Agent Will

You may have noticed a tab up there that says “Property Listings”. You may have even clicked it and taken a tour. But do you understand what you are looking at?

Perhaps before I delve into that we ought to go over the listing process. When a seller lists with an agent they have two options. The first is an exclusive listing whereby the agent has exclusivity in marketing the property. There is no promise to seller, nor obligation of the realtor, to share the listing information or data with anyone else (not including local board, member office, and government) except the potential purchaser. There will be no information entered on the multiple listing service and no other realtors will be notified of the listing unless granted permission in writing by the seller. This is most commonly used in the marketing of assignment properties. The seller, in that case, is the developer and they generally do not pemit marketing on the MLS (weakens their own marketing or may lessen the image of the development if “too many” assignments are easily found in the explanation given for that).

The second, and by far the most common, listing agreement is a Multiple Listing Agreement whereby the information will be shared through the MLS and the marketing of your property will take full advantage of the co-operative nature of the Real Estate industry.

So a Multiple Listing Agreement is signed and all the pertinent data is entered. The realtor then submits that information to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) who inputs it into the MLS database. Immediately upon doing so that information becomes available to all the members of that board. If you are looking for a home to purchase, this is your”hotwire” into what comes on the market. The information then also transmits to the MLS which is owned and operated by the Canadian Real Estate Association (of which each Provincial division and local member boards are a part of) who then make it public through MLS.ca. Now, I’m sure you can imagine how many listings are added and changed on a daily basis, locally. Imagine how many are done nationally! We’re talking tens of thousands. So would that slow down the MLS.ca update? You bet. In fact, it takes about 48 hours to get a listing up on MLS.ca. That’s 48 hours after all the local realtors have known about it and shown their prospective clients.

So what is this Reciprocity? We have a system here at the REBGV where w, as individual members, grant the right for other members to advertise our listings and receive the right to advertise theirs in return. These listings will say at the bottom “Listing provided by: ABCXYZ Realty” or something to that effect. The system can be found on most realtors websites and provides much the same information the MLS.ca does, and, sadly, in about the same amount of time.

How about VOW? VOW stands for Virtual Office Website. This technology was a HUGE leap forward to online property searches for the general public. What this does is, without a doubt, give the consumer the most information, in the quickest time, and more efficiently than any prior site did. It is built off of the reciprocity system (drawback is that not all realtors have signed reciprocity agreements so not all properties are on there… just the vast majority of them) bit with a tremendous speed boost. Perhaps I should just list the advantages here:

- More than 10 pictures possible.

- The other 90% of information you wanted including bylaws for condos, room dimensions, listing date, previous listing price, and much more.

- Google Maps integrated - how many times have you had to go look on a map to see where the property was before? Now it’s all there.

- The ability to save your searches and be automatically notified of new homes when they come on the market.

- The ability to rate properties.

and, this is one of the best perks,

- I’ve found that properties get on the VOW system within 15 minutes of the realtor’s system. Not 48 hours. 15 minutes!

So what are you waiting for? If you haven’t checked out the “Property Listings” button yet, do it now!

If you’re a realtor reading this and want to know how to get a VOW system for yourself drop me a line or a comment and I’ll get you that information.