Realtors respond
Re: Real estate’s dirty little secret: inflated fees, George Athanassakos and Scott Gryba, April 15
In their article, George Athanassakos and Scott Gryba make several assertions and suggestions concerning the practice of selling real estate. The first is that real estate lacks transparency because of blind bidding, the lack of real-time sales data and fees.
Blind bidding is an imperfect process that results from many buyers bidding on the same property. Creating artificial bidding wars is not a recommended practice, but it is the sellers’ right to withhold details of competing bids to encourage a higher price. In Australia, where there is also a housing shortage and where they have an open auction process, market dynamics and price growth are not significantly different than in Canada. In short, they have the same problems we have.
In many parts of Canada, sold data is included with the listing on Realtor. ca, but this is not currently possible in Ontario as regulators cite privacy legislation preventing us from making this information public. As for fees, Canadians should know that the use of a REALTOR® is entirely optional, and fees are always negotiable.
The authors also claim that selling a property in today’s market is relatively simple. That is, once the home is priced correctly and if it is listed on an MLS® System. Those are big “if’s.” Sales data, experience, neighbourhood knowledge and a host of other factors available to agents go into the accurate pricing of a home. Similarly, the MLS® System is entirely owned by REALTORS® as it represents their co-operative selling system designed to ensure that a seller’s home is seen by all REALTORS® whose buyers will compete to buy it for the highest price. Similarly, MLS® listings are uploaded to Realtor.ca so that the public can see all listings available.
In today’s hot market, it is natural for people to look for someone to blame. A professor of finance should probably start with supply and demand and investigate the root cause of supply shortages. Michael Bourque, CEO, Canadian Real Estate Association