You can have our (listing) data when you pry it from our cold, dead hands!
Tribunal hearing pits the Federal Competition Bureau against the Toronto Real Estate Board:
In what may result in a watershed ruling affecting real
estate historical listing information, the Competition Bureau Tribunal will be
conducting hearings in both Toronto and Ottawa over the next few weeks to determine
how much listing data can be provided by online real estate marketing
companies. This matter has been winding
its way through various regulatory and legal processes for some 4 years now,
including the Supreme Court-which refused to hear the matter.
What does the Bureau want?
The Bureau wants MLS® listing and sold data to be more
widely available to consumers and 3rd party online marketers like
Trulia and Zillow in the US. This would
allow more information for both buyers and sellers and a new range of online
services. Currently, Realtors control
this data and provide it to their customers or prospects.
The Bureau argues that TREB (and by extension MLS® as a
whole) uses its monopoly over access to this listing data to prevent new
services and business models and that consumers have a right to access this
data without having to go through an MLS® REALTOR® member, as is the case in
some other countries.
NB. The issue
fundamentally relates to historical “sold” data and listings, as active
listings are already widely distributed to the online 3rd party real
estate community via the MLS® Distributed Data Facility (DDF).
What is organized real estate’s position?
Organized real estate feels very strongly that historical listing
data is proprietary to MLS® members as they have assembled/created and paid for
the whole system that collects, aggregates, stores and distributes the listing
data. Listing data goes far beyond simple
listing and selling prices and includes photos, videos, room sizes, special
features etc.
This comprehensive data set is what is necessary to form any
kind of baseline for pricing a property to be listed in future. Simply having the selling price of a property
without all the ancillary information included in a typical MLS® listing is
fairly meaningless and is already available to the public via MPAC (up to 24
properties in Ontario) or the local land registry office.(for a small fee)
Organized real estate also argues that even private sellers
(for-sale-by-owner or FSBO sellers) have access to comparable sold data, as the
major FSBO sales organizations are generally affiliated with a real estate
brokerage that can provide that information.
FSBO sellers can also have their properties posted on MLS® subsequent to
a previous agreement between the Bureau and the Canadian Real Estate
Association (CREA).
We believe the bottom line on the whole exercise is “…let’s
not try to fix what’s not broken”.
Which side would the public support?
We suspect most members of the public with only a cursory
knowledge of the issue might choose to support the Bureau and hope that the
Tribunal decision forces the MLS® membership to make sold listing data widely available
without REALTOR® involvement or engagement.
However, it is a complex matter and the results of such a change may
have some unintended consequences that may not serve the consumer well at
all. Our current MLS® system is the envy
of many around the world and provides a strong centralized national and
regional platform for the distribution of listings for sellers and easy access
to those active listings for buyers. (without commercial messages or
advertising on www.realtor.ca ) Furthermore comparable sold data is readily
available for both sellers and buyers from a large and diverse REALTOR®
population who compete via a variety of business models for consumer
business. We believe the consumer is
well served by the current system.
Be careful what you wish for...
While there are arguably some positive aspects of wider
access to MLS® sold listing information for consumers, if such a change
ultimately resulted in a significant change to the MLS® landscape both consumers
and real estate professionals would be poorly served. We hope the Tribunal considers all possible
consequences in rendering its decision.
Our belief is that by and large professional real estate is
fairly intractable on this issue, so who can say what may transpire if the
Tribunal rules against TREB?
Stay tuned for news coming out of Ottawa on this issue, as
it remains to be seen whether this will simply be another skirmish between the
Competition Bureau and organized real estate or if in fact it will be a
decisive battle.
NB: we offer this note as our personal opinion only as experienced
real estate brokers and not as representatives of any Association, Board or entity,
as we do not have detailed knowledge of the legal complexities nor do we
represent organized real estate in any way, concerning this matter.
Gord McCormick, Broker of Record
Dawn Davey, Broker
Oasis Realty Brokerage
Ottawa
613-435-4692 www.oasisrealtyottawa.com
@oasisrealtyOTT
https://www.facebook.com/oasisrealtyottawa