B.C. Real Estate Council, watchdog in court battle
A power struggle is brewing between a B.C. government-appointed regulator and the real estate industry council that the regulator is supposed to oversee.
They disagree over how to deal with complaints about a real estate agent and, unable to sort it out, will be sparring in court.
The superintendent of real estate, Micheal Noseworthy, this week filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court seeking to push the Real Estate Council of B.C. to order a disciplinary hearing for an agent over claims he misled buyers.
The council’s chair, Robert Holmes, told Postmedia “history will be clearer when our lawyer files the next step, a response to the petition which will lay out parts that have been omitted or not given sufficient prominence by the lawyer for the superintendent.”
The superintendent’s petition contains details of the back and forth between the agencies over complaints about an agent in the small northern town of McBride and the scrapped sale of a rural property there. In a provincial court case separate from this petition, the buyers claimed the agent, who was acting for them as well as the seller, told them the property included a field, which they later learned was not true.
It’s a dispute of interest because both Noseworthy and a new slate of Real Estate Council members were appointed in response to a frenzy of scandals in 2016 involving realtors who broke rules, but faced few consequences, in a hot Metro Vancouver housing market. Homebuyers were incensed as agents appeared to gain as prices continued to escalate.
Looking ahead, how the two bodies tussle over this relatively simple complaint — and how they hash out who gets to oversee and who has to comply — could set the stage for how effective they can be together when faced with more egregious or pervasive problems.
In September 2016, the Liberal government appointed Noseworthy after an independent advisory group issued a damning report. This showed the province’s real estate industry failing to regulate itself, despite being allowed to do so for over a decade.
At the time, Noseworthy spoke of monitoring B.C.’s 22,000 realtors more tightly.
The government committed to some 28 recommendations, including giving the council power to issue fines of up to $250,000, compared with the rarely issued maximum of $10,000 in the past.
A month later, in October 2016, the government stepped in to appoint nine new members to the Real Estate Council, which had been criticized in the report as a cosy group of industry insiders reluctant to mete out punishment for wrongdoing.
The new members included Holmes, a litigation and arbitration lawyer with over 30 years’ experience, as the chair; John Daly, a former Global B.C. news reporter; Rob Gialloreto, president and CEO of Consumer Protection B.C.; Sandra Heath, president of a training and human resources firm; and Maili Wong, a portfolio manager with CIBC Wood Gundy.
The gist, Holmes said, is that “the changes made put in place a government-appointed council, and (currently) it includes 10 people who are public interest representatives and only two who are from the (real estate) industry.”
He said there is a subcommittee that deals with complaints. It is made up of three council members on a rotation.
Noseworthy declined to comment, but said in a statement: “We took this step because it is important to ensure that decisions made in the public interest by the superintendent are enforced, providing consumers and real estate licensees confidence in the integrity of the Real Estate Council’s disciplinary process.
“My office and the Real Estate Council continue to maintain a strong working relationship and collaborate on a number of joint initiatives.”