I’ll just comment quickly on today’s Edmonton Journal article: “Realtors Association of Edmonton a house divided over sales disclosure.” The article discusses a new rule from the board of directors to withhold sales information until the title transfers. This it the biggest change I’ve seen in the last 25 years when it comes to deciding how much to pay for a home, or accept for a home. With this new rule, REALTORS® and their clients will no longer have current data available at that critical decision making moment.
Under this new rule, if you’re working with a REALTOR® to buy or sell a home, you won’t have access to information about recent sales when you need it the most. You will be able to see that the home is sold, but you won’t know the sale price until title transfers (typically 30-60 days later). The rule is set to come into affect on Dec. 1/12.
No way, no how, can you pin this new rule on REALTORS®. I know that sounds weird, but every REALTOR® I have talked to since this decision was made is against it. You see, our Board of Directors made the decision with no input from the membership. Even though these directors are elected, not one of them ran on a platform of changing the way we report sales data. If they had, they wouldn’t have gotten my vote.
The board says the decision is to protect the association and its members from potential liability – they liken it to buying fire insurance. I liken it to buying bomb insurance. They say that every year a number of deals collapse after conditions are removed, and by reporting the sales information we open ourselves up to liability. It’s worth noting that after at least 100,000 transactions in the last decade in Edmonton, a whopping 0 lawsuits related to publishing sales information in our database have occurred.
The board says it’s no big deal, we should be able to estimate the sale price based on market conditions and the length of time it took to sell. They don’t mention that in doing so, the liability the association sloughed off has now been pushed squarely on to the shoulders of the individual REALTOR®. Our “educated guesses” could be wrong at least half the time.
We make our living interpreting market data for our clients. Our clients rely on this critical, timely information to make informed decisions. I can’t speak for the public, but as someone who buys and sells properties this information is invaluable when key decisions are made. How do you feel about the rule?
A message to our fellow REALTORS®: the board may say the decision is made, there is nothing we can do about it, but I think we can do something. Come to the general meeting on Sept. 27 at the Delta Edmonton South and have your opinion heard (register on the intranet – the form is in the weekly review inserts). Hopefully in a few weeks we can all wake up and think this was just some kind of bad dream.
You can check out the Facebook page on the topic here.
About Sheldon Johnston
Sheldon is very familiar with the ins and outs of real estate; he has been licensed to sell Real Estate in Alberta for over 20 years. Sheldon has served on the Real Estate Council of Alberta, the Real Estate Insurance Exchange and the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton. Find Sheldon on Twitter @edmontonsheldon.
Client Testimonial for Justin Tazi
Client Testimonial for Bill Bhamra
Client Testimonial for Mira Wannous
Client Testimonial for Nathan Mol 
Client Testimonial for Nathan Mol 
Client Testimonial for Travis Dochuk
Client Testimonial for Beverley Hasinoff
Client Testimonial for Beverley Hasinoff
Client Testimonial for Richard Widynowski
Client Testimonial for Bill Bhamra
Client Testimonial for Mira Wannous
Client Testimonial for Beverley Hasinoff
Client Testimonial for Richard Widynowski
Client Testimonial for Justin Tazi
Client Testimonial for Sheldon Johnston
Client Testimonial for Bill Bhamra
Client Testimonial for Tracy Vipond
Client Testimonial for Justin Tazi
Client Testimonial for Nathan Mol 
Client Testimonial for Bill Bhamra
I don’t see a big difference here. Yes your data is delayed by 6 months. But in most years, the price change in the 0~5% range, adjusted for seasonal factors. If anything, I see it stablizing the market to prevent a bid up or dumping situation, where a market noise is intepreted as a major trend.
Real estate associations and their fear of litigation make me crazy. This concern is easily dealt with in the brokerage agreement, but why not re-work the way we do business instead?
what drives me crazy is how fast they made this rule change and how little consultation was done regarding it. Actually even saying there was some consultation maybe misrepresnting the process. Their mantra “everybody else is talking about doing this”. That has be the best reason ever to dive head first into the shallow end.
So is this part of an evil realtor conspiracy to put the brakes on market crashes? (Since you won’t know the market is crashing until it’s already too late?) jk
lol…I think you should adjust your auto responder.
Good on you guys for making this an issue. I feel very strongly that there is already a serious lack of availability of information in the Real Estate business here in Canada. This is just making it worse instead of better. It seems to me that those in power are just trying to keep all of the information for themselves so it can be charged for, or held to manipulate the statistics…
I can’t say that I agree with this new policy, however – knowing what your neighbours house sold for is not always pertinent as to what you should be selling yours for.
As an example, when we sold our house it was listed 35K higher than our neighbour across the street. From the basic stats you would think that ours was over-priced as they were both the same basic size, bungalows with finished basements, etc. – but our house sold and the neighbour across the street didn’t. Why? because their house was no where near the same as far as curb appeal, quality finishes, and well maintained such as hardwood floors, etc.. The house was not looked after and it showed. We are happy the realtors we used were friends and were honest with us as to the reason we could list higher. Same as our neighbour three doors down. 3 price decreases – started out at $519,900 and now sits at $470K and still not sold. Using comparables doesn’t always work…….
Your neighbour’s house didn’t sell, so it’s irrelevant. We’re talking about sales data not active data – people can ask whatever they want for their home, the market determines what it’s worth.
However let say your neighbors did sell and shortly there after you sold yours. What would you say when you finally saw that the other home sold for $10000. less than yours?
Is not your board of directors made up of your membership? then the statement
“REALTOR® I have talked to since this decision was made is against it.”
well there is an amount of your membership who are in favour of this decision. and because of this consumers are not protected? so what is the difference your association brings to the table? how do you help the consumer?
Consumers trust who they know, either word or mouth or by family connection, the Realtor association is not helping the agent nor strengthening your industry.
With choice there is an opportunity cost, we can choose who we want working for us, so we might as well pick whom ever we want since the consumer needs a lawyer, and home inspector (whole set of issues with this group) before purchasing.
So my question is why use a Realtor? your trying to brand yourselves when you should be putting your efforts into professionalism with mandatory enrolment and clear rules to practice vs branding
my thoughts anyways