TorontoRealtyBlog

Some closings are smooth, and some are downright disasters.

Every property sale and closing has a different set of tales.

But as for the most common mistakes that sellers make before, during, and after closing, here are the ten I have witnessed most often…

10 Leaving the lockbox and ‘FOR SALE’ sign up for weeks, if not months

As I will explain in the next point, leaving the lockbox on the property for the day of closing is essential.

But note that I said “the day of closing.”

I did not say the week of closing nor did I say the month of closing.

And best yet: the decade of closing.  Let me explain…

It’s the responsibilty of the Listing Agent, presumably, to remove his or her lockbox from the property after closing.  A couple of days is great.  A week is too long, and it’s annoying.

But my clients on Monarch Park will tell you that their lockbox was up for ten years.

I kid you not.

I went to sell their House two years ago and I said, “Oh, great, you’ve already got a lockbox here!”

They said, “Um, no, that’s been there since we bought.”

I showed up the next day with bolt-cutters to finally remove the lockbox, and one of my clients joked, “It’s like a little piece of us is dying today too…”

The only thing worse than a listing Agent who takes a month to pick up his lockbox – especially when it’s on the front door – is a listing agent who forgets to take down his “SOLD” sign.

Personally, I only leave my lawn sign up for a week after the sale.  My team and I just grab it whenever we’re in the area next.  We’re not those agents that sell a house with a 90-day closing and see an opportunity to leave the sign up for three months for advertising.

But when a buyer moves into their new home, that “SOLD” sign on the lawn should be long gone.

Technically, this first point has more to do with the listing agent than the seller, but the seller has to keep tabs on his or her home upon closing.

9) Removing the key from the lockbox

Those who are over forty-years-old will remember how we used to get the keys to our new house or condo…

Imagine buying a condo on Fort York Boulevard and on Friday afternoon at 4:10pm, when the deal officially “closes,” your lawyer’s assistant emails and says, “Congratulations, your sale has closed!  Feel free to pick up the keys at our office, Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm.”

But their office is at Highway 7 and Islington.

Do you see the problem with this?

I always thought that getting the keys from the lawyer was the most unnecessary and illogical step of the whole closing process, but the lawyers always pulled rank.  Who am I, anyways?  Just a real estate agent.  I’m not the important lawyer who holds the literal and metaphoric key.

I used to tell my seller-clients’ lawyers, “Why don’t we leave the keys in the unit and then set up a lockbox with one unit key so the buyer can access the property?”

But that idea was always shot down.

“It’s a security issue,” I would be told.  But it wasn’t.  It was a power-play.

So more often than not, the buyer would travel to opposite ends of the GTA to pick up an envelope with keys, then trek down to their house or condo to open it up for the very first time.  And this was only if the buyers were able to get to the lawyer’s office in time.

The best part about the intersection of the 2020 pandemic and real estate is that we got rid of this ridiculous system.

“Touchless closing” was the buzz-word.

Place one single unit key in a lockbox on site, place any subsequent keys – front door, side/back door, mailbox, shed, garage door opener, building fob – inside the unit, usually on the kitchen counters.

Then the buyer is provided with the lockbox code upon closing, from their lawyer, via the other lawyer, via the listing agent.

And, voila!

Touchless closing.

Only I’ve been suggesting this for fifteen damn years!

So how can a seller screw this up on closing day?

Forgetting to put that one unit key in the lockbox.

I can’t tell you how many times we close a deal and there’s no key in the lockbox.

Then you reach out to the listing agent who calls the seller, and you’d be shocked (or not?) at how often there is little empathy or apology…

8) Leaving the alarm on.

Here’s a story…

I went to a house in the Beaches this past spring for a buyer visit with my two clients, who are very lovely.

We got the key from the lockbox and opened the door, only to hear the distinct sound of a security system buzzing and waiting for a passcode to be typed in.

Well, in this particular case, I had not been provided with a passcode.

Oh boy…

I checked my email again but didn’t find any passcode, and then I called the listing agent who said, “Wait……the alarm was on?”

He didn’t have the code.

But perhaps more problematic was the man who came charging across the street, up the driveway, and onto the front porch, who began to interrogate us.

“WHO ARE YOU?” he asked.

I calmly said, “Hello, I’m David Fleming.  This is Kelly and this is Drew, and they’re the buyers of the house.”

