Writ­ten by David Hat­ton, Prop­erty Wire

Real estate in 2010 has been a year that resem­bled an amuse­ment park roller coaster ride, com­plete with twists & turns. But the year will also go down in the record books as the year that real­tors took a good look at the value added ser­vices clients are pay­ing for. Or choos­ing not to.

Here’s a look at some of the events that made head­lines this past year:

Jan­u­ary

The year in Toronto got off to a good start with reports that 87,308 trans­ac­tions were processed dur­ing 2009 – a 17% increase over 2008. That included 5,541 prop­er­ties bought and sold dur­ing the month of Decem­ber 2009 alone. The aver­age home price climbed 4 % in 2009 to $395,460, accord­ing to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB).

A sur­vey of 1,225 Royal LeP­age agents and bro­kers across Canada revealed buy­ers were still ner­vous about the sta­bil­ity of the econ­omy. When asked to com­ment on the most com­mon fears they heard from home buy­ers dur­ing the last three months, 38% of Royal LeP­age agents and bro­kers cited eco­nomic sta­bil­ity and related fac­tors such as job secu­rity. Another 23% said home buy­ers fear they may not be able to sell their exist­ing homes at the price they are hop­ing for, while 12% said buy­ers are hes­i­tant because they believe prices have not yet hit the bot­tom of the cycle.

Mean­while, real­tors in the Hal­i­fax area were encour­aged by news that sales from Novem­ber 2009 to Jan­u­ary 2010 were up 27.5% com­pared to the same months last year. Nova Sco­tia Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors pres­i­dent Linda Smar­don explained it was no sur­prise. “This time last year we were expe­ri­enc­ing large decreases so we fully expect our num­bers to be up provin­cially. With list­ings down and sales up, the real estate mar­ket is more bal­anced,” she said in a news release, adding the aver­age price in the province was up 8.5 %.

Feb­ru­ary

Feb­ru­ary was the month of Valen­tines Day, and TREB released sta­tis­tics show­ing clients loved buy­ing and sell­ing prop­er­ties, report­ing that there were 4,986 trans­ac­tions in Jan­u­ary, a “huge” increase over the 2,670 sales dur­ing the same period in reces­sion bat­tered 2009.

Cen​tu​ry21​.ca announced they would be adding Chi­nese lan­guage sup­port for sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives and bro­kers in the Cen­tury 21 Sys­tem. “Can­tonese and Man­darin are com­monly spo­ken lan­guages in Canada’s met­ro­pol­i­tan cen­tres such as Toronto, Van­cou­ver, Cal­gary and Mon­treal,” says Cen­tury 21 Canada Pres­i­dent Don Lawby. “We now offer a unique advan­tage to fran­chises and sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives whose clients pre­dom­i­nantly speak these Chi­nese lan­guages.” Cen​tu​ry21​.ca already serves Cana­di­ans in the country’s two offi­cial lan­guages – Eng­lish and French – and the addi­tion of Chi­nese makes it the first trilin­gual, nation­ally branded real estate web­site in Canada.

March

Greater Toronto real­tors reported 10,430 sales through the MLS in March, push­ing total first quar­ter 2010 sales to 22,418 – the best result on record under the cur­rent TREB boundaries.

March was also when CREA filed its response to the Com­pe­ti­tion Bureau’s chal­lenge of its MLS rules, call­ing com­ments by com­mis­sioner Melanie Aitken “pre­pos­ter­ous”. “There is sim­ply no legal, eco­nomic or fac­tual basis upon which to order the rem­edy sought by the com­mis­sioner,” a state­ment from CREA said.

CREA’s response, filed with the Com­pe­ti­tion Tri­bunal March 26, stated the chal­lenge was “fun­da­men­tally mis­con­ceived. Con­trary to the commissioner’s alle­ga­tions, is it sim­ply untrue that con­sumers have only one option if they want to sell a house using a MLS sys­tem oper­ated by a local real estate board or asso­ci­a­tion.”

CREA even went after Aitken for state­ments to the media. “The com­mis­sioner of com­pe­ti­tion has stated in mul­ti­ple media state­ments that (CREA’s MLS rule amend­ments) amount to a ‘blank cheque’ because new anti-competitive rules could be intro­duced by CREA or its mem­ber boards. In CREA’s view, this alle­ga­tion is pre­pos­ter­ous. CREA has and always has had the abil­ity to make rules, as do its mem­ber boards. CREA and mem­ber boards…comply with com­pe­ti­tion law,” says the response.

