To the president of CREA: In your recent Letter to the Editor in REM, you said: “Given the passionate views about the industry expressed here and elsewhere, I look forward to members’ participation in these forums. It’s your chance to shape the future of our business.”
Unless I’m missing part of the story, I find some discrepancy between your words and CREA’s actions. I’m sure that I am not the only one to feel this way but I’m tired of wasting my time writing letters in order to improve this industry when the only thing that we receive from CREA is selective deafness and mutism.
It seems that you don’t give enough consideration to any of the letters sent to REM about CREA including mine (Map for disaster) and all the comments generated by it online. If you read them carefully you’ll realize that most of us are against the direction that CREA is aiming to and also against most of the things CREA is doing or trying to do.
In some sense, being a Realtor is like being at war. Certainly nobody is going to kill anyone; it is just a metaphor. But Realtors fight a battle every day trying to get more clients while, at the same time, we fight against our own competition.
In a war, you can’t give information or weapons to your enemies because that is giving them more power which, eventually, will turn against you. That’s what CREA is doing now and, if it continues this way, it will be even worse for us in the future when you and the Board of Directors, maybe, will be already enjoying your retirement.
These are just some of the roads from CREA’s map that should be closed:
1) Realtor.ca should be shut down. If the public wants information, tell them to call us (as it was before mls.ca was created). We do not have to pay for a public’s toy. Use that budget to improve our MLS.
2) You can’t give the public a tool to evaluate us because that would be a disaster. If they have a problem with a Realtor, they already have RECO (in Ontario) to make a complaint. Don’t waste our money on that.
3) You can’t ask the public what they want just to accommodate their wishes, in the same way that a surgeon is not going to ask you what you want during your own surgery or your lawyer during a lawsuit. CREA should ask us what we need or want.
CREA is giving away our power, our tools and our money to the public. They don’t pay CREA’s salaries, we do. Don’t you think that the Board of Directors should be more careful with their employers?
With all the due respect, I’d like to end this letter with a metaphorical suggestion for the Board of Directors: Before making plans and maps like generals, they should remember how to fight like soldiers.
Jorge Branca
Sales rep and ABR
Century 21 Leading Edge Realty
Toronto
