Toronto’s Hypocritical Real Estate Boards Suppress Price Information; One Broker Strikes Back with “Pay-What-You-Want” MLS Listi
globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com / Mike “Mish” Shedlock / March 04, 2015
“If 41,160 members have access to this information and are free to give it to (clients), I don’t think it is private information.” said Fraser Beach, a broker who caved into the demand out of fear he would lose access to the data himself.
“I think that the public is well-served if they can do their own due diligence,” Beach says.
Self-Serving Hypocrites Suppress Data
Please consider Toronto Real Estate Board Demands Brokers Halt Online Sales Stats.
This week, three real estate brokers are cutting off customers’ online access to recent final home sales prices — coveted information that can help buyers and sellers gauge a property’s worth.
The trio are the latest to give in to a threat made by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) to stop doling out home sales information or risk losing a lifeline to all privileged industry data.
Late last night, real estate broker Fraser Beach posted an online alert he called “bad news.”
He explained to his almost 30,000 registered users that he is temporarily halting daily emails connecting them online to the latest prices of homes sold in Toronto.
“In light of recent developments, we fear that making this information available to you, in this form, may be threatening our ability to continue operating as a real estate brokerage,” he wrote.
The broker feels Canadians should have access to sales information online. He believes when Realtors control and selectively distribute the data, they may provide only details that benefit their business, not the client.
TREB gives agents access to recent final sales prices that they can offer to their personal clients. But Canada’s largest real estate board maintains that Realtors cannot widely distribute the information over the internet because of privacy issues.
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