper where there's an
actual quote from a guy that gotburned saying, I knew I wouldn't
be able to get the mortgage, butmy friend, the real estate agent
(32:01):
told me, don't worry, you'll beable to assign it.
Did you have a backup plan?
Did you have a plan B?
And where is that real estateagent now?
Not in the real estate industry,I can tell you that.
The discount agents, thefly-by-night agents, all of
these guys were able to, if theygot a listing, hold an offer
night, do a really terrible jobat it, be really unprofessional,
(32:22):
but they were able to get theproperty sold because the market
was so hot back then, you couldsell absolutely anything.
So that was then.
How has it changed?
I gave you so many anecdotesback then.
and so many stories andanalogies dating back to my days
as a 19-year-old during the techboom, seriously.
(32:42):
Yeah, we've come full circlenow.
It's 2025.
I'm looking at the last five,six, well, back to say 2017,
2018, when this boom of realestate agents came in and fear
of missing out took over and theReal Estate, Bitcoin, and Wealth
Expo.
What is it like in 2025 and whoare the players?
The buyers...
(33:04):
There are people that want tobuy a home.
There are people that want tomove into it.
There are families that arelooking to upsize.
There are people moving toToronto or to Canada.
They are buying homes to live inthem.
And yes, there are still someinvestors out there.
It's the sharps.
It's a gambling term.
(33:24):
I don't gamble, but it's a funnyterm.
The sharps are out there andthey're subscribing to buy while
others are selling and sellwhere others are buying.
The Sharps are out there rightnow and they're saying, okay, if
I could get an absolute steal,I'll buy this place.
Big money.
Institutional money will follownext.
That's who's buying.
And dare I say, at least in theformer category there, the folks
(33:45):
that are buying to actually livein the houses, that is kind of
what real estate was intended tobe.
Now, I'm not an anti-capitalist.
I do believe if someone wants toinvest, sure, absolutely go for
it.
But that should represent aportion of the market and not
the driving factor behind realestate.
Now it takes guts.
It takes guts to buy right now.
(34:06):
But fortune favors the bold.
And honestly, you have to thinkabout the time horizon.
So I need to address a pointhere.
And this is in spirit ofhonesty, because I haven't been
honest enough telling you aboutlosing my life savings at 20
years old.
I'm no different than theaverage agent that had a client
buy in 2022 at the market peak,who now has a client whose house
(34:28):
isn't worth as much.
That's what markets do.
The difference between me andother folks, whether it's James
Benson, who I mentioned at theonset, and other agents, is that
we weren't day trading homes.
A client of mine that bought in2022, sure, they've got a
25-year timeline.
They just bought a four-bed,four-bath in Leaside for$3
million by selling their semi.
(34:50):
Their kids were three and five.
They're going to be there untilthey finish high school.
We weren't day trading homes.
And that's how you ensure thatyou don't get burned.
Markets go up, markets go down.
And the real estate market hasalways gone up on a long enough
time horizon, and it willcontinue to.
But I'm not gonna say, oh, noone has ever lost money when
I've sold them a house.
No, markets go up and down.
But that is the difference.
(35:11):
And I'm gonna make a point in amoment that all of this And for
those of you listening, youcan't see, I'm waving my hand on
all of these images of SylvesterStallone and Pitbull and
cryptocurrency and cannabis asit relates to real estate, even
though it shouldn't becausethey're completely different
industries.
This is gone, man.
This, hopefully, will be just adistant memory as we move
forward and people learn fromtheir mistakes, as I learned as
(35:34):
a 19-year-old losing his lifesavings on Nortel Networks.
Now, who are the players fromthe seller perspective?
Well, at the most basic level,they're the folks that are
selling in this market, whichmeans fair market value, which
means understanding the currentdynamics and not thinking it's
something else.
Of course, there are a lot ofthose folks.
(35:54):
And I use the example of if atree falls in the woods and no
one's around to hear it, does itmake a sound?
Okay, well, there's a lot ofthose listings on the market
right now.
I've got a conduit 579 that'sbeen listed for two months.
Why is the guy two floors up at679?
I'm not bragging about myability to give away real
estate.
I'm saying that there aresellers out there that they're
(36:16):
never gonna sell.
They're the trees falling in thewoods that no one's around.
That's what's happening in thismarket.
The sellers, not the would-besellers, the sellers that are
actually selling are those thataim to transact.
They are selling because they'redownsizing.
They bought a small condo andnow they're selling the big
house.
They are selling because they'reupsizing.
(36:37):
They bought a big house, they'removing in with their family
that's gonna grow into theproverbial Leaside four bed,
four bath, they're selling theirsemi.
This is different from theplayers then who were only
selling because they bought, whowere only selling to flip, who
were only selling because it wasspeculative in nature, who were
only selling because the entirepurpose of their purchase was to
(36:58):
eventually sell.
