To: The TREB board of directors and staff, CREA, RECO, OREA and the Toronto Star
I want to thank everyone at TREB and the board of directors in particular for the great experience I had as a director. I have learned a lot from you individually and from the exposure to organized real estate at its upper levels including my participation at CREA and the MTC. TREB is a well run and effective organization and will continue to be so. Congratulations to all who ran in the election especially to those who won.
I knew before running that my proposed changes would be difficult for the membership to accept. But after 26 years in the business and 5 as a TREB director I felt compelled to act and to help level the playing field for all members and ultimately the consumer. My position has not changed and I will continue to press for the changes that I feel desperately need to be made.
My platform is still available at www.michaelmanley.ca and can be summed up in the following with additional comments;
My belief that MLS.ca is unfair to certain members and that a TREB produced IDX solution was a way to correct this unfairness, may or may not come about. At the misnamed TREB focus group that I attended last week, a TREB produced IDX was the desired solution, but I see the same forces that were adamantly against electronic voting already gathering steam to kill this initiative. Too divisive to do something that would be fair for all, by taking away certain advantages that some currently have.
What I do see is that CREA will have to make some changes. I do not believe CREA will continue to be able to justify charging all members the same for MLS.ca but restricting the benefits to only those members who have listing contracts. There is no provision for members who have buyer contracts to participate. This is not fair. I still believe, adamantly, that CREA’s use of MLS in the MLS.ca name, an advertising vehicle’s name, degrades the MLS brand especially in the minds of buyers. This has always been a divisive issue in our industry. As it stands the current situation hurts a buyer agent’s credibility while benefiting a listing agent’s credibility.
A fair offer system. This is a hot button issue within our industry and with consumers. This issue has received significant media coverage and will continue to do so for as long as consumers remain disillusioned with our current offer system, actually the lack thereof.
I now believe that it is the brokerages themselves that will have to step up to the plate and deal with the lack of a system, guidelines, rules, and to the total lack of transparency in the offering process. I also believe that the brokerages themselves will have to take responsibility for the discipline of their members.
Since joining TREB as a director a few things have become very clear to me. TREB is an industry organization that exists to serve the best interests of all its members and has no interest in the end experiences of the consumer. I feel that other than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising trying to convince consumers that we are “perfect” TREB has no focus on the issues that are important to consumers.
Before RECO, TREB was deeply involved with the ethics and business practices of our members, but now ethics and business practices are the responsibility of RECO. The problem with this is that RECO unlike TREB has limited direct involvement with our members and it’s a Herculean if not impossible task to regulate and monitor the internal workings of approximately 1,000 brokerages and the ethical behaviour of 25,500 members.
I believe that since TREB dropped its code of ethics and any responsibility for brokerage activities that an ethics void has been created within our industry. I believe RECO is doing it’s very best to fulfill its mandate, but needs help. It won’t get it from TREB, so it must come from the brokerages and members themselves. I believe it is in the brokerages best interest to become much more involved with systems, guidelines and operating rules with guidance from RECO and to become more proactive in disciplining members who break these rules.
Designated Agency. It’s time will come. It makes too much sense for it not to happen. I had it as one of my election platform planks with the hope that I could push RECO, OREA and the Ontario Government into doing something sooner than later. I’m still hopeful.
Other comments and concerns;
The Toronto Star, June 13th, article “Real estate market hot and shady, broker says,” may be viewed as having caused damage to the reputation of the local real estate industry. While I regret some of the inaccuracies in the article it is important that it is known that this article was in the works long before I was asked for comment. In fact the TREB election made the story more relevant. The journalist that produced this article was inspired by letters and emails that he received from consumers that had questioned the ethics of various realtors they had recently dealt with.
Consumer complaints continue to mount and ignoring them will eventually create a crisis in our industry. In the end I think media coverage that causes us to question or re-examine the ethics of our business practices will do us a lot of good. I am and will continue to be an outspoken proponent of reform.
Admittedly there were several inaccuracies in the Star article and I was shocked by the headline, not just because I’m not a broker, but because I didn’t say that. I guess the headline writer can get away with this by not using quotes. The actual quotes are accurate I believe, I do find it amazing that by taking a quote like “between 10 and 20 percent” becomes me saying that I believe that between 10 and 20 percent of transactions in TREB’s market involve actions that are questionable. A big stretch from whatever I said as I do not believe for a second that there are anywhere near that many problems. I also understand that an editor took out the part where the writer quotes me as saying that the vast majority of REALTOR’s are honest, hard working and put the best interests of their clients first.
I’m glad the article made it to the front page. While many in the industry feel that it is negative coverage it is in fact a good thing that I was involved. Had the article run as originally intended it would have been a catalogue of consumer complaints and injustices with no real answer from the industry.
My involvement brought a problem that exists, at least in the mind of the public, to the forefront of our industry and showed the public that somebody was trying to do something about it. This takes a lot of courage when you know the backlash from your colleagues will be severe and mostly motivated by fear and a protectionist instinct.
Finally, I was very surprised that a respected industry educator would use all or portions of his vast mailing list (he claims 27,000) gathered from Ontario REALTORS who attended his educational seminars, members who gave their real email addresses to him for the purpose of getting educational materials, would use this mailing list to personally attack me and support my opponent by making wildly inaccurate accusations, and then claim to have rectified the inaccuracies by emailing a retraction of sorts to his personal email list of 50.
I will continue to work for the betterment of our industry.
Regards,
Mike
