Control Over Pace Is Control Over Destiny

Two sellers put similar houses on the market in the same month. One has a job starting in another province and must be gone by the end of the school term. The other decided long ago that she would sell sometime, and has been getting ready since then. The second seller will almost always walk away with the better deal, and the house has little to do with it.

The first seller has handed the pace of the sale to everyone else. Buyers sense the deadline and offer low. A bond that takes longer than hoped becomes a crisis rather than an inconvenience, and an offer with a long suspensive condition, waiting on the buyer to sell their own home, has to be accepted or refused in a panic. The second seller can wait for the right offer. She already has the electrical compliance certificate in hand, knows exactly what is still owing on her bond, and has read her title deed for any old servitude that might surprise a buyer. Nothing in her sale needs to be rushed, so nothing in it gets rushed.

Pace in property is mostly decided before the sale starts. Whoever did the preparation gets to choose the speed, and whoever skipped it gets the speed the market chooses for them. That accounts for a large part of what people call luck.