Canada: Court ruling could end secrecy surrounding home prices

A court ruling Friday, December 1, could bring an end to a multi-year fight over who has access to data about how much homes sold for, information that real estate agents have fought long and hard to keep confidential in a practice that some critics say keeps consumers at a disadvantage.

The Federal Court of Appeal is expected to rule on Friday in a case between Canada’s Competition Bureau and the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB).

At issue is confidential information about homes that have been sold, including the selling price. The fight over access to that data stretches back to at least 2011.

The Competition Bureau argues that limiting access to detailed information about home sales — how much a home sold for, agent commissions earned on the sale, and other data — should be given more freely to consumers in order to help them make informed decisions.

Under current rules, a prospective buyer or seller must work with a TREB-licensed agent in order to get access to detailed data. That’s not the case everywhere, however. In Nova Scotia, for example, ViewPoint Realty has turned itself into one of the largest independent brokerages in the province by offering its trove of data on every real estate transaction in the province free of charge to consumers.

Full Content: The Star

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