Friday, March 31, 2023

Our regulator, the BC Financial Services Authority (BCFSA), is instituting new rules for real estate teams starting on April 1, which include new obligations and definitions on what constitutes a team. 

Recently, BCFSA reached out to clarify how they intend to interpret and enforce these new rules. Some of these interpretations are currently unfeasible to comply with using Board systems such as the MLS® and WEBForms.  

We’re working with our vendors as quickly as possible to ensure our tools are compliant. 

We’ve communicated these shortcomings to BCFSA and were ensured that they will be flexible when enforcing the rules during the initial launch of the new regulations. 

However, members must be as compliant as possible in all avenues under their control to avoid fines.

Update your advertising

Part of the new rules revolve around advertising as a team. If you’re considered a team, you must identify as a team in all advertisements starting April 1.  

We recommend you update all your marketing vehicles to include your team name, including:  

  • email signatures 
  • brochures 
  • marketing emails and newsletters 
  • mailers 
  • traditional and digital ads 
  • business cards 
  • websites 
  • social media accounts  

VOW websites, REALTOR.ca, and Realtylink.org

The new advertising rules include all published spaces where your listings are advertised, however our MLS® isn’t built in a way to facilitate this requirement at this time.  

That means listing feeds on Virtual Office Websites (VOWs), and listing sites like REALTOR.ca and Realtylink.org will not be compliant to start. 

We’re working to fix this and BCFSA is aware and have assured us that as long as other marketing avenues are compliant, they won’t levy any fines based on this.

Contracts

The new requirements state that if you are a part of a team, the team name must be included on your contracts. If you have completed a team disclosure there is no need to list every team member.

 Otherwise, all team members must be included, typically in the schedule A.

 We’re currently working with WEBForms to better accommodate this requirement.

More information