Hooray, your listing just sold! What a relief. No more reflected stress from your clients asking why their place hasn’t yet traded hands, when offers will be coming in, what the sale price might be, if there’ll be multiple offers, if they can contact you at 2 a.m. to ask if they got the best price, whether they made a mistake, and/or about everything that still needs to be done.

I’ve been banging the MLS® drum for a long time now, and this is another column in that same vein.

The MLS® system is the best tool we’ve ever created. While benefiting us, it’s also enabled a significant public good, namely, an accurate database of property information including current listings, sales, and expired and terminated listings. In addition to the value of such a vast database of property information, there’s also the worth of its timeliness, meaning there isn’t another database of property information with newer information in it—at least, as far as I know. Time is money, as they say.

The buyers, sellers, owners, and many others we serve rely on this data to make one of the most important decisions of their lives. They need to feel confident that when their REALTOR® shows them all the latest sales, what they see is, indeed, the latest information. Imagine the potential catastrophe (and legal/Council) exposure any of us might encounter if a sale was made eight days ago, but hadn’t been reported to the Board in a timely manner? Maybe that sale information, if we had had access to it, might have swayed a seller or buyer to do something differently. Imagine, for a minute, what these buyers and sellers might do if they felt they had now made the wrong decision in light of the new (late) information? A potentially messy and stressful situation for all. 

This is why the Rules of Cooperation, Rule 5.01, requires brokerages to report non-subject/firm deals for properties listed on the MLS® system within five days of those deals going firm or being accepted with no conditions in the contract. It’s a long rule—as shown below—and is the relevant bit for today’s column: 

Note section (c) of the rule requires that the sale be reported to the Board via a properly completed and executed sales report within five calendar days “of the contract becoming unconditional.” A late report lessens the value and utility of your MLS® data and may expose members and their clients to harm if the information would have been an essential ingredient in a decision they made (or would have made.)

Stuff happens and brokerage staff get busy. We understand this. But the standard remains, whether or not it’s been met. Similar to all standards, it’s all fine until it isn’t. If a sales report is made late, no one notices and no apparent harm is done, then nothing is likely to happen. But if a sales report is made late and there is fallout later, watch out.

I suggest you keep an eye on the MLS® system five days after your sale to check if it’s been reported to the Board. If it hasn’t, a gentle follow-up reminder to the person who inputs these sales would be appropriate.

Some members input, into R/Remarks, comments like “$old,” “New Owner,” “Rhymes with gold,” “Starts with S and ends with D,” “F1rm,” “F1rm Deal,” “S-O-L-D,” “Subjects removed off market.”

Please note: the Board allows only “Accepted offer pending processing” in the R/Remarks. Not anything else, no matter how creative. Our data-checker system is pretty good at sniffing out comments crossing the line, but not all, so if you see one please let us know and we’ll contact the brokerage to get the remark changed or removed. I’m advised by MLS® department staff that 90 per cent of sales are processed the day the Board receives that sales report from the brokerage.

As an aside, MLS® department staff are currently following up on of 534 expired/terminated residential listings from 2019/2020. These listings will be matched against LTSA sales data to confirm whether a sale took place during what should've been the life of the listing. Unreported sales will be discussed with the listing brokerage and appropriate action taken.