- George Bernard Shaw
Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Change is one of the few constants in our lives. Things never stay the same, and the older we get, the less familiar things become. Just ask any grumpy old so-and-so what they think of the world we’re living in today.

Which is my way of letting you know we want to do something about the damage being caused to our collective reputation by the seemingly unending shenanigans related to delayed offers and multiple offers.

It’s no secret that our market has been busy—some would say overheated—for years. A chronic lack of supply is often pointed to as being the major cause. Another cause is Metro Vancouver being such a nice place to live. Who wouldn’t want to make a life here? The world has been beating a path to our door for as long as I can remember. I can’t imagine this won’t continue.

All this creates a lot of competition for available properties, and competition brings out both the best and the worst in humanity. Like King Canute trying to hold back the tide, our trying to regulate the market is probably doomed to failure. People are people and they do what they do. But we can try to soften the stress that our competitive market is causing to buyers, sellers, and their agents.

The stakes are high. Everyone needs a place to live, and they should be able to believe they’ve been given a fair shot at a place when they are competing against other buyers. Our little fiefdom can only regulate what REALTORS® do. We can’t tell buyers not to write offers, and we can’t tell sellers what price they should set on their property. But we can step in to bring more order to the sometimes chaotic situation that buyers, buyers’ agents and sellers and their agents often find themselves in.

"Despite the best of intentions, some members are still getting things wrong, resulting in buyer frustration, member aggravation, and—again—harm to our collective reputation."
Ethics Guy® Kim Spencer

If you’ve taken BC Financial Services Authority’s ethics course, you’ll have been dismayed to learn the state of our public approval numbers. They’ll make you weep. A contributing factor to the low approval, in my opinion, is the frustration buyers feel when they’re told the seller wants to wait awhile before considering offers, only to find that someone kicked in the door with an early, short-fused offer.

Another contributing factor is what many buyers see is lack of transparency in the number of offers being lined up for a seller to consider. When you don’t know the seller or their agent, you’re left to trust they’re telling the truth. While most do, sadly there are some who don’t. How’s a buyer to have any confidence given the current system?

These two factors are hurting our collective reputation. And we need to do something about it.

During the last several years we’ve fiddled with Rules of Cooperation, Rule 4.02, a number of times, with the goal of making the playing field as level as possible. Since we can’t tell sellers and buyers what to do, we’ve settled for instituting a complicated protocol for members to follow when their seller’s delayed offer presentation wishes are derailed by an aggressive buyer’s early offer.

Despite the best of intentions, some members are still getting things wrong, resulting in buyer frustration, member aggravation, and—again—harm to our collective reputation.

That’s why we’ve proposed to the other two Paragon boards (FVREB and CADREB) that a seller’s instruction to delay an offer to some date in the future should become irrevocable.

This practice is not unprecedented. It has been adopted in other jurisdictions, such as Manitoba. If we adopt this new practice, sellers will not be shown early offers in advance of the designated presentation date, and buyers will have the comfort of knowing their offer will be presented at the same time as every other buyer’s offer. The DRPO form will be amended and the wording in Rule 4.02 updated if both boards approve the change. If they do, we’re aiming for a June implementation date.

We’ve also made another suggestion to our neighbouring boards: namely, the creation of a new form to disclose the number of offers and the names of the buyer’s agents involved after a multiple offer presentation.

This will require changes to Rules of Cooperation, Rule 4.04. Once made, seller’s agents will be required to deliver this seller-signed form to buyers’ agents within 24 hours of an offer/counter-offer being accepted after a multiple offer presentation. (If the negotiation of the chosen offer takes a couple of days, the form won’t be delivered until that negotiation is over and a deal has been signed.).

Our expectation is that this seller-confirmed information delivered to all the buyers via their agents will give more comfort while making our process as reasonably transparent as possible, and without running afoul of the privacy gods.

Stay tuned.