How does the Kaizen Real Estate Team market a home?

Why the Order Matters More Than the List

Every brokerage publishes a marketing list. Photography, video, social, open houses. The lists look broadly similar because the tools are broadly similar.

What separates outcomes is sequence. Michael John Lau, a REALTOR® with the Kaizen Real Estate Team in Markham, Ontario and a two-time eXp ICON Agent, puts it simply: marketing decides how many buyers see the home, and price decides what they do about it. Spending on the first while getting the second wrong produces a well-photographed listing that sits.

So the system runs in a deliberate order.

Phase One: Decide the Number Before Anything Else

Strategy consultation and market analysis

Before a camera comes out, the work is understanding the property, the seller's timeline and the competition. Markham's 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.

Pricing comes from recent sold comparables in the same community and 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 happens before a number goes on a listing rather than after.

Data-driven pricing

Markham has been selling at 98% of list price. In that market, an accurately priced home gets met and an optimistic one gets passed over. The first two weeks carry the most qualified attention a listing will ever receive, and pricing to capture those weeks is worth more than pricing to leave negotiating room.

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 stop asking what the home is worth and start asking what is wrong with it.

Phase Two: Prepare the Home

Home preparation and staging consultation

The preparation budget belongs where it changes a buyer's behaviour, not where it would be pleasant.

The repairs that pay are the ones that create hesitation rather than negotiation: visible water staining, a failing roof, obvious electrical or plumbing defects, a furnace at the end of its life. A buyer who cannot tell how bad a problem is will assume the worst and price accordingly. A small repair routinely prevents a much larger negotiation.

Cosmetic work matters for a different reason, which is the next phase.

Phase Three: Produce the Media Before Going Live

This is the step sellers most often get backwards, by listing first and tidying up before the first showing.

The photographs decide whether a buyer books a showing at all. Nothing else in the budget has that leverage, because every other improvement only reaches people who actually come through the door.

The media produced:

• Professional photography
• Cinematic property video
• Drone photography and aerial footage, which matters for lot, setting and proximity to parks, schools and transit
• Floor plans

So the order of operations is: declutter, deep clean, resolve anything visually alarming, then photograph, then list. A deep clean and a decluttered house generally return more per dollar than any renovation.

Phase Four: Launch Across Every Channel at Once

A launch works because it is concentrated. Everything goes live together so the first two weeks carry maximum weight.

Phase Five: Manage Showings and Feedback

Two things happen here, and one of them is free.

Access. The cheapest lever available and the most commonly wasted. A home that can be shown on short notice, seven days a week, sells faster than an identical home requiring a day's notice and weekday evenings only. A buyer seeing three homes on a Saturday chooses among the three they could get into. A notice requirement does not delay that buyer; it removes them.

Feedback. Showing feedback is data. Consistent comments about a specific room, the layout or the price are the market telling you something several weeks before the days-on-market figure does. A seller who acts on week-two feedback has options a seller who waits until week six does not.

Enquiries and updates are tracked and answered promptly rather than left to chance, and showing feedback is put in writing so decisions rest on a record rather than a recollection.

Phase Six: Offers and Negotiation

Since 1 December 2023, Ontario sellers have had a lever most still do not use.

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 a seller can change the direction at any point, including part-way through.

Ontario did not ban blind bidding. It remains the default. Openness is an option a seller elects, and whether to elect it depends on the property, the number of interested parties and the strength of the offers. That decision should be made before offers arrive, not in the moment.

One development worth planning for: buyers have begun inserting confidentiality clauses that revoke a seller's ability to disclose their offer's contents.

Phase Seven: Conditions and Closing

An accepted offer is not a sold house. The conditional period is where deals are lost, usually over financing, inspection findings or a status certificate review.

The work here is coordination: tracking deadlines, keeping the buyer's side moving, managing inspection findings before they become renegotiations, and making sure nothing sits waiting on a document nobody chased.

What the Team Brings to It

The Kaizen Real Estate Team operates in Markham and York Region, with eXp ICON Agent recognition in both 2024 and 2025. Michael John Lau has been licensed since 2015 and the team works across Markham's communities from Unionville and Markham Village to Cornell, Berczy Village and Thornhill.

The approach is the one the name describes. Continuous improvement, applied to a process that gets refined listing by listing rather than reinvented for each one.

What Michael Will Tell You Honestly

• Marketing cannot fix a price the market will not support. It can only make sure the right buyers see the home.
• The season is worth about two weeks and a point of sale-to-list. Pricing and preparation are worth considerably more.
• Some homes should be sold as-is, and the honest answer is sometimes to spend nothing.
• Sometimes the answer is to wait. A seller with no committed timeline listing into a soft month is often better served by three months of preparation.

Related reading: how the buying side works, and for out-of-town sellers, the relocation guide.

Next Steps

• Get a free Markham home evaluation — the first step in the system, and the one that decides the rest.
• See the full selling process — every step, start to finish.
• Recent sold listings — the comparables that set your number.

Michael John Lau, REALTOR® · Markham, Ontario · (416) 700-0286
Disclaimer. Michael John Lau is a licensed REALTOR® serving buyers and sellers in Markham, Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area. Market figures reflect August 2026 board-sourced data and are averages rather than valuations. Marketing services and their availability may vary by property and by listing agreement. Commission and scope of service are negotiated in every transaction, and no rate is standard in Ontario. This article is general information and is not legal or financial advice.