85-offer bidding war comes to an end with Mississauga house sold

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A three-bedroom house in Mississauga sold for just under $1 million on Monday after receiving 85 offers.

“It’s wild. It’s certainly not what we expected,” Justin Bregman, founder of Justin Bregman and Associates, told CTV News Toronto on Wednesday.

The semi-detached two storey house at 3479 Longleaf Crt. was listed for $749,000 and sold for $999,999. As the listing agent, Bregman acknowledged the house was purposely listed low, close to the price it sold for in 2017.

According to Bregman’s estimate, the three-bedroom house sold seven to 10 per cent above a market value of approximately $930,000.

Channing Prater, representing the lucky young couple, first-time buyers who won the bid, said his clients had been on the hunt for three weeks.

“The property being listed at $749,000, I set my clients up for the expectation that obviously that wasn't the price it was going to go for,” he said.

Prater evaluated the actual property value, looking at comparable houses in the Erin Mills area of Mississauga, which only amounted to approximately 16 semi-detached properties.

“You're looking at a low inventory market,” he said. “I knew we would be in a multi-offer situation, but I don't know that anybody anticipated 85.”

Toronto realtor Desmond Brown said he’s never seen a property get 85 offers. “It’s a strategy. There are no rules against underpricing a property.”

From his perspective as an external observer in the industry, Brown said he felt the low-ball sale price shattered potential buyers’ dreams.

“There was another way to do this,” he said. “They could have listed this property for $999,999 and still got this property for $999,999.”

Bregman said approximately 80 per cent of the offers were nowhere close to being in the running, which he said is telling of the lack of research some realtors conducted prior to bringing their clients to the nearly 300 showings that were booked.

“I would have loved to get the same result with 10 offers,” he said.

In the end, his clients chose the winning buyer because there were no conditions included in their offer, they handed the sellers a deposit cheque right away and agreed on the seller’s desired closing date.

“This particular buyer wrote a lovely letter and my seller is also very proud it’s going to a fresh new home buyer and not to an investor of any kind,” Bregman said.