A Saturday of showings

The Margins

By Saturday the list has already been cut. The houses on it are the ones you flagged from your search during the week, and every appointment was booked around the hours you gave us. It is a shorter day than driving the city looking, because every house on the list has already cleared your own filter.

Every appointment goes through the seller's side

A showing is booked through the seller's representative, so nobody walks up to a door unannounced. The board's rules have an active listing available to show within a day of a request, with exceptions for a house with a tenant in it and a sale a court has ordered, so a house flagged on Wednesday can usually be seen by the weekend.

The list itself draws on every brokerage's listings. A buyer's agent is expected to bring you the houses that meet what you asked for, whoever listed them, and the search you were set up with reads the whole board.

A licensee goes in with you

We view the houses together. The board's rules have every buyer accompanied at every showing of a listed property unless the seller instructs otherwise, and the licensee who opens the door is responsible for securing the house during the visit and after it. An open house runs on the same principle, with a licensee in attendance unless the seller has said otherwise.

Assume the house can hear you

The buyer agreement carries a clause on this. A house you view may have a camera or a recording device running, and nobody on our side may know it is there. The seller's own listing agreement has them acknowledge that recording people touring the home without written consent is against the law, and the buyer agreement still assumes a camera might be running. So do we. A conversation about price, or about what you would offer, waits for the car.

Inside, the checklist does the work

What to look at in each house, from the smell at the door to the age sticker on the furnace, is in the first-viewing checklist. One number on the listing wants a word of explanation before you compare houses by it. The stated size follows the provincial measurement standard, which leaves out any floor that is partly below grade, so a finished basement adds rooms without adding to the size on the listing.

A condominium adds a layer the house on its own cannot show you. The building has its own bylaws, budget, reserve fund and insurance, and its documents are read during the conditions, the stretch after an offer is accepted and before you are bound. The unit size on its registered plan can differ from the size on the listing, and the listing's size is the one measured to the provincial standard.

Many of the neighbourhoods on a Saturday list have a guide of their own on The Desk, and why nothing we publish is attached to a listing explains why those guides sit apart from any sale.

Each house gets a name

The coffee from the first stop is cold by the third house, and by then the kitchens have started to run together. Addresses blur along with them. So each one gets named for the thing that sets it apart, the blue one, the one across from the park, and the names carry the comparison home. By the end of the day the list has its own vocabulary, and the vocabulary is what you use to say which houses stay on it.

The list stays yours

A house you liked can go on your list on this site, and what happens to it next is up to you. Book a second look or send it to family, and nothing moves until you say so. Saving a house to the list commits you to nothing. A house that survives the day earns a second visit on a weekday evening, when the street shows its other face.

When a house moves toward an offer, we find out what can be found about it before you write anything, and you hear what we learn. Anything we know that bears on a house you are considering reaches you, because the rules put that duty on the agent. The step before this one is the consultation. The step after it is writing the offer, line by line.