BC real estate boards send your WEBForms feedback to CREA

Nearly 76 per cent of REALTORS® across BC said they are dissatisfied with the new WEBForms, according to the WEBForms survey we conducted in conjunction with ten of the province’s real estate boards earlier this month. 

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) partnered with LoneWolf to deliver the new WEBForms platform to you more than a year ago. Over that time, we’ve heard you repeatedly express frustrations with this change. 

Your recent survey responses confirmed and articulated this frustration. 

From these results, the participating boards sent a joint communication to CREA on July 10, along with the full survey results, urging the national association to take immediate action to resolve these issues. 

The message called on CREA to provide Realtors across the country with a clear timeframe for when the significant issues you’re experiencing, and that you articulated in the survey, will be fixed.  

CREA confirmed they received the letter on July 13 and said they're working on arranging meetings with the participating boards to address the concerns we've raised.

WEBForms survey results 

More than 1,000 Realtors responded to our WEBForms survey earlier this month. 

The survey was a collaboration between ten of the province’s real estate boards to get a more comprehensive, data-driven understanding of your feelings about CREA’s WEBForms platform. 

The critical areas that members are most dissatisfied with relate to:  

• ease of use,  
• auto-populating forms,  
• reliability of the system, and  
• completing forms.  

The three areas that members believe need improvement the most are: 

• auto-populating MLS® information,  
• pagination, and  
• consistent display of information and font sizes—particularly when a contract needs to expand to a new page.  

We’d like to thank all of you who participated in the survey. Your feedback helps us understand your experiences and allows us to advocate on your behalf more effectively.  

We’ll provide more details on this situation as soon as we hear more. 

ICYMI: Open houses now permitted in BC under new guidelines: What you need to know

The real estate boards and associations in the province, together with the Real Estate Council of BC (Council), have removed the recommendation that REALTORS® not hold open houses that had been in place since mid-March. This change to permit open houses comes with new safety guidelines for you to follow.

Click here to read the new open house safety guidelines in the joint announcement that the BC Real Estate Association and Real Estate Council of BC issued on July 7.  

“This change doesn’t mean a return to pre-pandemic practices,” Colette Gerber, REBGV Chair said. “Since the pandemic began, Realtors have been adopting new technologies and practices to follow through on our responsibility to do what we can to help prevent the spread of illness. This responsibility hasn’t changed. If you and your clients choose to hold an open house, you’ll need to strictly follow the safety measures that your profession and regulator have carefully crafted in consultation with WorkSafeBC.” 

New safety procedures

The new safety practices for open houses focus on documenting consent, enforcing public health protocols, and employing enhanced cleaning and hygiene practices. These include:

• documenting your client’s consent to hold the open house and to the agreed safety procedures
• limiting the open house to serious buyers using technology to pre-screen them
• requiring that attendees wear masks and other personal protection equipment when appropriate 
• keeping two metres or six feet of physical distance between everyone in attendance at all times
• using marked signage and instructions, at all entrances and elsewhere, that remind attendees to follow required health protocols
• employing sanitary protocols after each open house
• keeping a log of visitors for contact tracing 

Watch our new video with 2018 Professional Excellence Award winner Josh Bath. In it, Josh walks through some of the new safety protocols you need to consider. 

Open houses re-enabled on MLS®

To help you with this change, we’ve re-enabled the open house function in Paragon. Call our Help Desk at 604-730-3020 if you need help entering your open houses.

Understanding consumer and REALTOR® safety and open house protocols

On July 10, approximately 800 members joined our virtual event on the recently-announced guidelines and protocols members need to follow when conducting open houses in today's environment. Trudi Rondou from WorkSafeBC and Marty Douglas from the Real Estate Council of BC answered questions and shared their advice. 

Click here to watch a recording of the event. 

Public communication

Here’s an article about this change that you can share with your clients. This public-facing article will help your clients understand what to expect at a future open house. You can also share this article that outlines seven things consumers can expect when attending an open house today. 

Click here to read and share this CTV News article on this change that features comments from REBGV Chair Colette Gerber.

Open house signage

We’ve developed signage you can use to guide open house attendees. These posters are intended to cover Council and BCREA’s signage recommendations.

These include:

• Reminders to wash your hands and keep physical distance
• Instructions to "look not touch"
• Guidelines on who can enter 

Click here to download them. 

PPE suppliers

We've also developed a list of potential suppliers for personal protective equipment and sanitizing products. 

Click here to download the list of suppliers. 

How to create a successful virtual listing presentation, showing, and open house

The provincial government is emphasizing REALTORS® must keep in-person contact to no more than 65 per cent of pre-COVID-19 interactions. And with fewer clients interested in meeting in-person but who still want to sell their homes, it’s more important than ever to create and deliver an effective listing presentation and market homes without conducting physical open houses or showings.

All this means you'll want to take every opportunity to use technology to reduce in-person contact, and you can still provide your clients with real estate services and market their home using an array of tools. Virtual listing presentations, showings, and open houses are effective for protecting you and your clients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We know you may be worried about how your business will weather this storm. You may wonder, for example, about:

• cultivating relationships with clients when you can't engage with them face-to-face;
• tailoring presentations when you haven’t visited the property in person; or
• relying on technology when not everyone has the same tools or experience navigating online platforms.