CREA offi­cials also addressed the Com­pe­ti­tion Bureau’s state­ments that “MLS restric­tions have caused at least one bro­ker to exit the rel­e­vant mar­ket.” It’s a ref­er­ence to the Toronto firm Real­ty­sellers, which has pend­ing legal action against TREB and CREA. In its response, CREA added, “Real­ty­sellers sus­pended oper­a­tions because of impend­ing dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings. The Real Estate Coun­cil of Ontario com­menced pro­ceed­ings to strip Real­ty­sellers of its bro­ker reg­is­tra­tion because the con­duct of its prin­ci­pal Stephen Mora­nis afforded ‘rea­son­able grounds for belief that he will not carry on busi­ness in accor­dance with the law and with integrity and hon­esty.’” It said the RECO inves­ti­ga­tion and pro­ceed­ings against Real­ty­sellers were com­menced prior to CREA’s March 2007 intro­duc­tion of the inter­pre­ta­tions to the MLS rules.

Com­ment: Natalie used to work for Real­ty­Sellers, we know a fair bit of the inside story. They were in hot water for mis-use of trade­marks, noth­ing more. They con­tin­ued to do so, in direct con­tra­ven­tion of requests from  CREA and RECO. Thus, they were up on dis­ci­pli­nary charges due to this behav­iour. Stephen Mora­nis then launched a ridicu­lous $100 mil­lion law­suit alleg­ing that this was putting him out of busi­ness. They were actu­ally going out of busi­ness because RECO was tak­ing their license away. Then Lawrence Dale, the other half of Real­ty­Sellers – in the ulti­mate case of tak­ing your toys and going home – started this whole com­pe­ti­tion BS. Can you say sour grapes? I know I can…

Finally, the last word went to Michael Pol­zler. The Re/Max Ontario-Atlantic exec­u­tive vice-president took out an adver­tise­ment in one indus­try pub­li­ca­tion, tak­ing aim at part-time real­tors who do one deal per quar­ter. He ques­tioned their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and value and launched a web­site for real­tors to voice their thoughts.

CREA and RECO declined to com­ment specif­i­cally on Polzler’s let­ter, although RECO’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ager Sherri Haigh sug­gested Pol­zler take his con­cerns to Ontario’s Min­istry of Con­sumer Ser­vices.

April

In April, real estate boards and asso­ci­a­tions across Canada were try­ing to get rid of land trans­fer taxes. The Win­nipeg Real Estate Board released a study show­ing Man­i­toba had seen its land trans­fer tax rev­enues increase from $31 mil­lion in 2006 to $44.8 mil­lion in 2008, rep­re­sent­ing a 44 % increase. The board cited a Novem­ber 2007 land trans­fer tax study by Will Dun­ning, the chief econ­o­mist of the Cana­dian Asso­ci­a­tion of Accred­ited Mort­gage Pro­fes­sion­als (CAAMP), show­ing “the taxes levied on land trans­fers are far in excess of any social or gov­ern­men­tal ‘costs’ that result from the activ­ity of home buy­ing and there­fore these dis­crim­i­na­tory taxes are not justifiable.”

Dun­ning com­pared 1997 to the first nine months of 2007 and showed over a slightly less than ten year period, the tax payable had gone up more rapidly than house prices.

TREB offi­cials released a poll show­ing that 70% of Toron­to­ni­ans believe the Toronto land trans­fer tax was not a fair way for the city to address its bud­getary needs. That was up from 62% of Toron­to­ni­ans who felt the same way accord­ing to an ear­lier Envi­ron­ics poll con­ducted for TREB in 2007, prior to the imple­men­ta­tion of the tax.

That still didn’t stop TREB from also report­ing 10,898 sales through MLS in April, rep­re­sent­ing a 34% increase com­pared to April 2009. There were also 20,683 new list­ings in April – a 59% annual increase. Both the sales and new list­ings results amounted to new records for the month of April under the cur­rent TREB bound­aries.

May

Greater Toronto real­tors reported 9,470 sales though the MLS sys­tem in May, rep­re­sent­ing a one % dip from May. 2009. In com­par­i­son to pre­vi­ous years, this was the third high­est May sales result on record.

Cen­tury 21 Canada unveiled a new brand­ing direc­tion dur­ing May as part of a multi-year online mar­ket­ing strat­egy that it says has seen the num­ber of vis­its to Cen​tu​ry21​.ca rise by nearly ten-fold since late 2007. “The goal behind our new tagline, Con­nected to More, is to com­mu­ni­cate to home buy­ers how Cen­tury 21 has evolved as a brand,” com­pany pres­i­dent Don Lawby said in a news release. “It also rep­re­sents our vision for how we want con­sumers, poten­tial sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives and fran­chisees to relate to the Cen­tury 21 brand in the future.”

May was also when real­tors got sus­pi­cious and angry with Real Trends. The US-based research firm had been pro­duc­ing a list of Top 500 bro­kers for 22 years, rank­ing every­one by num­ber of trans­ac­tions and closed sales dol­lar vol­ume. When it attempted to release a Cana­dian Top 200 list, how­ever, there were ini­tial prob­lems with accu­racy. Real Trends said it was due to not all bro­kers return­ing their sur­veys, and still wanted to do the lists on an annual basis.

