A Note Before the List

Articles like this usually quote a statistic saying that staging returns some specific percentage. Michael John Lau, a REALTOR® with the Kaizen Real Estate Team in Markham, Ontario and a two-time eXp ICON Agent, has left those out on purpose. The figures in circulation are almost all American, from a different market, and none of them describe what a particular home in Berczy Village or Cornell will do.

What follows is either sourced to Canadian market data or stated plainly as judgment. Where it is judgment, it says so.

1. Price From Sold Comparables, Not From Hope

Markham has been selling at 98% of list price. That is a market that meets accurate pricing and ignores optimistic pricing.

The city-wide average of $1,208,692 describes no individual home. It blends Milliken Mills West with Angus Glen and a condominium apartment with a detached house. Your price comes from recent sold comparables in your community, in your property type, adjusted for condition and lot.

Sold prices in Ontario sit behind a brokerage login and are not publicly searchable, which is precisely why this conversation has to happen before a number goes on the listing rather than after. Recent sold listings and a free home evaluation are where to begin.

2. Understand What a Stale Listing Costs

A home that sits accumulates days on market that every buyer's agent can see. Within about three weeks, a pricing problem becomes a perception problem, and buyers begin asking what is wrong with it rather than what it is worth.

The first two weeks carry the most qualified attention a listing will ever receive. Pricing to capture those weeks is worth more than pricing to leave room to negotiate.

3. Fix What Causes Hesitation, Not What Would Be Nice

The repairs that pay are the ones that stop a buyer from becoming uncertain: visible water staining, a failing roof, obvious electrical or plumbing defects, a furnace at the end of its life, anything a home inspector will flag prominently.

Uncertainty is expensive. A buyer who cannot tell how bad a problem is will assume the worst and price accordingly, and a $2,000 repair routinely prevents a $15,000 negotiation.

Cosmetic work matters for a different reason, covered next.

4. Spend on Photography Before Anything Else Cosmetic

The photographs decide whether a buyer books a showing. Nothing else in the preparation budget has that leverage, because every other improvement only matters to people who actually come.

Which means the order of operations is: declutter, deep clean, resolve anything visually alarming, then photograph professionally, then list. Not photograph, then list, then tidy up before the first showing.

A deep clean and a decluttered house generally return more per dollar spent than any renovation. That is judgment, not a statistic, but it is consistent judgment.

5. List March to June Where You Have the Choice

Across the Greater Toronto Area over the last two years:

• March to May produced the fastest sales, at 27 to 27.5 days on market
• March to May produced the firmest sale-to-list ratios, at 98.5% to 99%
• June produced the most sales, 6,770 in June 2026
• January averaged 41 days, and December ran the softest sale-to-list ratio at 97.5%

On a $1.2 million Markham home, a point of sale-to-list is $12,000. That is what the season is worth, and it is real without being decisive.

Avoid September if you can. It carries the lowest ratio of sales to new listings of any month, because supply returns after Labour Day faster than buyers do. Full detail in Best Time to Sell My House in Markham.

6. Open the Showing Schedule as Wide as You Can Sustain

The cheapest lever available and the most commonly wasted.

Every restriction removes a subset of buyers permanently. They are seeing three homes that Saturday and will choose among the three they could actually get into. A twenty-four hour notice requirement on a weekend does not delay a buyer; it eliminates them.

Build a schedule you can genuinely sustain for three weeks rather than an ambitious one that collapses in week two.

7. Decide Your Offer Strategy Before You Have Offers

Since 1 December 2023, Ontario sellers have a lever that did not exist before, and most still do not use it.

A seller may direct their brokerage in writing to disclose the substance of competing offers, in whole or in part: price, deposit, closing date, conditions. Separately and regardless of that choice, the brokerage must tell every person submitting a written offer how many competing written offers exist.

Two firm limits: the disclosure must never identify who made an offer, and the direction can be changed at any point, including part-way through.

Ontario did not ban blind bidding. Blind bidding remains the default and openness is an option a seller elects. Whether to elect it is a strategic decision that depends on the property, the number of interested parties and the strength of the offers, and it should be decided before offers arrive rather than in the moment.

One development worth knowing: buyers have begun inserting confidentiality clauses that revoke the seller's ability to disclose that offer's contents. Plan for it.

8. Disclose Early Rather Than Late

This one is counter-intuitive and it protects price.

Under Ontario law a seller must disclose known latent defects that render a property unsafe or uninhabitable. Patent defects, visible on reasonable inspection, need not be disclosed. An "as is" clause does not cure a known hidden defect.

Beyond the legal obligation there is a commercial argument. A buyer told about an issue upfront prices it. A buyer who discovers it during a conditional period reprices the entire house, because they are now wondering what else they have not been told. The first conversation costs a known amount. The second one costs the deal or a renegotiation.

9. Do Not Over-Renovate

The most expensive mistake in this list.

A kitchen renovation completed to sell rarely returns its cost, and it frequently returns less than the same money spent on paint, cleaning, decluttering and photography. Worse, a renovation done to a seller's taste can narrow the buyer pool rather than widen it.

The exception is a property where a specific system is at the end of its life and its condition is the reason buyers are hesitating. That is repair, not renovation, and it is point three.

Where a home genuinely needs more work than a seller can fund, the answer is usually to sell it as-is on the open market and let competition set the price. That is covered in Selling a Markham House As-Is.

10. Negotiate the Whole Agreement, Not Only the Rate

Commission in Ontario is fully negotiable and there is no standard or legislated rate. So is everything else in a listing agreement: the term, the holdover clause, the marketing commitments, the scope of service and the termination provisions.

The expiry date must appear prominently on the first page of a written listing agreement, and the agreement must be explained before it is signed. Read the holdover clause specifically. Ask what marketing is actually committed to in writing rather than described verbally.

One structural question worth asking: does the brokerage operate under designated representation or brokerage representation? Under designated representation a named individual represents you and only that person may access your confidential information, and a colleague representing a buyer does not create multiple representation. Under the older model, your confidential information is available brokerage-wide.

The Item That Is Not a Tip

Before any of the above: get your mortgage prepayment penalty quoted in writing by your lender.

On a fixed-rate mortgage the penalty is generally the greater of three months' interest or the interest rate differential, and there is no single standard formula across Canadian lenders. It can reach five figures, and it can change whether selling now makes sense at all. Ask at the same time whether the mortgage can be ported.

The complete cost picture is in What It Costs to Sell a House in Markham, and the whole process in the complete 2026 seller's guide.

Next Steps

• Get a free Markham home evaluation — Price from evidence, not from hope.
• Recent sold listings — The comparables that set your number.
• The full Markham seller guide — Preparation, pricing, marketing and negotiation.