By Kathy Bevan
By an overwhelming margin of 97 per cent, CREA delegates have voted “yes”, formally endorsing the consent agreement with the Competition Bureau that CREA’s board of directors initially approved in September.
Some 350 voting delegates (including those with proxies) came to the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador to attend CREA’s annual Special General Meeting (SGM) to cast their votes for the settlement with the Competition Bureau. The result: a 10-year legally binding agreement that will keep CREA and the Competition Bureau from facing each other in court in April. The agreement has now been registered with the Competition Tribunal and takes effect as an Order – see the agreement here.
“Boards that may have rules that go against the agreement will have a reasonable period of time to change those rules,” CREA president Georges Pahud told REM. “We don’t believe that there are any, but if they do have rules that are in breach of this agreement, they certainly cannot enforce them at this point in time.”
In a statement issued shortly after the CREA member ratification of the consent agreement, the federal Commissioner of Competition, Melanie Aitken, praised the positive vote as “welcome news” for both consumers and real estate agents.
“For Canadian homeowners, it ensures that they will have the freedom to choose which services they want from a real estate agent and to pay for only those services. For real estate agents, it ensures that they will be able to offer the variety of services and prices that meet the needs of consumers.’
CREA has consistently argued that a variety of services and prices already exists in the Canadian real estate market and that its rules and regulations did not discriminate against non-traditional business models, including those which offer “a la carte” real estate services.
“The Commissioner had some concerns that have been addressed in this agreement. We clarified our rules to make it abundantly clear that mere postings were permitted and there would be no discrimination against mere postings or preventing mere postings on the MLS,” says Pahud. He says all CREA members, regardless of their business model, would continue to be responsible for the accuracy of the data they place on the MLS system and that brokers will continue to be free to choose the business model they want to use.
Comments from SGM delegates and attendees following the vote were positive. Moss Moloney, president of the B.C. Real Estate Association, called the ratification of the consent agreement “a win for everyone.”
“The Competition Bureau gets what they were looking for, organized real estate gets what they were looking for, and it’s a win for the public,” Moloney says. “It allows everyone to do what they want. And there are going to be consumers who are going to benefit. I don’t see where there’s anything negative in the outcome of this vote.”
Lorne Weiss, president-elect of the Manitoba Real Estate Association, viewed the consent agreement itself as a major milestone for the relationship between CREA and the bureau. “The consent agreement really was a recognition that CREA understood the concerns of the commissioner and the commissioner has started to get a handle on how we do our business and the nature of our business – being so entrepreneurial and having so many business models.”
For Cal Lindberg, who was president of CREA when negotiations about MLS access began in earnest two years ago, the positive ratification vote was good news, but he emphasized that for many people in Canada, the consent agreement won’t change the way they go about doing their day-to-day business.
“I’ll continue to give the same level of service and I’ll also continue to sell my value to my clients and to the consumer and not worry about whatever anybody else is doing,” says Lindberg. “If I’m not confident in my own abilities to sell and to represent them properly and to provide a suite of services and then charge accordingly, then I probably shouldn’t be in the business I’m in.”