June

The bat­tle between CREA and the Com­pe­ti­tion Bureau heated up in June with the tri­bunal chair turn­ing down Lawrence Dale’s request for inter­venor sta­tus in the case. The co-founder of the for­mer Real­ty­sellers dis­count bro­ker­age was expected to be a wit­ness in the case while another appli­cant, Stephen Skelly, vice-president of oper­a­tions for the National FSBO Net­work, was granted inter­venor sta­tus. Skel­ley was asked to sub­mit an affi­davit for cross-examination by coun­sel for both par­ties in the case.

In other news, Greater Toronto real­tors reported 8,442 sales through MLS in June. This rep­re­sented a 23% decrease com­pared with the 10, 995 orig­i­nally sold dur­ing June of the pre­vi­ous year.

That was still sub­stan­tially less unit vol­ume than in the Van­cou­ver area, where the Real Estate Board of Greater Van­cou­ver reported 2,972 prop­er­ties were sold, a decline of 30.2% com­pared to the 4,259 prop­er­ties that changed hands in June 2009, the high­est sell­ing June on record for the board.

But Edmon­ton real­tors were still sat­is­fied with the pace in their mar­ket with sales of 1,539 prop­er­ties in June, said Larry West­er­gard, pres­i­dent of the Real­tors Asso­ci­a­tion of Edmon­ton. “There was less exter­nal pres­sure on the mar­ket from incen­tives or rate changes last month and as a result the mar­ket seems to be oper­at­ing in a nor­mal con­trolled manner…It has been…very busy in REALTORS® offices as they list client’s prop­er­ties for sale, book show­ings for buy­ers and attend open houses. This has not resulted in imme­di­ate sales, how­ever, and, in antic­i­pa­tion that this slow­down will con­tinue through the year, we have reduced our 2010 sales fore­cast by 2,000 units from 21,000 to just 19,000.” There were 9,406 res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties in inven­tory at the end of June as a result of 3,473 new res­i­den­tial list­ings and sales of the 1,539 prop­er­ties. The sales-to-listing ratio was 44%. The aver­age days-on-market was up at 47 days. The record inven­tory lev­els were set in Sep­tem­ber 2007 at 9,913 res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties avail­able through the Edmon­ton MLS sys­tem, accord­ing to Edmon­ton board officials.

July

On July 1^st, Ontario and British Colum­bia joined  the Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, New­found­land and Nova Sco­tia when they intro­duced the con­tro­ver­sial Har­mo­nized Sales Tax (HST).  The new tax is 13%  in Ontario and 12%  in B.C.

Mean­while, over a dozen Kitch­ener Water­loo area real­tors met with Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak to dis­cuss the con­tro­ver­sial land trans­fer tax. Hudak had advo­cated for a one year land trans­fer tax hol­i­day to give buy­ers a break for that first year.

August

CREA launched a new national tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial month called Faces, that was intended to high­light the value real­tors bring to home buy­ing and sell­ing. In the 30-second ad, view­ers see and hear tes­ti­mo­ni­als from sev­eral indi­vid­u­als about their expe­ri­ence with their real­tor. Men and women rep­re­sent­ing peo­ple from all walks of life talk about their unique needs when buy­ing and sell­ing a home. While they talk, their faces con­tin­u­ally change, even­tu­ally becom­ing another per­son with another pos­i­tive story.

September

Keller Williams Realty announced plans to launch a Keller Williams Realty Com­mer­cial Divi­sion this fall. “Our goal is to expand our plat­form and make Keller Williams Realty the real estate com­pany of choice in both the res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial worlds by pro­vid­ing our asso­ciates the tech­nol­ogy, mar­ket­ing tools, and resources to suc­ceed in the com­mer­cial busi­ness,” Mark Willis, CEO of Keller Williams Realty, said in a press release.

Re/Max launched a new entre­pre­neur­ial series for its top sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives, led by real estate coach Ken Good­fel­low. The entre­pre­neur­ial pro­gram, exclu­sive to Re/Max, pro­vides sales asso­ciates who have achieved Plat­inum Sta­tus (more than $250,000 in annual com­mis­sion) with “the skills nec­es­sary to cre­ate a ‘sys­tems dri­ven’ busi­ness, includ­ing strate­gies to achieve long-term growth, finan­cial plan­ning and lead­er­ship skills for bet­ter results,” the com­pany said.

October

Octo­ber will be remem­bered as the month when The Big Vote took place.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the country’s 101 real estate boards crowded into the ball­room of a New­found­land hotel to vote 97% in favour of a deal that some warned could mean the end of the Cana­dian Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion. Vis­i­tors rushed to the Prop​er​ty​Wire​.ca web­site almost imme­di­ately, mak­ing it the most-read story of the year.

