The Lakeland Real Estate Association is asking for changes from Queen’s Park that it says will help both realtors and home buyers.
Earlier this week, local realtors attended the Ontario Realtor Party Conference to, as the organization puts it, “stand up for home ownership and property rights, and meet with their local MPPs.”
Debbie Gilbert is on the Board of Directors and Chairperson of the Political Action Committee for the Lakelands Realty Association. She said that one of the biggest discussion points of the conference was updating the Real Estate Business and Brokers Act of 2002. The idea is to modernize it to account for things like smartphones, agent conduct and allow real estate salespeople to incorporate.
The changes would also add more clout to their governing body, the Real Estate Council of Ontario, to discipline real estate agents who break the rules. Gilbert noted that as it stands now, RECO has to receive a formal complaint through its website from an individual before it can investigate. The problem with this, she says, is that most consumers who have been wronged by a salesperson are not willing to make a complaint.
Under the new proposed regulation, RECO can investigate agents without a complaint and issue higher fines and in some cases, strip licenses permanently. The association is also lobbying for an increase to the first time home buyer tax rebate.
Scott Broad, a local real estate agent and Parry Sound PAC member for Lakelands Real Estate Association, says that consumers would be protected by this legislation in other ways as well. That includes increased protection of information that is transmitted through electronic devices.
On the realtor side of things, incorporating would allow realtors to pay the federal corporate tax rate of 10% instead of regular income tax. Gilbert says this will allow high producing realtors to funnel tax dollars they would have paid back into their business.
Gilbert said the association’s argument is that doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, and mortgage brokers are all already able to incorporate. They do, however, still respond to a governing body. Gilbert added that most western provinces have already modernized their laws governing real estate brokers and Ontario markets would be able to align with the rest of the nation.
She says the request for these changes was made prior to the 2014 provincial election though was deprioritized.
Gilbert added that at the meeting all the MPPs agreed these changes were necessary. The changes could be some time away, as Gilbert pointed out the last Real Estate Business and Brokers Act took five years to finalize.