{"id":819,"date":"2021-07-14T15:51:04","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T21:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/?p=819"},"modified":"2021-12-02T09:39:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T16:39:01","slug":"real-estate-regulations-in-the-wild-northwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/2021\/07\/real-estate-regulations-in-the-wild-northwest\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Estate Regulation in the Wild (North)West"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Two things have happened to me in the last 24 hours that have left me scratching my head in puzzlement. First, I was making inquiries on behalf of clients for a potential recreational property purchase in B.C., and when I received the information package, it contained a document that blew my mind – a material latent defect disclosure form. In this document, the vendor was disclosing, to any and all potential buyers, the fact that a section of wood flooring beneath the living room area rug was not properly sanded. The intent of the form is to make it more or less impossible for buyers to be caught off guard, or for vendors to be let off the hook, when defects in a home which are known to the vendor or their Realtor are concealed.<\/p>\r\n

We have nothing like that here in the NWT.\u00a0 Yes, just like in the rest of Canada, a purchaser in the NWT could sue a vendor or their Realtor and would likely win if they could prove that a defect was knowingly hidden, but taking someone to court is an atomic response, and most purchasers end up just shrugging their shoulders and suffering the financial consequences.\u00a0 Knowing this, regulators in the provinces put rules in place, they incorporate them into real estate licensing courses, they create standard forms, and then they enforce the rules.\u00a0 And it works.\u00a0 It protects people.<\/p>\r\n

But we don’t really do that kind of thing here.\u00a0 And this is just one small example of a smart rule that we don’t have, and of an area where home buyers and sellers in the NWT are vulnerable to being taken advantage of – mostly by Realtors.\u00a0 Here are some others.<\/p>\r\n

    \r\n
  1. A Realtor in the NWT is not required to disclose to a potential buyer that they are not working for them (because they already represent the seller).\u00a0 This may seem like it should be obvious, especially when you are viewing a home with someone who is not the listing agent, but it’s not obvious at all.\u00a0 You can be viewing a home with someone who works for a completely different brokerage than the listing agent, and you may think they are representing you, but in fact they represent the seller.\u00a0 It’s confusing and ridiculous, and it is a practice that must be regulated.<\/li>\r\n
  2. A Realtor is not required to seek permission from a seller before double-ending (assisting the buyer with the preparation of an offer).\u00a0 In these situations the seller will never truly know if they had the undivided loyalty of the salesperson, or if the salesperson perhaps worked both sides a bit in order to earn a commission.\u00a0 Only the Realtor will ever know for sure.\u00a0 This is a bad practice for Realtors as well as sellers and buyers, and it needs to stop.\u00a0 Our regulators need to care about it.<\/li>\r\n
  3. A Realtor assisting a buyer with an offer on a home is not required to disclose the fact that they are assisting other buyers with offers on that same home, at the same time.\u00a0 We’ve seen this happen multiple times this summer.\u00a0 You can have five buyers submitting offers on a home and three of them worked with the same Realtor.\u00a0 Who amongst those three potential buyers do you suppose got the best advice on pricing and conditions?\u00a0 Only the Realtor will ever know.<\/li>\r\n
  4. As a broker, if my brokerage takes a good faith deposit on a purchase, and then things go sideways and the deal falls through, I can return the deposit to the purchaser without the seller’s consent, even if the purchaser acted in bad faith.\u00a0 No rules.\u00a0 Good luck to the seller in going after the deposit.\u00a0 Talk to your lawyer.\u00a0 Nothing I can do about it.<\/li>\r\n
  5. If a Realtor is found guilty by the Superintendent of Real Estate of violating one of the few rules that do exist in the NWT, they will likely receive nothing but a warning.\u00a0 No fine, no suspension.\u00a0 And nobody but the Realtor who broke the rules, and their broker, will ever know if there was in fact a penalty applied, or what the penalty was.<\/li>\r\n
  6. Realtors in the NWT are not required to adhere to a Code of Ethics.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

    Any Realtors reading this post may question that last point.\u00a0 After all, I’m using the term “Realtor”, which means we are members of CREA, and CREA requires that all of its members adhere to the “Realtor Code of Ethics.” But the problem is that, in the NWT, it’s unenforceable.\u00a0 We are just too small a real estate board to adjudicate code of ethics disputes without accusations of bias, so we have been relying purely on the honour system – and on the ethical compass of brokers – for almost a decade.\u00a0 I’ve tried a half dozen different tricks to come up with a way to make a code of ethics more enforceable, for the benefit of buyers, sellers and Realtors, but nothing has worked.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

    My latest attempt was to work with my MLA to try to raise concerns with the Superintendent of Real Estate’s Office.\u00a0 Our regulations are ancient, and anemic, and people are being taken advantage of because of it.\u00a0 And the response both my MLA and I received today was the second thing that made me scratch my head today.\u00a0 The response was that the Superintendent’s office will not impose stricter rules on Realtors unless the Realtors are generally in agreement that they need stricter rules imposed on them.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

    If you look up “head scratcher” in the dictionary, this should be right there in the list of useful examples.\u00a0 It would be like asking vehicle manufacturers if they feel that safety standards should be beefed up.\u00a0 Maybe some of them would say yes, but a whole lot of them would say that they don’t need more paperwork, more time-sucking hoops to jump through, more energy-consuming rules to follow.\u00a0 They would argue that they can be trusted to look out for their customers’ safety, or the environment’s safety, or their workers’ safety, without regulations.\u00a0 Except, history has shown that they can’t.\u00a0 \u00a0This is why we have regulators.<\/p>\r\n

    The Superintendent of Real Estate’s office is going to canvas Realtors about the issues I’ve raised to them this coming fall.\u00a0 I’m trying to make sure that this consultation includes a public component.\u00a0 So if you’ve ever tried to make a complaint to the real estate board but couldn’t find their website (which doesn’t exist), or if you’ve found yourself wondering why you paid so much for your home a few years ago and now realize you were double-ended but didn’t even know that was a problem, or if you’ve wondered how your Realtor could act in a way that you feel was unethical without any fear of repercussions, please stay tuned to this blog and I’ll try to give you an opportunity to do something about it.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Two things have happened to me in the last 24 hours that have left me scratching my head in puzzlement. First, I was making inquiries on behalf of clients for a potential recreational property purchase …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-and-advocacy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.century21yk.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}