The successful realtor's that I know are very driven individuals, who seem to be working constantly. I find it strange and unusual that a well known Toronto Realtor, highly successful, would obtain a 7 million dollar listing, in a fairly hot Toronto real estate market, and then take off to Florida and leave the showings to an assistant. The realtor's I know would stay in town, trying to sell the house before Xmas. After all, the listing was recent, and there is a significant list of people that had viewed the house, indicating potential buyer interest. Leaving town doesn't reconcile with the behaviour I have seen with agents that I know .
'Successful' realtors are always going to have listings, most 'successful' realtors also have 'assistants', or sometimes work in 'teams', and even 'successful' realtors deserve and take vacations from time to time. Communication is easily done via phone, and even real estate contracts can be completed via fax or other electronic means nowadays. There is no reason for a realtor to have to be present in the flesh at every showing done by every realtor showing every one of their client's listings, and I feel confident that any client would need to be accepting of the fact that working with their chosen realtor may mean that at times they may be dealing instead with the assistant (or team member).
I don't know whether the news article got it wrong or not, however it wouldn't surprise me or make me think less of the listing sales rep to know she was away at the time..... although it does add another layer of weird coincidence imho, if she was out of the country at the time, in addition to the other weird timing things, such as:
i)the home had very recently been put up for sale on the open market so people could access the home, see photos and perhaps floorplans online, gather details about the property, etc.;
ii)HS was leaving for Florida within days, to be gone for a month, so it was one of the last occasions to have them together while the home was still for sale (nobody would know when it might sell);
iii)both husband and wife had been out of the house at a meeting together, at his office where it's possible that many people would have seen them and known they were there and not at home, just prior to this event;
iv)the weird timing of only days after the judge's decision to have the cousins pay costs to the billionaires regarding the 10 year lawsuit the cousins had already lost (twice? - I believe this most recent 'loss' was on appeal?).
