The B.C. premier has announced the real-estate industry’s days of self-regulation will soon come to an end. “Self-regulation is very much a privilege,” Christy Clark said at a press conference in Vancouver this morning (June 29). “The real-estate sector has had 10 years to get it right on self-regulation, and they haven’t. And so we are going to end the right of the real-estate sector to self-regulate.”
In B.C., home and property sales are policed by the Real Estate Council of B.C. (RECBC), an organization composed of the same real-estate agents that it is supposed to regulate. Clark said the RECBC is losing that authority. Instead, the government is creating a role for a “dedicated superintendent of real estate”.
“Someone who will not be distracted by other duties, who will have the authority to do what is necessary to increase public confidence in the real-estate sector,” Clark explained. “That will include transferring all authority from regulation for penalties and rule making away from the real-estate council and put it directly in the hands of the superintendent.”
Travis Lupick – Georgia Straight – June 29th, 2016.