Members will recall our white paper on professionalism, published last year. Greater Vancouver REALTORS® (GVR) staff now have strategic plan to-dos they’re working on to get us closer to this paper’s described objectives. One of mine was to write, with the Communications Department, the member pledge (oath) unveiled last fall.  

Three other tasks in progress, include: 

• adding a “timely communication” standard to the Rules of Cooperation, the Regulations and/or the REALTOR® Code;  
• considering the merits of having non-members sit on the Professional Conduct Committee; and 
• reviewing whether or how professional standards are applied to non-member conduct (for example, unlicensed assistants or contractors).

When I instruct the PDP Rules of Cooperation and REALTOR® Code courses, I often ask participants what they wish their colleagues would do better. Almost always, the top one or two issues raised are members’ timeliness in responding to a communication from a member when asked a question, or timeliness in following up after a showing or the back-and-forth during offer presentations. There’s work to do on this.  

There’s almost universal member frustration with how members communicate with each other. Civility comes up often, but not as often as, for example, “I was ghosted,” “I just couldn’t get them to respond,” or “Their response was exceedingly slow and incomplete.” This shouldn’t be the case, as we all know.  

We’d improve members’ quality of life a lot if we could just get this issue addressed. (I wonder if members are so slow to respond to buyers and sellers. I suspect not, but maybe I’m too jaded.)  

Behaviour can be challenging to change. Response times and how others perceive the level of speediness can be subjective. For example, maybe someone is 11 time zones away. Or maybe it’s the middle of the night.

Given that we already have in the REALTOR® Code a standard related to civility, namely that Realtors will conduct themselves with “absolute civility,” a standard championed by our late past chair, Andrew Peck, why can’t we insert into our standards a similar expectation in relation to “timely communication”?  

We’ve spoken to the Canadian Real Estate Association about updating the REALTOR® Code, and we’re talking to the Fraser Valley and Chilliwack boards about adding the standard to the Rules of Cooperation. I can’t think of a reason why we shouldn’t do this, and frankly, why we’ve let this sore fester for so long. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.

As you may know, GVR has had public directors in the past and currently has one public director. We invited these directors to join our board a few years back to get a wider non-member perspective when directors are setting the board’s direction and making decisions. We’ve received a lot of valuable input from these public directors.  

We think our disciplinary process could be similarly enhanced—by sprinkling a few non-members among the membership of the Professional Conduct Committee. We’re taking baby steps on this, including taking input from the committee, our directors, and our lawyers. Any change of this magnitude would also need input from the wider membership. We’ll keep you posted.

While we do have standards in place, we’re looking at how GVR’s professional standards work in relation to members’ unlicensed assistants and contractors.  

Since only members are subject to disciplinary oversight by the Professional Conduct Committee, we want to determine if there are improvements that could be made to our present regime to ensure that members and those they hire reflect well on the profession. More on this to come.

REALTOR® Code Article 30 – Duty of Cooperation and potential exceptions to the general policy that residential exclusive listings, once advertised publicly, must be listed on the MLS® system within three days, are evolving. We’ve established with CREA that exclusive listings taken prior to January 3, 2024, are excluded from the requirements until the listing contract expires or June 30, 2024, arrives—whichever comes first. We’ve also established that residential exclusive assignment listings for new product that hasn’t yet been sold or occupied are excluded. Ditto for one-on-one direct communications (but not distribution lists) with Realtors from other brokerages that don’t trigger the requirement to list on MLS®.  

We’re still working on residential land assemblies and whether or not Article 30 requirements will apply. Our thinking is that they won’t, since the boards have some discretion to interpret the Article. However, the devil will be in the details, as they say. So we’re working with directors and members to fine tune a definition of what constitutes a residential land assembly. When that and other detailed work is complete, we’ll advise the GVR’s position as to residential land assemblies in relation to Article 30 requirements.