Do your eyes glaze over when you read densely worded rules and terms of use copy in documents? Mine do. Because now I can’t even see the fine print without using an electron microscope, not to mention my tolerance for wading through industrial-grade bureaucratic prose has dropped to almost nil.

Here’s a question: “What’s a virtual office website (VOW)?” It’s a feature you can add to your website, allowing visitors to create an account by identifying themselves to you. The intent is to make the MLS® information you could give in a face-to-face meeting available to a potential client should they show up at your virtual front door, similar to the way it would be available if they showed up at your brokerage’s door. In both cases, the visitor identifies themself to you and wants real estate information.

When that’s done virtually, you’re allowing visitors (called registrants) to your VOW to create an account and login so they can access pretty much all the MLS® information we see in Paragon, except for REALTOR® Remarks and sellers’ names. Meaning, a registrant can see for themselves all reported sales, including those deals that have not yet closed. More on that later.

Some of you have VOWs very ably set up and monitored. I suspect by someone other than you. Or perhaps you are able to do the monitoring yourself but just haven’t been able to find the time necessary to ensure that the registrants using your VOW are using the information they glean in an appropriate way, meeting your VOW’s terms of use.

“Wow,” you say, “my VOW-Board agreement requires me to do something other than to pay the entity that hosts it?” Indeed it does. A few years back we worked with legal counsel to write language governing the creation and use of VOWs by our members for inclusion in the Rules of Cooperation. We intended to follow the terms of the order regarding VOWs made by the Competition Tribunal against Toronto Real Estate Board as a result of the Competition Bureau’s long-running case. We provided a draft to the Competition Bureau for review and comment in advance of implementation. The VOW standards now comprise Rules of Cooperation, Section 9. Also relevant are parts of Section 11, as they relate to the use of personal information.

Click here to access the Learn more from the Rules of Cooperation - scroll to Section 9 and Rule 11.02.

Also relevant is the Privacy Notice and Consent Form you have buyers, sellers, and unrepresented parties sign. Its’ wording defines the permissions we have to use someone’s personal information. This requirement comes from the Personal Information Protection Act. For example, information collected for one purpose mustn’t be used for another purpose unless it’s been agreed to. You can view the relevant passage below.

Why is my personal information collected, used and disclosed?

Your personal information may be collected, used and disclosed for some or all of the primary uses set out below.

1a) To list/market your property on the MLS® System in accordance with the terms and conditions of the MLS® System and the boards.

1b) To allow members of real estate boards (including REALTORS® and appraisers) to value your property.

1c) To market your property through any other media (both print and electronic).

1d) To help you locate a suitable property to buy or lease.

1e) To facilitate the purchase and sale or lease transaction both before and after the completion of your transaction or entering into of your lease (including by cooperating with financial institutions, legal advisors, government departments and agencies and third parties engaged in connection with the purchase and sale or lease transaction, such as photographers, appraisers and other service providers, and by communicating with you to coordinate any of the foregoing or to ensure your satisfaction with any of the foregoing and the real estate services provided to you in connection with the transaction).

1f) To allow the boards (including REALTORS®) to compile current and historical statistics on sales and property prices and lease rates, and to conduct comparative market analyses. Information about your property will be retained in the MLS System and handled in accordance with its and the boards’ terms and conditions, and published by the boards from time to time for these purposes after your property has sold or leased or your listing has expired (if you are a seller/landlord) and after you have purchased or leased your property (if you are a buyer/tenant).

1g) To enforce codes of professional conduct and ethics for REALTORS® (by cooperating with the boards, BCREA, RECBC, CREA and other regulatory bodies).

1h) To comply with legal requirements and to act pursuant to legal authorizations.

The above-mentioned primary uses are a necessary part of your relationship with the REALTOR® to whom you are giving this consent.