Despite these issues, you can create a virtual listing presentation that'll win over your clients.

To help you, we’ve developed several pre-recorded webinars to answer your questions about how to do virtual listing presentations, showings, and open houses. These short, easy-to-follow segments cover all the basics you’ll need to get started.

Virtual listing process videos 

Click here to access our virtual listing process videos.

Virtual listing process PowerPoint presentation in PDF format

• Strategies to create a successful virtual presentation introduction steps 1 and 2
• Steps 3 - 5
• Steps 6 - 7
• Step 8 - parts 1 and 2
• Additional tips

Additional resources

• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-live-guide
• https://help.instagram.com/292478487812558
• Basic Instagram Live https://youtu.be/SCoAA6D97Os
• Zoom Basic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8uL4umH2ck
• You'll find lots of tutorials on YouTube and Google, from the basics to advanced ways of delivering virtual presentations, showings, and open houses.

Times change and so do marketing strategies. Transitioning into virtual technology will give you a better chance at success in today’s real estate market. Check out our resources today.

Much ado about nothing

The “nothing” in my column title refers to what you get when a listing has been unconditionally released: as in, you’ve worked for nothing. With apologies to Shakespeare’s comedy, my title could have read, Much ado about working for nothing. It’s a more apt description of how you’d feel when your work, done in expectation of being paid, has been utterly frustrated by an unconditional release of a listing contract.

First, it must be said that an unconditional release has its place. Both you and the seller might be at odds with no way out except to part company, permanently and unconditionally. But there are other options for dealing with that situation. More on those later.

Obviously, the best option is selling the place and spending the money before the deal completes. That’s what I always did. I’ll bet you do that too. I mean, you say to yourself, “Hey, I’ve got $8,700 coming in three months from now. I think I’ll buy another phone, watch, or pair of shoes.” In my case, it was always car parts. That approach is all good until those bills start coming in and you realize the incoming $8,700 has already been spent. At least, that’s how things usually worked for me. Ask me what I did with my very first commission? Notwithstanding that I lived in a basement suite and had no money in the bank, I bought a Rolex. One must keep up appearances.

But to circle back to listings being cancelled: A week or two ago a member called to ask about a potential commission dispute. One thing led to another with us chatting about conditional versus unconditional releases, transfers of listings, refusals to grant any of these; the advantages of using the underutilized buyer agency contract and the REALTOR® Code and Rules of Cooperation. Our conversation could have gone on longer than War and Peace if we’d let it. In the end, I made a mental note to write something about all of this in my column when the mood struck.

The mood did, indeed, strike a few days later. I started banging away on the keyboard with my increasingly plump dog dozing on the floor beside me. I hadn’t even finished the first paragraph before I had received three calls in quick succession about listing cancellations. The callers—two members and a seller—had questions about the forms and protocols. Talk about timing.

Let’s start with the basics: There is no right of early cancellation wording in the Multiple Listing Service® contract. You don’t have to grant a cancellation of listing even if your seller demands it. You can choose to, for business reasons, but you’re not obliged to. And, should you decide to “cancel” your seller, you’ll discover that the knife cuts both ways. Some sellers don’t want to be cancelled. Sometimes they call us, demanding the Board cancel their listing. We refer them to your brokerage because only the parties to a contract can cancel or amend a contract. The seller is one of the parties; your brokerage is the other.

Markets, personal situations, and seller–Realtor relationships change, creating the need to do something about a relationship defined by the listing contract. What are the options?

1. Conditional cancellation: There’s a “standard” 60-day cancellation form for a conditional cancellation. The seller remains committed to you under that contract from the date the conditional cancellation has been signed until either the listing’s original expiry date, or 60 days, whichever is earlier. If a buyer, found and introduced to the property during the term of the listing, buys the place during the protected period, the seller owes you the commission as described in the contract. This also protects buyers’ agents who’ve been kind enough to show your listing. That means if their buyer goes around everyone to buy the property directly from the seller, the buyer agent would get a commission from what you’re able to collect from the seller via your conditionally cancelled listing contract. Oh, and by the way, a listing agent who’s cancelled a listing, whether conditionally or unconditionally, may still be liable to pay the buyer’s agent the published cooperating portion at an arbitration. “Huh?” you ask. If the listing agent had unilaterally waived the rights to commission, knowing that a commission had been earned (i.e., they were aware the buyer and seller had done a deal directly), the listing agent may still be required to pay from their own pocket, at arbitration. Talk about rubbing salt in the wound. For example, this could happen if they refuse to assign to the buyer’s agent the rights to sue the seller, on the premise they want to retain future business with that seller.
2. Transfer of listing: There’s a standard form for this too. Using it allows all the rights and responsibilities the listing contract contains to be transferred to another brokerage. Why would you use this option rather than granting an unconditional release? Think about it: An unconditional release means any rights the listing contract gave you are gone. Forever. This makes it difficult to pursue the seller for a commission coming from a contract that has been unconditionally released. In front of a judge you’d be saying, “Your Honour, my client won’t pay me. He did a deal directly with a buyer who came to the property while it was listed with me.” The judge would say, “You mean the ex-client who was unconditionally released by you from the listing?” You can figure out the ending to this story.
3. Unconditional release: Look on WEBForms for the standard form. Just remember, once it’s signed by the parties, it’s as if the listing never existed. “You’ve got nuthin’,” as Robert De Niro, playing Al Capone, said to Kevin Costner, playing Eliot Ness, in The Untouchables. No, really, I’m serious. Imagine this: Your seller and another member’s buyer get together and privately do a deal. The buyer’s agent discovers this, a while later. The buyer agent phones you, saying, “Hey, my buyer bought your seller’s property; please demand your commission from the seller and then pay me my cooperating brokerage commission.” Long pause. You say, “Ah, our relationship soured a while back. The seller then demanded an unconditional release, so I gave him one.” “Huh?” says the buyer agent, not understanding. You say, “I’d rather not sue my client.” The buyer agent then says, “Fine. Assign me your contractual listing rights to collect the commission to me under Rule 7.06, and I’ll go after the seller.” You say, “You mean the contract I unconditionally released?” Back to Robert De Niro again.

