The Toronto Real Estate Board is big. While the board doesn’t boast or make such claims, it is said that TREB is the biggest real estate board in the world. TREB dominates the real estate community in Canada so much that about half the Realtors in the province of Ontario are members of the board. About one in every three Realtors in all of Canada is a member of TREB. Those are staggering numbers.
TREB pioneered many real estate-oriented projects, such as publishing its own newspaper for the public. It no longer produces that newspaper but when it did, it paved the way for other boards to publish newspapers too, so members could market properties and get a break from the high cost of advertising in mainstream newspapers. TREB’s Real Estate News had so many newspaper boxes on the streets of Toronto that at one point, the company that supplied the paint for the boxes officially named the colour they used as “Real Estate Blue”. TREB laid the groundwork for many other specialty advertising papers in Canada, and not just real estate.
TREB has been visited frequently by other boards in Canada, the United States and organizations from other parts of the world who wanted to see how they operated. TREB’s doors were always open. Visitors returned home with new ideas to marshal projects to operate “just like TREB”.
At one point the board had a fleet of over a dozen cars for its staff in the photography department. It operated its own print shop operation with presses and collating machines that were so big that they had to be housed in a separate building until new facilities were built. Within these two departments, new methods and ideas for photo processing and printing were developed. This was always encouraged by senior staff, to streamline the MLS process back in the days before computers. The extraordinary ability of this system to receive a listing from an agent, process it, drive out and take a picture of the property, then print it and distribute it to hundreds of offices; all in a two-day turn-around remains a remarkable feat to this day.
TREB continues to develop innovative new methods to serve its membership today. Its annual conference and trade show, Realtor Quest, has become the largest real estate trade show in Canada.
TREB is bigger than a number of other large boards in Canada combined. One would think that it would dominate the ideological and political direction of Canadian real estate agent thinking across the country. It could easily steamroll its opinion by threat of withholding is co-operation and more importantly its fees to organized real estate. Yet it does not. It extends its co-operation and offers help wherever it can to its industry community without fanfare.
TREB is not free of politics. It would be impossible for any organization of its size to avoid the turmoil that comes from clashing ideas, committee wrangling and elected directorships. I have seen this organization come to a near standstill once or twice. It has warts. But overall this is an organization that should be admired for operating as smoothly and as well as it does. TREB consistently contributes ideas to its members and its community. Many of the people who work there and are in charge of it are genuine and humble. There are a few bad apples there but they don’t seem to spoil the bunch like in some other boards and associations.
When you consider the size of this behemoth of a real estate organization, you have to acknowledge that it runs efficiently and well. There is so much to criticize in organized real estate but credit should be given when it is due. In TREB’s case I am pleased to give it.
Heino Molls is publisher of REM. Email [email protected].
