That’s a quip I recently heard from a member. I love when members offer me a quip that I can use as a jumping off place for an article. In this case, member Sean phoned to ask me how to deal with buyers who want a strata unit in a building that has a bylaw restricting owners to only one pet.

Unfortunately, his buyers have two pets, and one of them is a service dog. The question, then, is whether a service dog is a pet as defined in the bylaw. Another question is whether the dog is a valid service dog or just a dog wearing a blue vest.

Sean’s story is relevant to what I want to write about this week.

I often get phone calls from members asking me for legal advice. I’m flattered, but I’m not a lawyer. I thought about becoming a lawyer when I was 25. All those television lawyer shows I watched growing up made me want to become one, especially Burke’s Law, in which the main character drove around in a white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.

How cool is that, I thought.

Everything was on track until I got the result of my law school admission test. It was miserable. I tried a second time, with an equally miserable result. My father was his usual sympathetic self. He commented on my idiotic result and suggested I should go searching for a village.

So off to real estate school I went, and here I am 44 years later, kinda, sorta being asked legal questions.

Don’t ask anyone who isn’t a lawyer for legal advice. They’ll tell you what they think, as I sometimes do, but there is no substitute for getting advice from a real lawyer. I think most of us understand this. But because we’re helpful and we’re problem solvers, clients sometimes will ask something that they should be asking a lawyer. Other times they might ask us to talk to the Board’s lawyer and get back to them with an answer. 

You can do this if you have a high risk for tolerance. But I don’t recommend it because any information you convey to your client has an excellent chance of becoming your professional advice. And we’re legally and professionally responsible for the advice we give.

Our clients don’t often want to phone their lawyers for advice, probably because they fear the cost. So, they call us to ask for advice or they ask us to get the advice they want and get back to them. It’s illogical when you think about it. A client is buying or selling a $2 million piece of property, likely their total net worth and then some, and they’re trying to save money on getting the very advice they need to make an informed decision.

Here’s a suggestion for what you could say to your client in this situation: “We could do that, but I don’t recommend it. We’re doing a very big-ticket deal here. You’re going to be locking yourself into that deal with an iron-clad contract. My advice to you is to ask your lawyer and then tell me what you want to do. I want to help you get to your destination. The advice you need is not advice that I can give—let’s get your lawyer (accountant/architect/building inspector) on the line and get you your answer.” Or something similar.

As Sean put it, when I said that I didn’t know if a service dog is exempt from the “only one pet” bylaw and suggested he either tell his client to get legal advice or to write an offer subject to the buyer getting legal advice, he said, “You know what, that’s a good idea. We're not here to jump on grenades.”

Exactly.

I wish you the best.

Member Ray points out that the disclosure of multiple offers form has a delivery time requirement. It’s no later than one calendar day from the moment the seller makes a decision. If your managing broker has decided they want to be the party delivering that notice, a position they’re entitled to take, consider the short time limit and whether your broker is available to send the notice before it expires. If the clocks stops ticking at midnight and it’s a weekend, we suggest pressing “send” earlier, rather than later.

Congratulations Anne Piche, Sutton Group Seafair Realty, Richmond. Paige Kraft, PREC, Dexter Realty, Vancouver is sending you a bouquet.

Here’s what Paige told us:

Anne Piche stands out in Richmond as a leader in managing multiple offers and as a consummate professional. She was selling a home on behalf of an older client who was looking to downsize. She was clear on sharing the terms that would assist her client—longer dates, dates that would allow for transfer of funds, and encouraging buyers to prepare offers that were as clean as possible.

Our client is experienced with renovations and asked technical questions about the house, and Anne spent time to fully answer the questions. If she didn’t know the answer, she committed to finding the answer and sharing with us.

When it came to the offer day, there were multiple offers and Anne actively managed the process through clear communication to us as buyers. When a seller gets six offers, their selling agent works hard to bring everyone to the table. Anne’s seller was also fortunate because she got a good sense of market value, an important part of this process.

I have confidence that Anne presented our offer to her client in full—read the letter, talked about the value of having a bank draft included with the offer and the value of a well-written offer.

And from my buyers:

Anne was a pleasure to work with. Her attention to details, thorough responses to our questions, high integrity, and extremely pleasant demeanour made us feel valued in such a competitive housing market.