Real estate brokerage faces new allegations
Complaints against Steve Bailey have been filed with the Real Estate Council of Ontario
CAMBRIDGE — One woman nearly lost half the market value of her house. In another case, a young couple had their dream home pulled out from underneath them by an insider, despite having made the better offer. In a third, it’s alleged a buyer paid $10,000 more than they needed to because of a fake competing offer.
These are some of the troubling allegations levelled against one of Waterloo Region’s top-selling real estate brokers, Steve Bailey, and his Cambridge-based brokerage, The Bailey Group.
They’re the basis of complaints that have been filed with the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO), the governing body that regulates the real estate industry. The regulator won’t comment on complaints until after they’ve been reviewed, investigated and reach a public hearing.
There are more than 80,000 real estate brokers and salespeople in Ontario, and the vast majority of them never draw formal complaints through the provincial regulator. Of the more than 2,500 complaints RECO opened in 2016, 178 were investigated, leading to 29 convictions.
Bailey is among the less than one per cent of real estate professionals who have been investigated by RECO, which reports to the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services.
He’s facing an upcoming disciplinary hearing reserved for only the most serious of offences — and potential punishment
that can include fines of up to $50,000 for brokers and a further $100,000 for the brokerage. In rare cases, the regulator may revoke a realtor’s licence.
Bailey insists he’s done nothing wrong and says his success has “put a target on my back,” according to a since-deleted post on Facebook. As the team leader of The Bailey Group out of the RE/MAX Real Estate Centre in Cambridge, Bailey oversees one of the top-selling real estate groups in the province, selling hundreds of homes in Waterloo Region every year.
The Bailey Group is accused of manipulating the real estate market on multiple occasions, allegedly breaching the provisions of the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act that requires brokers and agents to act ethically and in the best interests of their clients.
Bailey, endorsed by celebrities such as John Tesh, Rascal Flatts singer Gary LeVox and TV’s “Shark Tank” investor Barbara Corcoran, is a realtor fond of flashy commercials and bus ads who guarantees he’ll sell your house in under 90 days. In Waterloo Region’s tight-knit real estate industry, he has plenty of supporters — and detractors.
While RECO prepares for an upcoming disciplinary hearing, sparked by Bailey’s role in an aborted house sale in Waterloo, it has also probed other formal complaints against his brokerage for alleged ethical violations.
That includes the sale of a house in Plattsville in March 2017 sold by his brokerage. In that case, it’s alleged his mother-inlaw, Isabel Pinheiro, was able to secure a home for one of her clients for $15,000 less than an offer already on the table.
Pinheiro is also a real estate agent at The Bailey Group, which meant the brokerage was able to collect a commission from both the buyer and the seller. Pinheiro did not respond to interview requests for this story.
“We thought the deal was through, we had an offer. But they ended up accepting a deal from his own team, for a lot less,” said the would-be buyers’ real estate agent, Vince Vasco.
The would-be buyers, who spoke to the Record but did not want to be revealed publicly, were angry after losing out on the Plattsville house. They felt the home had been taken out from underneath them despite having made a better offer.
“I was never told there was another offer. Basically, they went in and kind of side-swiped us,” Vasco said.
When the seller, Chris Kubassek, became aware there was a better offer on his house, it’s alleged Bailey paid him the difference directly, according to the complaint. Kubassek, who’s now one of the broker’s recommended home inspectors, declined to be interviewed when reached for comment.
Vasco’s clients filed their complaint just days before Bailey joined RECO’s board of directors. He stepped down from that posting just a year later, when the regulator began investigating him over a complaint about his role in an aborted Beechwoodarea home sale.
The top-selling broker was also questioned by RECO for a third allegation, connected to the sale of a home on Marmel Court in Cambridge that sold for $275,000 in March 2016.
In that case, it’s alleged one of Bailey’s agents created a fake competing offer that pushed the buyers, Evelyn and Alvin Adona, to pay $10,000 above the asking price for the property. The regulator’s investigation into that allegation is ongoing.
Bailey, meanwhile, said his team is co-operating with the industry regulator, but declined to comment further on the complaints.
“There are no concerns or any issues at all at our end. We are responding, and indeed are very pleased to respond as required. It would not be appropriate to say any further at this point,” he said in an email.
Bailey is already awaiting a RECO discipline hearing over his role in an aborted sale at 108 McCrae Pl. in Waterloo in 2016, when he tried to help his parents buy a Beechwood-area home for about half its market value.
In September 2016, Bailey went to do an evaluation of Laureen St. Denis’ Beechwood West home, and claimed she told him she wanted $330,000 for the house — significantly less than the average price for a four-bedroom home in her neighbourhood.
Ontario’s Municipal Property Assessment Corp. assessed the house as worth $594,000 in January of that year. That assessment, for tax purposes, is based on comparable homes in the same neighbourhood in similar condition and is a baseline gauge for a home’s value.
When St. Denis’ family found out about the pending sale, they became angry, contacted police and demanded Bailey cancel the deal.
The deal was cancelled in December 2016. The seller found a new realtor, and her house ultimately sold for $635,000 the following month.
Bailey insisted he did nothing wrong in that case — but he also required St. Denis sign a release that promised “not to make any complaints to any real estate regulatory body regarding Steven Bailey” to get out of the deal, according to a copy of the document obtained by the Record.
In a previous interview in June when the Record first reported on the allegation, the broker said his parents, John and Moira Bailey, were looking for a retirement home that would lure them back from B.C. — not just another investment to add to the family’s network of properties around the region. In his version of the story, Bailey said St. Denis was embarrassed about the state of the house and wanted a quick, private sale without having to list it.
St. Denis’ family offers a different take. They said the experience was incredibly stressful and frustrating for a woman just trying to sell her house and plan for retirement. She was afraid to speak out because she didn’t want a legal fight, they said.
“Laurie is absolutely operating from a place of fear. Once she got out of the deal and made more money on the final sale of the house, she needed to be done. It was so stressful,” said her daughter-in-law, Anna St. Denis.
Bailey, meanwhile, says his team has done nothing wrong and argues the complaints are borne out of jealousy from other realtors. As one of the top-selling players in the residential real estate market, he says there’s a “target on my back” — a defence he also made in his previous interview.
Realtors have grumbled for years about the broker’s aggressive style that they say has cost them commissions and made him some enemies, according to interviews with multiple people in the industry.
During Bailey’s lavish 40th birthday party at his home on Cedarbrook Court in Cambridge in 2016, someone went up and down the street slashing the tires of his guests’ vehicles. One car also had its rear driver side door scratched. Police were called and filed a report, but no charges were laid.
The allegations against Bailey will be heard by the Real Estate Council of Ontario’s discipline committee, but a date for that public hearing hasn’t been released yet.
The regulator says it will be able to release more information once it holds that hearing, and once a decision is published.
“RECO stipulates that these are allegations until proven otherwise, and that Mr. Bailey has the right to defend all such allegations,” the regulator said in a statement.