I mean, there was a “SOLD” sign on the lawn, so it wasn’t the most unrealistic scenario for him to absorb.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted.

I was quite surprised, and I showed him the key to the front door, only to have him say, “How did you get that?”

“Um, I used the code that I was given?” I stated, but sort of asked.

He looked us over as the alarm started to blare, then he went inside and typed in the code.

I was on the phone with the listing agent and I said, “So, there’s a neighbour here who just typed in the code to the alarm….”

The listing agent said, “Oh, that’s Brad.  He’s a fixture on the street.”

Uh-huh.

I asked Brad to speak to the listing agent, and after a twenty-second conversation, Brad hung up and said, “All good,” with a smile.

He was like a completely different person now.

“I didn’t know you were the buyers,” he said, which was odd, since I told him that!

“The owners here are never home.  They’re always overseas.  So they have me keep close tabs on the place.”

No kidding.

Brad was essentially the unhired security for the house, and seemingly for the street.

He said, “Enjoy your visit, come by and say ‘hello’ once you move in!”

Meeting Brad was interesting but it was necessary.  Had Brad not possessed the code for the alarm inside the house, it would have sounded until the police showed up.  If police still do that sort of thing.

Way too often, a seller will lock up the house for the very last time, and whether it’s a subconscious force-of-habit, or whether it’s intentional – without understanding the consequences, they set the alarm.

Having an alarm go “beep” doesn’t even mean that there’s monitoring through Bell Smart Home, Telus, or the like.  A seller should remember to cancel their home security monitoring as well, but above all, remember not to set the alarm when you leave upon closing!

7) Leaving cable/internet box behind.

I can’t possibly tell you how many listing agents have emailed me weeks after my buyer-clients have moved into a house, and asked, “David, can you check with your clients to see if there’s a Rogers box there?”

It’s amazing.

This isn’t the “worst” item on my list, but it might be the most common.

In terms of items inadvertently left behind, this is number-one with a bullet.

Why?

I have a theory.

When you remove a wall-mounted television, a large shelving unit or media console, a set of speakers, a receiver, subwoofer, and a Rogers box, what’s left is usually a massive mess of cords.

There’s cable/internet, speaker wire, HDMI cables, and god knows what else.

Then there’s that small, innocent little box.  That modem/router you almost forget you have.

You’re packaging the 60-inch television very carefully, and you’re probably doing the same with the receiver, speakers et al.

But that little router gets lost in all the cords, and even if you do notice it, you usually think, I’ll come back for that.

I’m not speaking from experience, but rather from the theory that I’ve developed as to why one out of every four transactions results in the listing agent calling to try and track down the “missing Bell box.”

5) Not paying for mail-forwarding.

Sorry, not sorry.

If you’re too cheap to pay the $86.60 per year to Canada Post to forward your mail from your old address to your new one, then we can’t be friends.

We just can’t be.

There’s nothing worse than the listing agent emailing to say, “Hey David, would you be able to ask your clients to put aside all the mail or Bev and Kev, and maybe they can just come every Friday for the next little while and pick it up?”

Amateur hour!

When I moved out of my condo in 2017, I paid for mail forwarding for four years!  Why not?  What’s to lose, other than $86.60, which is basically the cost of feeding a family at McDonalds in 2023…

Folks, you can’t imagine how many times we deal with this upon closing, and it’s always the seller’s mistake…

4) Not notifying property management of a sale.

This is a good one!

I closed a sale once where my buyer moved into the condo and, unbeknownst to her, property management had not been withdrawing her monthly maintenance fees.

Why?

Because the seller of the unit never told property management that he had sold and was moving out.  Neither did his lawyer, I suppose.

The listing agent for this unit emailed me four months later and said, “My seller is having $400 withdrawn from his account every month, what do you know about this?”

Like this was my fault?

My client went to speak to property management and the property manager said, “We did receive your pre-authorization form when you moved in, but we never received any request from the seller to cancel, nor did he notify us that he had sold his unit.  It’s policy for us to have both before making a change.”

Amazing.

Property management started withdrawing maintenance fees from my client’s bank account the next month after the seller had signed the requisite form.

The listing agent continued to pester me, demanding a cheque for $1,600 and change from my client, to give to his client, but I told him this was out of my hands.