There were also reports that the fed­eral Com­pe­ti­tion Bureau may not be fin­ished with orga­nized real estate and set its sights on inves­ti­gat­ing how MLS data is stored.

The Ontario Real Estate Asso­ci­a­tion (OREA) was also upset this  month, but over another issue. The group com­mis­sioned an Ipsos Reid sur­vey that showed 56% of Ontario res­i­dents mis­tak­enly believed the new Har­mo­nized Sales Tax (HST) applied to the full pur­chase price of a resale home, when it is only levied on the var­i­ous trans­ac­tion fees asso­ci­ated with the pur­chase. “We’re doing our part to inform our clients, but we shouldn’t have to do it alone. We’re call­ing on the Ontario gov­ern­ment to launch an imme­di­ate pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign to edu­cate tax­pay­ers and end the HST con­fu­sion,” said Dorothy Mason, Pres­i­dent of OREA.“For aver­age home­buy­ers, learn­ing that the HST does not apply to the full pur­chase price means a $40,000 sav­ing they weren’t expect­ing.”

TREB reported 6,681 sales through the MLS sys­tem in Octo­ber 2010, while the REBGV showed home sales were steady the past four months, lend­ing a sense of sta­bil­ity to the mar­ket. Accord­ing to the MLS Link Hous­ing Price Index (HPI), the bench­mark price for all res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties in Greater Van­cou­ver over the last 12 months has increased 4.6% to $579,349 in Octo­ber 2010 from $553,702 in Octo­ber 2009. Since June, how­ever, res­i­den­tial home prices in Greater Van­cou­ver have remained rel­a­tively unchanged, declin­ing 0.2%. “We’ve seen a lot more con­sis­tency and less volatil­ity in recent months when it comes to both num­ber of sales and pric­ing, although it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that con­di­tions often vary between com­mu­ni­ties and neigh­bour­hoods,” Jake Moldowan, REBGV pres­i­dent said.

Novem­ber

CREA announced that, after a six month review of poten­tial can­di­dates, Gary Simon­sen would become its next CEO when Pierre Beauchamp retires next spring.  Well-known within orga­nized real estate in Canada, Simon­sen has been CREA’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer since 2008, hav­ing pre­vi­ously served for a decade as asso­ciate exec­u­tive officer.

Toronto area real­tors reported 6,510 exist­ing home sales in Novem­ber – down 13 % from 7,446 sales in Novem­ber 2009. New list­ings were also down 13 % annu­ally to 8,642, accord­ing to a news release. Mean­while in Greater Van­cou­ver, res­i­den­tial home sales improved in Novem­ber com­pared to the pre­vi­ous four months, with the num­ber of sales posted on the MLS com­ing in slightly higher than the 10-year aver­age for that month. REBGV reports that the num­ber of res­i­den­tial prop­erty sales in Greater Van­cou­ver totaled 2,509 in Novem­ber 2010. This rep­re­sents a 7.4% increase com­pared to Octo­ber 2010 and an 18.6 % decline from Novem­ber 2009.

December

Accord­ing to the sixth Annual State of the Res­i­den­tial Mort­gage Mar­ket report from the Cana­dian Asso­ci­a­tion of Accred­ited Mort­gage Pro­fes­sion­als (CAAMP), Cana­dian home­own­ers are com­fort­able with their mort­gage debt, have sig­nif­i­cant home equity and could with­stand an increase in their mort­gage inter­est rate.

With a month to go in the year, Win­nipeg real­tors were prepar­ing to cel­e­brate a new record for dol­lar vol­ume sales. MLS sales totaled $2.58 bil­lion as of the end of Novem­ber, sur­pass­ing the pre­vi­ous record of $2.47 bil­lion set in 2009. “In many respects,” said Win­nipegRE­AL­TORS pres­i­dent Claude Davis, “the first 11 months bore a strik­ing resem­blance to last year with the excep­tion that prices are con­tin­u­ing to climb, as they have been doing year-over year since 2003. “Look­ing ahead to the end of the year, Win­nipegRE­AL­TORS has already set a new annual MLS dol­lar vol­ume record and will see MLS sales fin­ish over the 12,000 unit mark — a level only sur­passed five times pre­vi­ously,” he added. With 11,583 units sold by the end of Novem­ber, year-to-date MLS® sales were vir­tu­ally dead­locked with last year’s total of 11,563. Novem­ber MLS unit sales were down less than one % to 829 trans­ac­tions. On the other hand dol­lar vol­ume sales dur­ing last month rose by 10 % to $182.2 mil­lion when com­pared to the same month in 2009, which is a new record for the month.

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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stephen mora­nis toronto real estate board

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