The now very aggrieved buyer agent could, I suppose, take a run at their buyer client arguing that the buyer acted in bad faith. Or, they could make a claim in court, arguing quantum meruit. Remember that? A tough argument to make. Or maybe, the upset buyer agent could start an action against the seller and buyer, arguing they acted in bad faith by conspiring to go around the agents and that the unconditional release granted was gained under false pretenses. There’s no harm in trying, I suppose. Or, you could go after your buyer under the exclusive buyer agency contract you had your buyer sign. That would be a perfect fit for this situation. “What’s that you say? You don’t use those?” No Rolex for you.

When I was a broker, I rarely gave an unconditional release. Instead, if there was a business reason to part company with the seller, I’d give a transfer of listing first, or a conditional release second. I’d start the conversation by reminding the sellers we were in a contract, asking them to let us continue with it. If there were relationship or competence issues involved, I’d offer to assign another member of the brokerage to act for them under the listing, with a referral back to the original listing agent. Like breaking wind in a spacesuit, it’s not something one wants to endure, but under the right circumstances, it’s better than the alternative.

Lastly, is it okay to ask sellers to compensate you for your efforts in return for a release or transfer of listing? You can ask. But if you do, I suggest you back up whatever you’re asking for with the details of how your compensation number was calculated. Another option would be to agree to a transfer of listing in consideration of the next brokerage agreeing to pay you a referral. Get this in writing, by the way. This option is easiest because the seller is not out of pocket and the listing, with all its rights and obligations (including protecting buyers’ agents), is transferred to someone else.

There is, indeed, much ado about all of this. It would be a pity if it were for nothing.

Bouquet

Congratulations, Rhonda Ennis, Dexter Realty Vancouver. Your colleague Margaret Wong, Dexter Realty, Vancouver, is sending you a bouquet. Here’s what she told us:

Last week I had possession. The listing agent and I had arranged to meet at 5:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon at the building in Collingwood area in Vancouver East. On the day of possession, the listing agent called me at around 3:20 p.m. to let me know she couldn’t meet and would leave the key in her Coquitlam office.  

Oh my goodness. I’d already arranged all my showing appointments for that day, and I had a number of showings in UBC right before and I was travelling from Ladner to UBC for my viewing appointments. When I got the call from the listing agent, I panicked. I left messages to ask when her office would close since if the office closed, I wouldn't be able to pick up keys for my buyer.

At the last minute, I called my colleague, Rhonda Ennis in my office who lives near Coquitlam. I explained the situation and she immediately said, “Give me the address.” I searched their office number and called the front desk to inform them she would pick up the keys on my authorization. By 4:30 p.m., I received a text message from Rhonda. She had the keys in her hand and would meet me at 5:30 p.m. at the building address where I was scheduled to meet my buyer. She knew I would be really tight on time, so she drove to pick up the keys and waited for me at the building, so I could pull up, get the keys, and meet with my buyer with a bottle of champagne a minute later!

This is the epitome of Realtors’ cooperation and collaboration. Ultimately our clients win! I am so very grateful to Rhonda's help.

Underground fuel storage tanks, Empty Homes Tax, and affordable housing recommendations

Underground fuel storage tanks – beware, they’re there! 

Throughout Greater Vancouver, long-forgotten underground fuel storage tanks are rusting in back yards, leeching toxic fuel into nearby soil. Here’s our updated matrix on how each municipality deals with them. 

Read more. 

Empty Homes Tax put to good use – Vancouver creates affordable housing 

Four affordable housing projects in Vancouver are receiving grants totalling more than $8.7 million dollars – partially funded by Vancouver’s Empty Homes Tax.  

Read more.

Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s housing affordability recommendations

Your Board made three recommendations on making home ownership more affordable during recent consultations with the provincial government. 

Read more.