To this day, I still don’t know what happened in the end…

3) Removing chattels and fixtures included in the Agreement.

I have written about this many times so far this year, so let’s not belabour this.

While most of the other points on the list are “mistakes” in that the seller will be harmed, this one doesn’t really have a negative effect on the seller.  It is, however, a mistake nonetheless…

Any seller ought to know what is included in the sale and what isn’t, and yet so many of them don’t understand that when they affix a Nest Thermostat to the wall, and connect wires, it makes that item a “fixture.”  Fixtures are deemed to be included in any sale unless they are excluded in the Agreement.

So whether you wanted to take that Nest item with you or thought you could, it doesn’t matter.  That’s a fixture, not a chattel.

Time and time again, we see sellers removing items from the home that were either specifically included, or for which needed to be excluded, but weren’t.

Maybe doing so doesn’t harm the seller at the onset, but it can lead to litigation down the line, or at the very least, a huge pain in the ass.

2) Not removing items and planning “to come back later.”

Ask any lawyer this question: “If a home-owner closes the sale of a house on Monday, but leaves his Porche in the garage, can he come back on Thursday and legally take it?”

The answers may vary.  Show me a lawyer that sees in black-and-white, rather than grey, and my eyes will widen.

But for the most part, the lawyer will say that anything left behind in the house upon closing, regardless of whether it was included in the Agreement or not, becomes the property of the buyers.

Imagine?

The Porsche example isn’t real, but somewhere, at some time, I bet it’s happened.

Because I see a lot of instances of this in Toronto where my buyers close on a house and they walk inside to find items left behind; items of value!  And then the listing agent calls and says, “Hey, Dan and Suzy weren’t able to get the pinball machine from the basement out in time, so they’re gonna come back next Tuesday and haul it out.”

Uh, no.

DING-DING-DING!

That pinball machine belongs to the buyers now, thanks!

BING-BING-BING!

Thanks, Dan and Suzy!

The arrogance of some sellers cannot be underestimated, let alone explained.

I had clients close on a house in Orangeville earlier this year and they found a near-new sectional couch in the basement, along with a TV console and a nice rug.  They asked, “Is this ours now?” and I said that it was.  Two weeks later, the listing agent called and said, “I fucked up, we left some stuff in the basement.  Any chance of getting that back?”

He knew enough to phrase his question that way, and I answered nicely.

“I mean, I guess if they want it.  If they need it.  But it’s been two weeks.  My clients are literally camping out down there every night in front of the TV.  Your clients are in Florida.  This was probably just going into storage anyways.  Just let them have it.

And they did.

1) Not moving out.

No joke.  This happens.

More often than not, it’s only a problem for a few hours.  But sometimes, it can be a problem for days…

The worst part is, you really can’t see this coming.  You can do everything to protect yourselves as a buyer, but short of showing up on the morning of closing and peeking in the windows of a house, you merely assume that the seller will be out on time.

I’ve only had one of these myself.

My clients received the email from their lawyer around 3:00pm on a Friday that the “sale had closed” and they cut out of work early to head over to the house, only to find the sellers were still there, the house was full of furniture, and there was no moving van in site.

They freaked out.

They called me and I drove over, then I called the listing agent and she drove over.

The listing agent talked to her clients, and we overheard them shout at her, “This is still our house until 11:59pm tonight!”

They had no idea how this process worked.  But were they supposed to?  Who’s job was it to explain it to them?  Their agent?  Their lawyer?

The moving van showed up at 5:00pm and the house was empty, with the sellers off-site, by 8:00pm.

Disaster was avoided, but my clients felt a bit sour since that was their first experience in their new home.

Today, they think it’s hilarious.  They laugh about it all the time.  But in the moment, they felt awful.

I’ve heard from other agents, however, about sales that closed where the buyer showed up to the house, only to find the seller sitting on her couch at 6:00pm watching the evening news.

Believe it or not, there are times when a seller actually forgets or just doesn’t know when the closing date is.  As crazy as it sounds, I’ve heard this story more than a few times, from different agents.

Can you imagine?

That’s about as big a mistake as a seller can make…

–

That’s it for me for today, folks!

And that’s it for this week.

There’s a bit of a surprise coming down the pipe next week, and I don’t mean weak TRREB numbers.

Should I tell you which day, or do you just want to show up one morning and see for yourselves?

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