This depends on the nature of your purchase. In addition to the ZVR package flat fee and the cost of an agent’s time for visits, offers generated and listings pulled, you will need to pay your lawyer to process the transaction. Since the lawyers are more involved in ZVR purchases, they tend to charge a full standard deviation more than the average. This is because this service is not the same as just a conveyance. You get ZVR’s legal precedent, a lawyer is available to review offers, and deep integration with other processes such as mortgage.

You have to understand that offer review is pay-per-use, just like every other lawyer. If you have complicated assignment contract reviews, multiple status certificate reviews, etc. that will cost more. Any other lawyer will do the same. Our standard cost of processing a purchase of a detached property with a mortgage from a chartered bank, with 1-2 offer reviews, is $2800-$3000, including all search charges, wire fees and HST. If you have a mortgage from somewhere other than a chartered bank an additional fee of $350+HST will apply, as these lenders offload much of their administrative work to the law office. If you are buying a condominium your search fees will be less, but you will likely have a Condominium Status Certificate Review, which is $350+HST. These fees do not include Land Transfer Tax, land registry registration fees, or title insurance.

Additionally, you may choose to use our exclusive 100% cashback mortgage service. That gives you even more cashback, often more than 100% of the real estate co-op commission. The flat fee for this service is $999.

However, the average customer buying an average Toronto home pays around $25,000 less than with a salesperson. Most customers choose to bundle mortgages from our mortgage partner to receive 100% cashback or more.

There generally three options. The easiest one is an open house if there is one. The second is using third parties for showings, as some even do them on contingency, or “free”. Once registered, we provide some tools to help facilitate the process, including access to our network of ZVR agents who work on an hourly basis.

We do not generally recommend using the listing agent. You must also understand that there are two versions of every listing on the MLS: what you see, and the full internal listing that only agents can see. The full listing contains “broker notes”, which are notes kept away from public view. Sometimes (around 10% of listings) these notes state that the buyer agent’s commission will be reduced if the seller’s agent has to do their job and show the home. Some of them are sneaky and even edit the listing between your viewing and offer submission if you have them do the showing.

No, and you pay nothing up front. You only pay for what you explicitly request and use. Any flat fee is payable only if you close on a home that was listed offering a buyer agent’s commission. This also means that if you found a home for sale by owner and did not need the ZVR discount you will not owe ZVR any flat fee, even if you used the offer generator for it.

Numerous websites publish it. Some examples are House Sigma, Rew, Zillow, and Bungol. Understanding the market value of a home is quite similar to understanding the value of a used car, and we highly recommend taking the proper amount of time to do thorough market research.

There is a practice where an agent refrains from posting a listing publicly and will instead try to find a buyer off-market in the hope of double commission. More often than not real estate agents simply don’t have any exclusive access, so you will generally not lose much. Be careful to understand the true market value of the property; in an off-market deal there tends to be one party that gets a bad deal. Try to make sure it isn’t you.

This is a big misconception, and if you believe it they have a bridge to sell you! The seller might pay the agents, but the buyer pays the seller. This also assumes a seller can be successfully extorted to pay a commission. ZVR demonstrates the enormous costs baked into the sale price, and gives the option of unbundling them. We simply offer a buyer who is willing to do their own work a choice to have just the bare minimum service. The average commission for a buyer’s agent in Ontario is more than an average household’s annual savings, and many buyers prefer to save this amount.

We are not against agents or the people who wish to pay them for their services, but think this fearful mentality might be overblown. A global perspective might make this easier to understand. A buyer’s agent is almost non-existent in the UK and Australia, yet those countries also have first-time homebuyers. When we ask people to elaborate on the insights an agent could have imparted upon first time home buyers we like to separate them into categories: trivia, the obvious, and the malicious. Trivia is the part that is irrelevant in making a purchase. Perhaps kitchens were built in a certain way in the 00s because of the burgeoning popularity of open living, but this doesn’t help you make a housing choice. You either like it, are willing to smash it and build what you like, or it is a deal breaker. The reason it came to be is irrelevant to the task. Then there is the obvious. Someone might tell you what time of day certain rooms will have sunlight, but as the sun has been rising in the east and setting in the west for the last few billion years, none of this is news. Third, there is unfortunately the malicious that a minority of agents may engage in. Pressuring buyers to have condition-free bids is an example. Often enough they opine about technical subject they may not be trained on, like tax law. A lawyer on the other hand should be able to answer relevant questions about home buying. We are not saying that a majority of agents are malicious, just that some of the advice from a minority of them can be harmful. At ZVR you are expected to do the legwork yourself, which might not be for everyone.

No one knows which way it will go. Not the CMHC, not the Bank of Canada, no one. Anyone who pretends they do is after a commission.

ZVR is not for everyone, but 80% of our buyers are first time home buyers. Those comfortable using our service research market values and the process, and are willing to do much of the legwork themselves. However, we do offer a Full Service Package for $4,499 which gives you a dedicated agent and a traditionalist experience.

We think the empirical answer might be “no”, as real estate salespeople don’t seem to have any special education and training beyond a few college courses. If you desire to hire one, we are not opposed. However, contract negotiation and understanding the consequences of defects in title are a lawyer’s area of expertise. Physical defects are a contractor’s expertise. This service is for those who would like to unbundle these items and consult experts a-la-carte.

It isn’t just our opinion, but the conclusion of an academic paper published by a veteran employee of the US government in the Berkeley Journal of Law. Property transaction costs are far higher in North America compared to other countries like the UK, Australia, Iran and Israel. Prices are high in Canada, yet provincially rather uniform. This price fixing is monopoly behaviour, and should be dismantled through legislation. The majority of Ontarians use a real estate agent when buying without the intent of paying them, so as a seller you have a stark choice to make: pay the 2.5% + HST fee they demand, or potentially have a majority of buyers steered away. We are only against how agents get paid, rather than agents or their services as a whole.

Real estate transaction costs in Canada are double the global average. We believe you instead pay for what you don’t get. ZVR promises zero value out of our straw real estate agents, all discount. We have concerns that the current system gives agents incentives to have the purchase happen fast rather than at the right price. With Zero Value Realty even if you happen to overpay for a home by almost 2.5% you still come out ahead. You can have access to the same sold data as agent, as would any lawyer. We do have concerns with real estate boards who fought all the way to the supreme court of Canada to suppress the public’s access to data.

About 3-4 weeks. We must invoice the listing brokerage, and only after they pay we have the funds available. Mortgage cashback typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Up to a reasonable limit. All offers are reviewed before being transmitted. You have a duty to act in good faith both when making an offer and when dealing with us. So while lowball offers are allowed, conduct in bad faith is not. We may refuse to transmit offers if we believe you are acting in bad faith, and may terminate our business relationship with you.