The competition bureau has launched an aggressive offensive on the livelihoods of 98,000 or so licensed Realtors. They have found that CREA (the Canadian Real Estate Association) is anti-competitive and restrictive in blocking several options which may benefit the consumer. The two greatest points are the prevention of direct access to the seller (not publishing the seller’s name and phone numbers) and the requirement that the Listing Realtor be present at all offer presentations and negotiations.
Where the Competition Bureau gets it wrong
The Competition bureau does not apparently recognize that Realtor.ca is the public marketing tool of CREA, a collective made up by its 101 member boards and the licensed Realtors who are there, but in effect finds it to be the whole organization itself. It is ordering the opening of the Realtor.ca to mere-postings wherein a Licensed Member Realtor takes an order and processes a listing to go onto Realtor.ca (at hopefully reduced rates) and then the Realtor’s job would be done. The reality of this plan is to allow the general public to post their home for sale on Realtor.ca without actually using a Realtor or the level of service that Realtors pride themselves on providing. In effect, the competition bureau is stealing the Realtor.ca site from Realtors. For a great analogy, this is akin to you placing your car for sale on a local dealer’s lot and paying them a small amount. The dealer will not touch the car or try to sell it for you. You are merely paying the dealer a small space rental fee for the greater visibility on some busy thoroughfare.
BUT… and there is a BUT
Those mere-postings are pretty much already available though they break with what CREA and member boards have proscribed as minimal service levels. They’re also not popular in usage as these companies just do not have the money to advertise their services well (revenues just are not high enough). The largest was eRealty who at 0.5% and now there is myRealty which encourages Sellers to do everything for a pretty minimal fee. There are or were even cheaper services I was aware of existing, one which was just $79/week to get on the MLS. So it’s not so much about the mere-postings that the Competition Bureau is really going after but the entire industry itself. And why not? Realtors are always fat and juicy targets. We’ve ranked as low as you pretty much can go on the respectable jobs rankings… until someone needs us.
So being the government there’s a pretty good chance that the Competition Bureau is going to win. The rules will change and the public will be given the opportunity to have a member fill out a form, collect a small fee from you, and then post your listing on the MLS and the Realtor.ca site… unless there is no more Realtor.ca site.
What?
Yes. Realtor.ca is the biggest sham going. It is completely misunderstood by the public as some sort of service wherein your home is listed and put up by Realtors as a way of saying they are marketing your home but the facts speak for themselves. Most Buyers are introduced to the property they buy by their agent… not from Realtor.ca.
Where Realtor.ca gets it wrong (for the public):
- Realtor.ca shows properties 24-48 hours after the agents and their VOWs (like on this site) already have them.
- The information is limited.
- The search mechanics weak.
- The mobile usage awkward.
Where the AgentWill.com VOW corrects these issues:
- Properties show up right away.
- The information is far more extensive.
- The search mechanics are as great or greater than what Realtors get on their own system.
- The mobile usage is amazing with iPhone and Android phones.
So why have Realtor.ca at all? And why encourage the public to use it?
Answer: lead generation.
In my opinion, from the Realtor’s point of view, there is nothing we like better than having the public call us on a listing. Maybe you’re a buyer without an agent (bigger commission for me as I don’t have to pay another agent for bringing the buyer) and/or maybe you have a place to sell (opportunity for another commission). Yes, that is all the Realtor.ca site is to us agents; a lead generator. You see, we get a call from another agent and we know that there is a higher likelihood of a sale happening, a higher likelihood of the transaction going smoother, and we’ll be paying this agent half our commission with no further leads generated. Leads are business. No leads, no business.
So Competition Bureau, you want to take our MLS public face? Sure. What’s next? All the rest of the data? Sorry, not going to happen (or at least you haven’t gone after it, yet).
Here’s what I would do if I were CREA:
Shut down Realtor.ca and the subsequent VOWs and reciprocity advertisements.
Yup. Gone. Poof. You want to promote mere postings and eliminate the rest of the Realtor profession (as if we are a website and nothing more)? OK, but don’t think we’ll be giving them equal billing on a powerful public site wherein the public can circumvent the need for us. Then what you will have to do as a prospective home buyer is meet a buyer’s agent, sign a buyer’s agency agreement, and then that agent will work with you to find you a home. The “power” (really just ads on a site) of a nationwide MLS advertising site will be taken away.
Now, why would you have to sign a Buyer’s Agency agreement? Because no agent is going to work with you and then help you buy a home only offering them $1 in commission, and, no agent is going to work with you and then have you go directly to a seller circumventing them. I don’t know why so many people find this hard to understand.
(You don’t want to pay an agent? Fine. There are a multitude of sites and sources which have for years tried to circumvent the use/need for a Realtor – Craigslist, FSBO sites, etc.)
So, to sum up, Congratulations Competition Bureau. You’ve just actually hurt a very good thing for the public. Information will be made private again.
Want to argue that it can’t be done? Impossible. The listings contract will just change. Yes, it will still remain a Multiple Listing Agreement but none of the information will be made public. Not on any site except for the Realtor and their Broker’s site as well as the very private MLXchange service which all Board members use to research properties. Want to know sales data from past sales? Or all that other delicious data that can be found on the often trumped Zillow? Perhaps a service will start up that will access that information (currently available) and distill it for you, but the startup- costs for such an operation are astronomical. I guess the costs outweigh the projected revenues by a wide shot or someone would have already done it.
So what is really at stake here with my proposal? For Realtors it’s lead generation. For the public it’s the ability to do a lot of the home searching and researching footwork. And the benefits? For the Realtors it is protection of their industry (we survived over 90 years without an internet and won’t be killed by a Realtor.ca disappearing) and for the public you’ll be able to list for nominal amounts. Will it affect sales if we shut down the Realtor.ca site? I highly doubt it will affect the industry. It will affect individual Realtors who have tailored their business to attracting buyers through utilizing better public search tools, greater transparency, and involving the Buyers as much as possible in the process, like me.
Vancouver, BC 