About Mike Perkins

Real Estate.

Thoughtfully Advised.

I’m Mike Perkins, a Toronto real estate agent specializing in historic and century homes in the city. You may also find me in Muskoka helping clients with cottage transactions.

I believe good real estate advice starts with understanding the property—not simply selling it.

That means asking questions, investigating the things that don’t quite make sense, understanding what a problem actually means before reacting to it, and giving clients enough information to make a confident decision.

Sometimes that means spending more time on the details.

I’m quite comfortable with that.

I like complicated houses

I’m particularly interested in Toronto’s older and character homes.

Century homes aren’t perfect, and I don’t think pretending otherwise is particularly helpful.

They can have knob-and-tube wiring, clay sewer lines, old plumbing, plaster walls, unusual additions, radiator heating and foundations that look nothing like modern construction.

But old doesn’t necessarily mean bad.

When I’m helping someone buy an older home, I want to distinguish between something that’s simply original, something that requires maintenance, and something that genuinely deserves further investigation.

If there’s a concern, my preference is to investigate it.

If there’s a solution, I want to understand it.

And whenever possible, I want to put a real number around it.

That’s much more useful than simply telling a client not to worry—or telling them to walk away.

Buying a home

Buying a house involves considerably more than finding one you like.

My role is to help you understand what you’re actually buying.

That can mean looking beyond the finishes and asking questions about the structure, electrical system, plumbing, sewer, heating, renovations, property boundaries, easements or anything else that could materially affect the property.

I don’t expect every house to be perfect.

I do want my clients to understand its imperfections before deciding what they’re comfortable paying for it.

For older properties, I’ve put together a growing Toronto Century Home Guide covering many of the issues I regularly encounter.

Explore the Toronto Century Home Guide

Selling a home

I don’t believe every property should be marketed the same way.

Sometimes the right preparation is staging and photography.

Sometimes it’s paint.

Sometimes it’s an inspection, contractor quotes or a renovation concept.

And sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is research the property’s history and figure out what makes it unlike anything else currently for sale.

With older homes in particular, buyers can become uncomfortable when they’re confronted with unknowns.

My approach is often to do the homework first.

Identify the issue. Investigate it. Explain it. And where possible, document the solution.

That doesn’t mean renovating every dated system before selling.

Quite often, it means giving buyers enough information to understand what doing the work themselves would actually involve.

Read: Selling an Older Toronto Home With Dated Systems

A recent example: 32 Belcourt Road

A 1908 Davisville home I recently brought to market is a good example of that approach.

The house was vacant, more than a century old and had been owned by the same family since 1970.

We detailed it from top to bottom, selectively painted rooms where dated colours distracted from the space, painted out some distinctly 1980s finishes, staged the rooms where furniture would help buyers understand scale and left others alone.

Then we tackled the harder questions.

Knob-and-tube wiring remained, so I obtained an electrical quote—and then separately priced the plaster repairs that would follow the electrical work.

Potential for an additional bathroom? We had that investigated and priced too.

Rather than hiding those things, I put signs beside them explaining exactly what we’d found and what the proposed solution would cost.

Then I researched the house.

That uncovered more than a century of history involving artists, actors, writers and musicians. Family archives helped bring that story to life, and the property’s history and unusual marketing approach created several potential angles for targeted media outreach.

The result was a marketing strategy built specifically around that house, rather than a template applied to every listing.

Read the 32 Belcourt Road Case Study