Now the last part of this, whoare the players now?
The agents.
They're the professionals.
They're the ones who made itthrough the war and came back.
And I mean that in a proverbialsense.
All apologies to the literalsense.
But that's effectively how I seethis, is that over the last six
(37:19):
or seven years, we have had somany people enter the business
for the wrong reasons.
We've had people that have hadsuccess, and by success I mean
for their own pocketbooks, notthe people that are calling me
now crying because they can'tsell their assignment and
they're$200,000 behind in theirpre-con, but those folks are
gone for the most part.
You're not gonna see photos nowon social media of real estate
(37:40):
agents throwing dollar dollarbills, y'all.
You're not gonna see it.
People want to hireprofessionals.
And I mentioned my friend JamesBenson at the beginning and I
said, if folks like James and Iare getting passed by, because
someone's yoga teacher has areal estate license and they
want them to sell a pre-con.
That was the sign then.
That was the warning sign thenthat was missed.
(38:03):
And now what I see is that thejob of a realtor in peak times
is more important than ever.
And I don't wanna talk aboutwhat we do.
I don't wanna talk about who Iam.
So I'm gonna tell you about someother agents that I admire.
Alex Brot, that's a brand.
People say an Alex Brott typelisting.
(38:23):
Do you know what that means?
Do you understand how powerfulthat is?
You see a listing on MLS and yousay, oh, that's an Alex Brott
type listing from the write-upto the photos to the staging.
Ralph and Corey, they've got abrand.
They've got a style.
People like it.
They're drawn to it.
They respect it.
A guy like Paul Johnston, UniqueUrban Homes, and I don't want to
speak out of school for Paul,but I don't know that Paul's
(38:46):
necessarily taking that crappytenanted place and city place.
His entire unique urban homes isthat these properties he lists
are amazing.
These are the agents.
These are the professionals.
And yes, I'm talking aboutmyself and my team as well.
But there are so many incredibleagents out there that do the
things that need to be done thatBecky, the part-time spin
(39:08):
instructor and coach, Somehowmagically working 85 hours a
week as a realtor and putting itall on social media for you to
see, getting up at 5.30 in themorning, drinking our kale
shake, going to bed at 11o'clock after a successful day
flogging 14 pre-cons.
Those days are gone, man.
We've got a listing we'reprepping right now.
We just put in new countertops.
(39:29):
We had a new sink installed.
We put in new floors.
We're painting everything.
We've got a long list of fixeson the outside of the house.
We're talking not necessarilyabout the fluff and pizzazz of
the house, but now we're talkingabout, and I mentioned this in a
previous podcast, the nuts andbolts, the unsexy things that
during the boom people didn'tcare about.
We have a new furnace, we have anew air conditioner, we put in a
backflow valve, we put in a sumppump.
(39:51):
This is what we're marketing.
We're getting that propertyready for sale by getting into
the weeds with the seller.
Replacing countertops, man.
Yeah, that's what you need to doin this market.
You need a real professional.
And that's what was missing.
for so long, because in 2019,you could have a fly-by-night
(40:11):
real estate agent take a C-minuslisting, put it on MLS, set an
offer date, and they're gonnaget their 10 offers.
Now, they're not gonna get theprice that myself or one of
these other agents could havegot, but the seller doesn't know
that, right?
They got a 1.5% discount oncommission, and they think
they've done such a good job,they're never gonna know the
difference.
But it was selling, they gottheir 10 offers.
(40:33):
You can't do that today.
The A's are selling incompetition, on offer nights.
The B's aren't, the C's aren't,and the D's sure as hell are
not.
And what has changed, theplayers that were in the game, I
might say dominating the game,at least from a social media and
from a loudest noise winsperspective, those folks, for
(40:54):
the most part, are gone.
The players have changed becausethe game has changed.
And we are now in a completelydifferent market than we were in
before.
And for the love of God, thereal estate Bitcoin and wealth
expo with a focus on cannabis.
For those of you guys thatdidn't live through that, you're
looking back now and you'resaying, God, it was so easy.
(41:14):
It was so easy to see thewarning signs.
Then how come so many otherpeople missed them?
Anyways, folks, I appreciate youwatching today.
And yes, with the benefit ofhindsight, you could of course
say, oh my God, David, you'redoing this now.
But as I mentioned, I've beenputting this in the blog for
quite some time.
I've been rallying against thepre-construction for many years.
(41:34):
I did this seminar for TorontoLife in 2018.
I talked about all of this.
And I am hoping the folks thatdidn't learn then are certainly
going to learn now.
So thank you so much forwatching.
As always, folks, I hope youenjoyed the many trips down
memory lane here.
If you're watching on YouTube,please feel free to drop me a
comment.
I always love reading those.
And please remember to like,comment, or subscribe wherever
(41:55):
you get your podcasts.
We'll see you here next time onThe Last Honest Realtor.
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