By Peter Daoust

This fellow Joe was first mentioned in a blog  I wrote in July. At that time we discussed the impact that newly built condos have on our condo price indexes. We used Joe’s used car business as an example. If he mixed into his selection of vehicles offered for sale a few that were nearly new, his average monthly sales price index (if he bothered to keep one) would go up.

Here we are once again talking about Joe’s used car business and this time we want to mention the importance of Carfax reports. Most used car buyers know they exist and many ask to see them. Could our real estate industry make something like this available to consumers to help make them make more informed buying decisions?

Joe understands that clean Carfax reports help to take some of the haggling out of making deals. A six-year-old Jaguar with a history of only two past owners and no accidents is, all other things being equal, easier to sell than a six-year-old Jaguar with a history of four past owners and two front-end hits.

But let’s be honest. Carfax reports can only say so much. Remember the truck Joe sold that helped raise his monthly used vehicle index? What we failed to mention in that story is that in the glove box of that vehicle, Joe found a receipt for a $3,000 transmission repair job. It was a warranty on that work, which was good for a period of 90 days. That date is now long past.

While Joe had this truck for sale it leaked transmission fluid. In Joe’s mind, that might help to explain why its last owner traded it in and why the new car dealer that he purchased it from was so willing to quietly wholesale it out of their rear door. Yes, this vehicle did have a perfect Carfax report, but these reports do not tell everything.

For example, they omit any reference to what past vehicles sold for. If a similar report was applied to the real estate industry, perhaps past sale prices would be a worthy inclusion. If you are a potential buyer considering Mr. Smith’s house on Applebee Court, wouldn’t you be curious to see what he purchased it for?

Some properties trade more frequently than others – properties that have latent defects and are less desirable to live in. Recently I was talking with one of my nieces who purchased a house in Ottawa. She and her husband purchased a two-storey home in a 25-year-old subdivision. While they liked the area, they did have a few issues with the house. Every year when the snow melted the rear yard turned into a lake. The problem was so severe that her children could not play in it and the basement was damp. They were reluctant to have it finished. No one bothered to inform them of these two issues when they purchased it.

She was told by one of her neighbours that her house was the only one on the street with a noticeable history of being bought and sold. I was then asked if I thought that the real estate agent who sold it to them knew about this and if I thought they should sell it during a dry season.

I asked her if they would have purchased, it knowing in advance its history. She said probably not.

When it comes to past real estate information, like what your house once sold for, people in the United States can look it up in one of a number of websites like Zillow. These sites show everything and have huge followings. Things are different here in Canada and as a real estate broker I confess to leading a somewhat sheltered life. I do not know what the powers that be in the upper echelons of our real estate boards and committees are thinking. Will they make this type of service available here and how soon will it happen? Will the Competition Bureau force them to do that?

On one hand, we may worry about giving consumers access to too much information as they may not then need us. But are we as professional agents sometimes guilty of not providing enough information? Like many other Realtors, I was somewhat dismayed with the decision to let Comfree share our MLS system. They are a privately owned Internet company, not Realtors. They have not contributed fees in the past like we Realtors did to advance our MLS system to its present state. Given this decision, it only stands to reason that other Internet companies will take these same privileges, which will only further erode the integrity of our system. That being said, I do appreciate that we live in a world of constant change.

There is a website called Viewpoint.ca. It offers detailed, up-to-date information on all listings for sale in Nova Scotia. It shows past sales histories. What an amazing databank.

Author Tom Peters wrote a book that was published in 1987 called Thriving on Chaos. These three words very well express the situation we now find ourselves in. There is no turning back now; the public has to see more. It is only a manner of time before websites like Zoocasa, which have deep pockets and in some ways no clear mandate of what they are trying to accomplish, will evolve more to look like a Zillow website. That’s one of the reasons they were built in the first place. They are just looking for a niche in this real estate website race.

Is all of this good or bad news? Well, ask Joe. What he would probably tell you is that sometimes the more things change the more that they stay the same. What I think is that perhaps this time he might be wrong. After all, aren’t we as Realtors the real experts?

Peter Daoust is a broker at Re/Max Advantage Real Estate in London, Ont. www.yourcondoworld.com