My girlfriend Joanna and I moved to Toronto almost five years ago. We believed the main benefits of being renters was the freedom to relocate to different parts of the city for things like new jobs or just a change of scenery. Moving isn’t exactly fun but we’ve never felt tied down and as a result, we’ve relocated a few times. Of course, all this “freedom” comes at a cost. After five years of lining the pockets of several landlords’ around the city, we started thinking about buying a condo and happened across Simplycondos.com while looking at online listings. We made an appointment to meet with Laurie to discuss our options. Prior to our meeting, we did extensive research on the type of condo, location and features we wanted and learned about some of the pitfalls. We made arrangements to visit a few sales offices with Laurie and quickly found the perfect place. He was quick to steer us away from units with potential problems, gave us information on the builder, handled all negotiations on our behalf and even put us in touch with a great lawyer (Myles Waxman). With everything finalized in just over a week, Laurie congratulated us on a smart purchase. Thanks to Laurie, buying our condo, the biggest investment of our lives, was a surprisingly simple process. So simple in fact it seemed almost too good to be true. This proved to be the case almost a year later when Laurie called with bad news. The builder of our condo was unable to obtain permits and significant delays were inevitable as the building itself had to be redesigned. We immediately weighed all our options together and decided that pulling-out was the best course of action for us to take. Overnight, our simple condo purchase became much more complicated. It soon became clear that our decision to work with Laurie was the best one we could have made. Within days, he was dealing directly with the builder negotiating a mutual release from our sales agreement. Rather than a bitter, drawn-out fight to have our down payment returned, Laurie went to work with our best interests in mind. Our down payment was in our hands within two weeks – a feat that surprised even our lawyer. Still scowling from the experience of losing almost a year on our original purchase, we began making the rounds to sales offices around the city. Laurie was unwavering in his positive attitude and commitment to help us find a new condo and was quick to adjust his schedule to meet our needs. We visited building sites on late nights, early mornings and even though a year had passed, Laurie remembered exactly the kind of place and features we were looking for. During the worst snow storm of the season we found a deal that was even better than our original purchase. While neither one of us is eager to repeat this ordeal, we learned a valuable lesson that we won’t soon forget. Even the most bullet-proof condo deal can fall apart. As such, it’s critically important to have the support and commitment of a skilled professional like Laurie. Without him on our side, the outcome would not have been nearly as positive.