Selling a home in Ontario

Roughly: work out what it is worth, prepare it, price it, market it, negotiate the offers, and close. The order matters — preparation before pricing, pricing before listing — because a home that reaches the market underprepared spends its best two weeks being seen at its worst.

From what comparable homes have actually sold for in the past few months, adjusted for the ways yours differs, and read against how much competing inventory is out there now. Not from what neighbours are asking, and not from an online estimate. We prepare that analysis and show you the comparables, so you can check the reasoning rather than take the number on faith.

You must disclose known latent defects — problems that are not visible on inspection and make the property dangerous or unfit. You cannot conceal a defect you know about. Your lawyer handles the agreement, title and closing. We will tell you where a disclosure is required; we do not give legal advice, and anyone in real estate who does is doing you a disservice.

Usually decluttering, deep cleaning and minor repairs earn their cost several times over; full furniture staging earns it in some homes and not others. An empty house or a very personalised one benefits most. We will tell you which category yours is in, including when the honest answer is that your money is better spent on the driveway than on rented sofas.

Professional photography first, because most buyers decide from the photos whether to book a showing. Then the MLS® System — which is what feeds REALTOR.ca and every portal — plus our own site, email to matched buyers, and social. Open houses where the property suits them. The listing agent's job is that every buyer's agent working your price band knows the home exists.

Sometimes, yes — and anyone who says never is selling you services. As-is makes sense when the work needed is structural and expensive, when you're settling an estate, when tenants limit access, or when you don't have the time or capital to do the work properly. What it costs you is buyer pool: fewer buyers can finance a house that needs work, so you're trading price for speed and certainty. Where as-is rarely pays is cosmetic — cleaning, decluttering, paint and flooring usually return more than they cost. Ask for both scenarios priced out before you decide, so you're comparing numbers rather than opinions.

Almost always price, presentation or access — in that order. Price is the one sellers resist and the one that moves the result. Very few showings on a fresh listing is a pricing signal, not a marketing one. Plenty of showings and no offers is the same message arriving more slowly: buyers are seeing it and choosing something else at that number. If showings are strong but feedback keeps naming the same thing, that's presentation, and it's usually fixable. And if the home is hard to book — restricted hours, tenants, short notice — part of your buyer pool never sees it at all. The showing and feedback record normally tells you which of the three it is.

Spring brings the most buyers into the market and winter the fewest — but more buyers also means more competing listings, so busiest and best for you are not the same thing. A well-presented home in a quiet month can do better than the same home in May against thirty alternatives. The larger factors are usually personal: where you're going, whether you need to buy first, and what your financing allows. If your timing is genuinely flexible, that's worth a conversation about whether waiting pays. If it isn't, the season matters far less than pricing and preparation do.

The first two weeks tell you most of it. A property priced to the market generates showing requests almost immediately — so if a brand-new listing goes live and the requests don't come, that's the market's verdict on the price, and it arrives well before any offer would. Showings without offers is the gentler version of the same finding. It matters because how long a home has been listed is visible to buyers and their agents, and a listing that sits starts attracting lower offers regardless of what it's worth. Correcting early is almost always cheaper than defending a number for two months and then correcting anyway.