Ontario Real Estate Association won’t target individual candidates

But the group says it will continue promoting the home ownership ‘dream’ to politicians

The Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA) says it has no plans to back away from its campaign promoting home ownership to parties and candidates in the upcoming provincial election.

But OREA won’t be moving ahead with billboards supporting or criticizing individual political candidates, a spokesperson said Monday.

That clarification comes in the wake of reports of industry squabbling between OREA and the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB). On Sunday, The Canadian Press reported that TREB president Tim Syrianos sent OREA a letter telling it to step back from a “misguided and ill-advised” campaign that could negatively affect Toronto-area realtors by highlighting the home affordability challenges in the region, which has had a slow start in some areas this year.

The campaign called “Keep the Dream Alive” urges politicians to help make home ownership affordable to millennials. “Rising home prices have pushed home ownership out of reach,” says the material on the association’s website.

Syrianos also suggested that endorsing or undermining certain politicians violated OREA’s mission to promote policies rather than people.

Targeted billboard advertising was only “one element of an election plan” OREA circulated to its board, of which Syrianos is a member, said Matthew Thornton, association vice-president of public affairs.

“Our board decided not to move forward with the program. It was a pilot initiative they were considering, and upon further review they decided not to move forward,” he said.

That decision was made before Syrianos’s letter leaked to the press, he said. In it, Syrianos warned OREA against trying “to supplant TREB and overtake our expertise and well-respected voice.”

Syrianos also objected to OREA’s plan to use an “Ontario Realtor Party” as part of its campaign. The Ontario Realtor Party is the profession’s voice promoting the dream of home ownership and protecting the real estate profession, according to the association’s website. TREB refused Monday to comment on the letter. It referred to a previous joint statement with OREA saying that “the letter is not reflective of the long-standing and positive rela- tionship between OREA and TREB who jointly remain committed to helping create a new generation of homeowners.”

OREA represents 39 Ontario real estate boards, but about 50,000 of its 70,000 members belong to the Toronto board.

Thornton stressed that political campaigns aren’t new to OREA. He said the association successfully lobbied the province against allowing municipalities outside Toronto to levy their own land transfer tax.

The “Keep the Dream Alive” campaign will move into a sec- ond phase in September through November, he said.

“It’s an opportunity for us to continue to promote this message that young people are struggling to afford a home, and policy-makers need to take this issue seriously,” said Thornton. OREA CEO Tim Hudak is the former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party. Last year, OREA lost its main function and key revenue source as the training provider for new realtors in the province, and it announced it would rebrand itself as the voice of the real-estate industry and an advocate for home ownership.

The internal strife is typical of industry associations that have different tentacles or sometimes local, provincial and national arms, said James McKeller at the Brookfield Centre in Real Estate & Infrastructure at York University’s Schulich School of Business.

“It’s hard to figure out the motives of both of these organizations,” he said. “They pretend they’re representing the public, but they’ve never given any evidence of that in the past.”

Meantime, Bosley real estate agent David Fleming said he would be happier if TREB represented the interests of active agents, rather than the 50,000, who are licensed to practice, many of whom help transact one or fewer sales each year. But the board is dependent on its large membership for revenue.

Meantime, he said, OREA is “trying to figure out what is our purpose and they don’t even really know.”