Not unusual, officials say, as problems will rise with increased activity in the market
Fiona Anderson
Sun
The Real Estate Council of British Columbia expects to receive 400 complaints against its licensees this fiscal year, a 16 per cent increase over last year.
But that’s not surprising given the hot pace of the market, RECBC spokesman Anthony Cavanaugh said in an interview.
“As a result of the increased activity in the real estate market, there has been an increase in the number of complaints received at our office,” Cavanaugh said.
In its last fiscal year — from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005 — there were 345 complaints.
But the number of complaints is very small compared to the number of transactions there have been, Cavanaugh said.
In 2005, there were more than 106,000 residential sales in the province through the multiple listing service, an increase of 10.3 per cent from 2004. That number does not include private and commercial sales, nor sales made through brokers that do not use MLS. The value of those sales — $35.3 billion — was an increase of almost 27 per cent from a year earlier.
But while the increase in complaints may outstrip the increase in sales that doesn’t take into consideration the rising number of realtors and licensees that are regulated by the RECBC, Cavanaugh said.
Since 2002 the number of licensees has steadily increased, with more than 17,000 registrants currently in B.C., Cavanaugh said. Included in these new numbers are about 250 companies and 800 individuals licensed as strata managers, a requirement that came into effect Jan. 1, after much lobbying by the RECBC.
But the new strata rules haven’t led to any complaints yet, Cavanaugh said. Last week the RECBC suspended the licence of strata and rental property manager Dedicated Property Management Ltd., but that suspension arose from the RECBC’s own investigation and not from a complaint, he said.
Fraser Valley Real Estate Board president David Rishel does not think the number of complaints is a concern. “It’s not as a result of the fact that realtors are getting worse, or more realtors are doing wrong things,” Rishel said in an interview. “It’s strictly a numbers game. The more transactions you do the more the likelihood that something can go sideways.”
“[And] when there’s more money at stake there are more chances for issues to come up,” he said.
Multiple offers on properties, and competing bids may also leave more room for error, he said.
Carmen Maretic of the Consumer Advocacy and Support for Homeowners Society — an organization aimed at protecting “housing consumers” according to its website — says the number of complaints means little by itself but when the increase in complaints outstrips the increase in sales, that raises a “red flag.”
Maretic says there are a lot things the RECBC could do to improve consumer confidence, such as adding a consumer advocate to its board of directors and increasing penalties handed out to offenders.
The RECBC can suspend or cancel licences and impose fines of up to $10,000 for an individual and up to $20,000 for a brokerage, Cavanaugh said.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
