How I sold an expired listing in Embro

The situation

She texted me the morning of November 29, 2024, referred by her sister. She wanted to show me her listing before it was released from another agent.

She was already out the door with her existing agent before I’d said a word. What she needed was somebody to take it on fast, because she’d already bought a new build and the clock on that purchase was running.

By December 17 her builder was charging $500 a day to delay her closing. By December 20 she’d negotiated an extension that cost her $5,000 due January 3 plus a $6,800 late fee payable on closing. "We gotta get my house sold," she wrote.

What made it hard

Three things at once. Her old listing was still showing active on the board, so mine couldn’t go up until it was released, and it cleared only just in time.

The house wasn’t ready to be photographed. The only video she had was one her ex had shot. My read the first day was blunt: it needed staging to live up the place. When the first open house ran, the feedback was about the repairs still needed throughout the home, a step up from what she’d historically heard, but still not where it needed to be.

And it was December, in a village of about 800 people. The second open house had zero visitors.

What the numbers said

There’s no TRREB figure for this one. Embro sits on a different real estate board and doesn’t appear anywhere in TRREB’s data. What the property itself carried: a 2019 build, three bedrooms, nine rooms, 1,500 to 2,000 square feet, on 2024 taxes of $4,015.61.

The number that actually mattered wasn’t a market average. It was a net seller sheet, something her previous agent had never given her. I built her one showing what she’d walk away with across a range of sale prices, because her real problem wasn’t what the house was worth. It was whether the number cleared her roughly $3,000 mortgage discharge penalty and got her into the new build before the extension fees ate the difference.

What I recommended

List at $700,000, with the terms explained and put in writing for her before she signed anything.

Stage it and reshoot it rather than reuse the previous agent’s photos, even though she offered them and said they were fine.

On the first offer, counter rather than accept.

What I did

• Got the release from the previous brokerage sorted, eight days from her first message to launch.
• Staged the house December 3. Had it professionally cleaned December 4: three cleaners at $30 an hour for five and a half hours, plus $50 for travel, and I deducted the two and a half hours I’d worked in the house myself.
• Professional photography December 6, a husband and wife team out of London. I called her on video first to check the staging hadn’t moved before they arrived.
• Went live December 7 with an email blast to every agent on the board and follow-up calls.
• Set her up so showing requests went straight to her phone.
• Ran open houses December 8 and 21, and kept marketing straight through the holidays.

What happened

December 14: first offer, $650,000, conditional on the buyers selling their own home by mid-February. I laid out her options plainly, accept, counter, or decline.

December 15: I countered at $690,000 with the sale-of-home condition stripped out entirely. The buyers didn’t take it. It looked like a loss. It wasn’t. I’d refused to let her sale hang on a stranger selling their house first while her own closing was costing her $500 a day.

January 7: a second offer at $675,000. I countered, and the paperwork moved from $675,000 to $687,500 to $690,000. Firm January 14, at the same $690,000 I’d asked for on December 15, this time without the condition that would have left her exposed.

Sold at $690,000 on January 14, 2025, 38 days after listing, 99% of the asking price.

Her own account, published on Google: four and a half months with another agent and no offers. I had it under contract in 38 days.

In their words

“Mats is amazing!! My listing was with another agent for 4.5 months without any offers. When I decided to be released from my listing and use Mats as my agent, I received 4 offers and my house was sold within a month. He is a miracle worker! Thank you Mats!”

Trish S., Google review, January 2025