My husband and I contacted Joseph Boyle when we saw that his sign was up in front of my deceased uncle's cottage in Highlands 1.  We were in a unique position of having already communicated to the executor of the estate that we were interested in buying the property for the appraised value of $485,000, but we didn't know it was on the market until we saw the sign go up.  The online listing said the property needed some attention, so my husband called Joseph and asked about that.  We knew that the cottage needed a new foundation.  Joseph Boyle said it was a tear-down and that it was listed for $499,000. We could see that we needed to get our own agent, so we booked a trip to Grand Bend.  Our guy met us at the cottage and when we explained our situation to him, he said, "What am I doing here?  In all my years in real estate, I've never seen someone put a property on the market when they already had a buyer, let alone family."  After research we had done, along with the professional opinion of a real estate agent in the family who is very familiar with the neighborhood (her family has owned a cottage there for more than 50 years) that the appraisal was high, and on the advice of our agent, we offered $450,000.   We put our offer in writing and flew out to go home.  Our agent called us en route to let us know that there was a competing offer that day and asked us if we were willing to come up.  We gave him a verbal offer of $460,000.  While changing planes a few hours later, our agent told us that our offer was not the superior offer, but that my uncle (the executor) wanted to keep the cottage in the family and that we could buy it for $499,000.  We declined to go above $460,000. We expected to hear from my Dad (as one of the estate's beneficiaries) that the cottage sold and what it sold for, so we were surprised that the place was still on the market days later.  Apparently, the competing offer told the seller to go fuck himself (Joseph's words, not mine) when he came back to us with the $499,000.  It seems unlikely that a buyer would react like that after they had the better bid, so I don't know if there ever was another offer that day. The property came off the market in early January 2023, and was back on the first week of March. Our agent reached out in mid-March to let us know there was an offer coming in and said that Joseph Boyle wanted to let us know, and to ask if we were interested in putting in an offer. We declined. We found out about a week later that the property sold for $425,000. So the "meh" two stars come in because I don't give anyone one star, and because after all was said and done, and the cottage went into escrow, my uncle, the seller, said that he never got our counter offer of $460,000. My husband contacted our agent to ask for clarification, and he said that, yes, he did submit an offer for $460,000 on our behalf. So why didn't Joseph pass the offer along to the seller? To us, this seems like the worst mistake a listing agent can make and we can't recommend him to friends and family because he is not trustworthy. I can't recommend Joseph as a listing agent either, based on his marketing of this property. The photos he put in the online listing were so bad. They included unmade beds, a tub of Lysol wipes on the back of the toilet, and one with the previous owner's pants hanging on a hook in the hallway?!! Also, when we went in to view the place, I had to kick my deceased uncle's slippers under the chair next to the front door, so clearly staging is not a priority for him. I can only guess that because he thought it was a teardown, he didn't think the beds needed to be made before he took the photos. There are a lot of emotions tied up with selling a family cottage, and what may look like a teardown to an agent may have a lot of special meaning to a family. If you care about how your family cottage is treated, and marketed, you should find a different agent. Cleary when you read this review, you can see that there are some bad family dynamics at play. Surely ours is not the only family, with a cottage that needs to be sold, that isn't getting along. In, Joseph Boyle's defense, he waded into a big family drama. But as a real estate agent, in a cottage area, I would expect an agent to navigate the process with more professionalism. read more

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