THE gossip

Three tales from the front of foreign buying

THE BLANK CHEQUE “I was selling a property near Bathurst and Eglinton, and an agent for a foreign buyer showed up with a blank offer and said, ‘You fill in the number.’ My client and I spoke, and she threw a number at them. They wrote it in, and we were done. The original asking price was $1.2 million. We sold for $1.4 million.” —David Batori, re/max

THE SIT-IN “I was helping a famous Canadian author sell her condo at Queen and Beverley for $849,000. We got five offers, four of which were from foreign buyers. When my client accepted one that was $30,000 over list, one of the losing agents showed up at our office. He told us to name a price— that his clients would pay whatever they had to. When my client said no, the agent said, ‘I’m not leaving the office until we get the property.’ He walked into one of our meeting rooms, blocked the door and refused to leave. Eventually, he gave up, but I had never seen anything like it. Regardless, the condo has been sitting vacant since February. The buyers have no intention of renting it out. It’s just there.”

—Christopher Bibby, re/max

THE FENG SHUI FIXER “I was having trouble selling a property in an area that’s very popular with Chinese buyers. They didn’t like the fact that you could see right through the main floor family room and out the back window. They interpreted that as, ‘Money comes in the front and out the back.’ So I called a well-known feng shui master. He came in, changed some furniture around and certified the space. It sold a week later for $2.3 million.”

—Richard Silver, sotheby’s