A major source of her consternation is the so called “blind bidding” process of making an offer on a home, where buyers aren’t officially allowed to know the details of other competing offers.
She recalls one instance of a home listed at $899,000.
That’s more than Kim and her husband would have paid, but the incident left her with a bad taste in her mouth, so she complained to the regulator — one of 711 people in the province who did so last year, according to RECO, or an average of nearly two complaints per day.
In B.C., a realtor can share information about the number of bids, and how much they are for — but only if their client, the seller, agrees.
Hutchings said he’s become so concerned with what he’s seeing in his local market that he himself has complained to RECO, banking regulator OSFI, and even the office of Canada’s Finance Minister about doing away with blind bidding, where would be buyers don’t even know who or what they’re bidding against.
In that instance, the winning bidder ended up offering a price that was “extraordinarily higher” than the second-best offer — and the system as it is currently set up encourages that to happen.
“The highest bid is never $150,000 or $200,000 greater than than the next lowest bid, so it creates, I think, a more equal and fair offering system,” Hutchings said.
Another tactic that raised Kim’s ire is the practice of listing a property below its market value to then try to drum up a bidding war.
states, for example, if a bidder offers the asking price, the seller isn’t legally obligated to sell but they may be on the hook to pay their realtor a commission regardless, for setting up the listing in good faith.
“When I’m on the listing side of it, it’s no fun either because you’ve got to go back to five of the realtors and tell them they didn’t get it.
Pete Evans is the senior business writer for CBCNews.ca.
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