Gary Morse
By Tony Palermo
The CREA Futures Implementation Team (FIT) proposal to create an independent technology organization has been deferred until March 2013.
At CREA’s Special General Meeting in Winnipeg on Oct. 30, “there was a lot of support for (the proposal) in the room but there were some people who weren’t satisfied with a couple of the aspects in the proposal,” says immediate past president of CREA and FIT chair Gary Morse. “Some people opposed aspects (of the proposal) and others had questions, so the FIT will do more work and come back with a full package (at the spring AGM) next March.”
The meeting was the first opportunity for the FIT to report back on the work it has been doing on the Map to the Future plan approved earlier in March.
The most controversial issue dealt with the motion to create a share capital independent technology corporation to run Realtor.ca and CREA’s technology services. Morse says that a couple of the specific concerns were how the company would work and the company’s potential income-earning opportunities.
Burlington-based sales rep Ross Kay is one who has several concerns with the proposal and is happy to see the motion deferred.
“I’m glad a sober second thought can now take place on the privatization of Realtor.ca,” says Kay. “When you review the financial projections, this was a $15 million per year expense for CREA members to be legally committed to. The financials lacked a total understanding of the online technology sector as it exists today and a total misrepresentation of the current online advertising opportunities.”
Kay also says the financials included no preparation for the potential of a massive reduction in membership numbers, as happened from 1990 to 1995, and provided no safe guards to prevent the remaining CREA members from becoming liable for operational expenses.
Ross Kay
How the motion to create a separate technology company was communicated to the membership is another concern Kay shares with other Realtors.
“I think, universally, the vast majority of CREA members didn’t know this vote was taking place,” says Kay. “CREA did not communicate directly to its members that a vote to make Realtor.ca a private company was taking place. Instead, it was hidden in an agenda and buried in correspondence that never told the members what was being voted on.”
But Morse disagrees. He says the whole project was communicated to the membership, explaining that CREA received permission from the majority of the real estate boards and associations early in 2012 to communicate directly to their members.
“We’ve been communicating directly to members once a month with an email product called News2Me, which is sent to every member whose board agreed we could communicate directly to their members,” says Morse. “I think the newsletter is going out to about 96,000 out of 106,000 Realtors, and I don’t think there was a newsletter this year where the Futures project wasn’t mentioned.”
Morse also says people were encouraged to go to the Futures site on RealtorLink to read the background information and watch informational videos. Furthermore, during August and September, Morse says CREA sent out six different emails, one per week, encouraging the membership to watch a short video that addressed a specific action in the plan and answered related questions.
“We understand people are saying, ‘CREA didn’t tell us anything’ but it’s not for lack of trying,” says Morse. “There has never been a bigger communication effort on a project than there has been on this Futures project.”
Morse also disagrees with those who have been saying CREA is looking to privatize Realtor.ca and its technology services, indicating that the word privatize is a bit of a misnomer. He says the share capital corporation the FIT is proposing would be independent from CREA, but still controlled and owned by CREA.
“We’re not talking about making it private where the company can go off and do whatever it wants,” says Morse. “There would be very strict operating guidelines for the company in terms of what they can and can’t do.”
And, he says, it would operate with a mandate to provide technology business services in the best interests of its Realtors.
CREA spokesperson Pierre Leduc says that one of the things the Futures project is looking at is correcting the perception from front-line Realtors that CREA is not communicating with them effectively or to the depth they would expect.
Another motion brought forward by the FIT and passed at the Special General Meeting was that CREA no longer pursue the proposal to make FSBO and non-MLS data available on Realtor.ca. The FIT determined there were no practical options for making FSBO and non-MLS data available that didn’t involve significant risks to the Realtor and MLS trademarks. The team also reported that no business case was identified that would be sufficiently compelling to justify taking on these risks.
