The BREL team has agents throughout the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton, including central Toronto, north Toronto, Mississauga, Scarborough, Durham Region, Brampton, Burlington, Oakville, Milton and the greater Hamilton area.
We also have partnerships with top listing agents throughout Ontario, including cottage country. Our partner agents have been vetted for experience, expertise, communication, services and client satisfaction.
We take the health and safety of our agents, staff and clients seriously and have implemented COVID-19 safety protocols. We’ve drastically minimized the amount of physical contact required to buy or sell a home, without lessening the experience.
In addition to social distancing, good hand-washing hygiene and mandatory masking (for agents and clients), we offer:
– Virtual consultations via Zoom
– Immersive online experiences that allow potential Buyers to get to know a home safely, from the comfort of their home, including walk-through videos, 3D virtual tours and virtual open houses
– Safe in-person showings that encourage the right people to see a home in person, while minimizing risk
– In-home safe showing kits for buyers and their agents, including sanitizer, masks and more
– Smart strategies and smooth seller experiences that hinge on communication, trust and transparency, provided by skilled experts able to manoeuvre unique circumstances and market shifts.
We take our direction from our public health officials and pivot our services and approach depending on what’s happening. Our goals haven’t changed – we’re still here to educate, inform, advise and protect; the mechanics of buying and selling a home are just a bit different now.
In addition to announcing a home is for sale on the MLS, our marketing strategy includes gorgeous HDR photography, 3-D walk-through tours and videos, floor plans, professional copywriting, immersive online home tours for safe at-home showings and virtual open houses.
Our listings are heavily promoted online, including: on our website (75,000+ visitors per month); on all the important local and international real estate search websites and portals; on the websites of 10,000+ Ontario agents and brokerages; on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. We also invest in targeted online ads and make use of email marketing to expose our listings to our database of thousands of engaged potential buyers and their agents.
Read more about our listing marketing strategy and how we reach more buyers.
Pre-COVID, we used to host a lot of open houses…but these days, we host virtual open houses -and we find they’re actually MORE effective than traditional open houses.
Related: Why We Don’t Host Open Houses During COVID-19
We have our own home staging company, UPstaging, with full-time employees and a staging warehouse full of furniture and accessories to help transform every home we list for sale. Our staging services are included in our commission and include a detailed staging consultation and home preparation plan for the Seller (virtual or in-person), access to our trusted Safe Partner home professionals, help coordinating home preparation, professional cleaning/disinfecting, professional staging (including furniture and accessories for 30 days).
Read more about our staging services.
Read our Staging FAQ.
Visit the UPstaging website.
Our staging services are exclusive to sellers who list their homes for sale with the BREL team and is included in our commission.
As REALTORS, one of our most important jobs is helping guide you about the market value of your home and the strategies that will bring in top dollar. We estimate the market value of your home and recommend a listing price and strategy based on what’s currently happening in the market, but ultimately, all price decisions are made by the Seller.
Read more about: How Houses Are Priced.
Read about: How Condos Are Priced.
We have a few commission options for our sellers, depending on what services are included.
Our fee is 5% of the sale price for our all-inclusive package, which includes cleaning, staging, floor plans, a 3-D tour, an immersive online experience and a ton of digital marketing. This option assumes half of our fee is offered to the agent who represents the buyer. Commission is payable upon a successful sale.
We also have a 4.5% commission option for non-staged properties, with fewer services and inclusions, with 2.5% of our fee offered to the buyer’s agent.
Note: We believe that every buyer and seller should have their own representation and as such, our agents will never represent both the buyer and seller in the same transaction.
Related: All About Real Estate Commissions
Our commission may be negotiable, depending on the services or situation (for example, a seller listing multiple properties for sale with us).
The paperwork to sell your home in Ontario is relatively standard, and you’ll be asked to sign a Listing Agreement, a document to verify your identification (‘FINTRAC’) and a document that outlines how REALTORS work with Sellers (‘Working with a REALTOR’). You’ll also be asked to sign a staging contract if your home will be staged.
In order to list a home on the Toronto MLS, a listing agreement must be signed for at minimum, 90 days. In most cases, that’s the length of a listing contract with the BREL team.
Related: All About Listing Paperwork for Sellers
We work hard to match our buyers and sellers with the right agent. Our agents have different geographic experience and knowledge, as well as specific expertise working with different types of situations, properties and price points.
We strongly believe that Buyers and Sellers should have their own agent representation, just like divorcing couples should each have their own lawyer. When you hire a BREL agent to sell your home, you can rest assured that their only motivation is to get you the best offer and represent YOUR interests.
Because our marketing reaches so many potential Buyers, it’s not unusual for us to be approached by interested Buyers. We assign a BREL agent to every listing who is familiar with the home, but independent from your listing agent, to help unrepresented Buyers.
The BREL team takes communication seriously and we know there’s nothing worse than not knowing what’s happening. We have a detailed onboarding process for our Sellers, with work-back schedules and communication at every step of the process.
How you communicate with us is up to you – email, phone, text, Whatsapp, Zoom…
While you’re listed for sale with us, you’ll get a formal update every week (and if we forget? we’ll take $500 off your commission.)
Our goal is to wow you, and if you’re not happy, neither are we. We believe in open communication and if something’s not working, we want to know. If we can’t fix it, we’ll release you from your contract.
In 2019, homes listed for sale with the BREL team sold in 12 days, on average, while the average home listed for sale on the Toronto MLS, sold in 20 days.
In 2019, homes we listed for sale sold on average, for 103% of the asking price, while the average home listed for sale on the Toronto MLS sold for 100.4% of the asking price.