One of the things many people suggested to us before looking for a home is to find a realtor to work with, because they will be able to add elements to our home search that we probably wouldn't have thought of.

So after seeing a nice apartment on the internet, we decided to call the realtor to ask to take a look at it.

The place was in our current neighbourhood, only about five minutes from where we currently live, considerably larger than our hovel at around 1,100 square feet, and had laminate flooring throughout.

We arrived early to the showing on a cool Wednesday morning to see a well-equipped Mercedes-Benz sedan sitting in the parking space in front of the building.

Figuring a realtor couldn't afford such a car, we continued to wait for about 20 more minutes before walking up to the building, where we were greeted by the realtor.

My first impression of him was that he'd make Niles Crane look working-class.

Extremely well-dressed with perfectly-coiffed hair and designer glasses, this guy looked ready to deal.

The building was exactly what we were looking for: concrete and steel construction, large suites, and amenities: a pool, hot tub, exercise room and it was all enclosed behind a gate.

The only problem was that it was a former leaky condo. The building had been completely re-done over the past two years and was in brand-new condition; however, the current owner (and all other owners in the building) were involved in long and (very) expensive litigation against the original developer.

The suite itself was on the fifth floor, but was listed as the fourth, because there are no apartments on the ground floor.

Some work was definitely needed, as while the leaky condo repairs were being finished, the tradesmen had done some damage in the kitchen, but the amount of work needed was minimal.

We walked through the place and were highly interested. We decided to put down an offer of $250,000. The place had an asking price of $257,800.

The place had been on the market for about two months, but only two weeks had passed since the last offer fell through, so the seller was eager to move.

Another couple, from Ontario, was going to go through the suite later that day, but we figured our offer was sufficient, and we were confident in the deal.

We get a call back later that day from the realtor saying that someone else, the couple from out-of-town, had made a considerably higher offer.

No problem, I thought, we made the first offer, and he had to look at that one first before he finds out about the new one.

Apparently not.

The upshot of it was, the realtor never sent in our offer, and pressured us on two separate occasions to increase our offer, which I refused to do.

The place ended up selling for $253,000.

We got a new realtor later that week to continue in our search.