In what’s become a turf war in the Canadian housing industry, the Canadian Real Estate Association has decided to remove Quebec properties listed by out-of-province brokers on the popular Realtor.ca website, the Montreal Gazette reported.
Province law prohibits Quebec brokers from merely listing a property on a multiple listing service for a flat fee, requiring they “supervise” a deal through closing. This has prompted some Quebec homeowners who wish to sell their properties without a broker to pay flat-fee brokers outside of the province to list their properties in the MLS, which feeds listings to Realtor.ca.
Members of the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board voted to break away from CREA last month in a huff over the site’s inclusion of these flat-fee listings. That decision means members’ listings will no longer appear on Realtor.ca as of Jan. 28. That has caused anxiety among some sellers in the province, who feel their properties may not get enough exposure if they are not on the site.
Now that CREA will be pulling the offending listings from Realtor.ca, some for-sale-by-owner sellers are also worried about lack of exposure and are accusing the industry of protectionism.
“I don’t have a problem working with brokers, but this really limits people who are able to sell themselves,” one seller told the paper.
Source: montrealgazette.com
