Duel: Premier unfairly demonizes real estate agents | Vancouver 24 hrs

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This week’s topic: Was the province correct in stripping the real estate industry of its right to self-regulate? ed. my column as published in Vancouver 24 hrs newspaper July 4, 2016.

Premier Christy Clark threw real estate agents under the bus when she stripped the industry of its right to self-regulate — a right the BC Liberals granted to the industry in 2005. It was a shameful move that in one stroke demonized and diminished over 20,000 working professionals in this province by tacitly assigning blame to the agents for the explosion of housing prices.

It’s a betrayal to be sure, but not because real estate associations and agents are big money contributors to the BC Liberals. Petr states that “realtors and their associations are among the largest financial contributors to the BC Liberal party.”

A search of the Elections BC donor database reveals this argument to be grossly false.

In a detailed search of the Real Estate Council of British Columbia, British Columbia Real Estate Association, the 11 real estate boards covering every agent in B.C. and 27 individual executives of these boards, the total amount donated to the BC Liberals is a paltry $11,400. This total is for the last three years and is hardly enough to warrant returning a phone call let alone providing protection to an industry at the expense of the public.

The punitive action taken by the province is nothing short of scapegoating. The Report of the Independent Advisory Group to the Real Estate Council rests its entire critique on the apparent mishandling of a few of the 1,500 consumer complaints made against agents in BC over 36 months. In an industry with over 20,000 agents, conducting tens of thousands of transactions a year the number of complaints is trivial. And certainly, the actions of these agents could not be responsible for the out-of-control housing market.

Indeed, the report provided no clarity on the primary causes and admits that if implemented the 28 recommendations in the report “are unlikely to have a material effect on housing prices and issues of affordability. The price of housing is determined by the factors of high demand and limited supply.”

It gets worse. The authors of the report ignored the elephant in the room — foreign buyers in the housing market. A keyword search of the report for “foreign,” “China” and “Chinese” reveals zero results. Shocking! Is it incompetence or a dogmatic adherence to the politically correct?

Branding real estate agents with a scarlet letter isn’t the solution.

VOTE NOW at Vancouver 24 hrs

Read the IAG Report 

FICOM - IAG REAL EASTATE REPORT

 

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Brent Stafford
Brent Staffordhttps://regulatorwatch.com
Executive Producer / Founder - RegulatorWatch.com

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