Bolstering this is Rule 11.02, which says, “no Member, or their unlicensed assistants or administrators where permitted by the Board, except in the ordinary course of their business (bolding is mine), shall make available to any unlicensed person, firm or corporation information distributed by the MLS® System.” 

So, for example, it would be okay to use uncompleted property sale information to prepare CMAs for clients. But it wouldn’t be okay to provide that same information to those who haven’t asked for it, e.g. to create a recent sale flyer for distribution in a neighbourhood, or to provide this information to someone, or an entity, intending to use the information for a commercial purpose. (Piling on, Rule 8.06 also restricts members’ advertising of sale prices before they are publicly available through a government registry.)

There’s more. Rule 9.07 says, in part, information obtained by VOW registrants “is intended for and may only be used for the Registrant’s personal, non-commercial use;” (that the) “registrant has a bona fide interest in the purchase, sale or lease of real estate of the type being offered through the MLS® VOW;” that the registrant will not “copy, redistribute or retransmit any of the MLS® VOW Data or information provided;” and that the registrant won’t “display, post, disseminate, distribute, publish, broadcast, transfer, sell or sublicense any of the MLS® VOW Data to another person.”

Section 9 also requires VOW operators to ensure their registrants respect the VOW’s terms of use.

Do these requirements prevent members from providing market or MLS® information (including sold prices of property deals not yet closed) if asked to do so by consumers? The answer is yes and no. Whether or not this is ok depends on the reason for which the information is being requested. In this regard, the standard is the same for VOW registrants or anyone who contacts you by phone, text, or with smoke signals. If the information is to be used in the normal course of your business (as described in the privacy consent form), fine. If it’s to be used for some other purpose, then it’s not.

Here’s what Rule 9.26 – Restriction on Use of MLS® VOW Data – says: “MLS® VOW Participants must not permit any portion of the MLS® VOW Data to be used or provided to any person for any purpose other than those expressly provided for in the Rules of Cooperation and other Board rules, regulations, bylaws and policies.”

If you operate a VOW, please remember this. You’re obligated as a VOW operator to ensure that your registrants are accessing and using the VOW in line with its terms of use. If they’re not, you’re entitled to (and must) deactivate their access to your VOW. And you, as a member, must (please) respect the member VOW requirements as described in the Rules of Cooperation.

We’ve all seen the television ads selling a wide range of goods at rock-bottom prices, along with a condition: “Some restrictions apply, contact us or go to our website for details.” Article 15 of the REALTOR® Code frowns on this practice because it requires that we put “significant exceptions to an offer” into the advertising copy. Nobody makes an offer without at least some restrictions. This goes for insurance companies since their insurance contracts all have exceptions to the coverage the insured has bought.

With all of the recent weather disasters and their knock-on effects, including flooding, slides, erosion and heaven knows what, it seems reasonable to remind your clients, especially buyer clients, to check their insurance coverage should they want to buy a property. The magnitude of the risk from forest fires, floods, and slides has caused insurance providers to take a step back, sometimes refusing to provide the insurance coverage they once provided without a second thought. Do you think it will be easy in the future to get flood insurance if the property is in Sumas Prairie or building insurance in a lovely, forested area in Lillooet? Think again. Only time will tell.

Your buyers may not understand how much the insurance landscape has changed during the past few years. We’re not insurance agents, but we can certainly suggest to our buyers that they should have a chat with their insurance agents as a part of their due diligence into any property that interests them.

If you’d like me to drop in via zoom to your brokerage meetings in 2022, I’d be happy to. Please ask your Managing Broker to book me at kspencer@rebgv.org.

A big 'thank you' and holiday greetings to allI’m of the Christmas persuasion, so if you’re of like-mind, I hope you have a merry one. And I wish us all, of like mind or not, the happiest of the season. May you and yours have good health, happiness, success and prosperity in 2022, with a heaping side-order of normalcy. Thank you, everyone, for being so very cooperative and great to deal with. I appreciate this more than you can know.