RECO was purposed to self-help the industry service the public with honesty, integrity and semi-transparency. In reality it hovered as a menacing watch dog over every aspect of my career.

It took 50 emails to get RECO to allow me to resign. I had no income for over 3 years, yet they insisted I file a financial statement, even though they knew I had zero income.

I wanted to just continue to serve a few clients from time to time. On-going fees and repetitive 10 hour online exams, as a fully independent broker, was too stressful. It seems totally unfair that my knowledge and expertise is no longer useable to supplement my negative cash flow in semi-retirement.

FINTRAC is another watch-dog over realtors. In my 25 years I never had a suspicion of a money-laundering client. I resented FINTRAC ‘s effort to second me to their crime enforcement team. Since they began, I’ve never heard of any, never mind a 1 or 2% of deals, prosecution rate.

The government has more than 5 levels of policing identifying money-laundering. Aren’t the banks and law firms far better equipped to recognize money laundering than simple realtors?

When I see (Sharks?) in our industry promising to buy a seller’s property, ie. 100% guaranteeing a sale, I feel RECO is failing to protect competition between listing agents. (The advertisers don’t tell people they will pay only 85% of market value plus their commission.)

My other RECO complaint is the big franchise AWARDS advertising, which imply team leaders are better realtors than others. The years I won 2nd or 3rd tier awards on my own, I outsold the team leader and their individual agents personal sales. This practice not only deceives the public and falsely enhances franchise expertise, but is unfair to independent contractors.

Last point. Brokers should not be allowed to escape a lawsuit by forcing independent contractors to waive this right for internal arbitration cases.

Real Estate is Canada’s largest and most competitive industry offering excellent career opportunities to all age groups.

The industry is drifting towards corporate oligopolization and AI, but better admin and more equal service to realtors and consumers by RECO, could make Real Estate a more reliable independent career option for many thousands of Ontario/ Canadian families.

$24,600,000 in fees collected from 104,000 registrants.
$6.670.000 from education referral fees
$13.450,000 paid in salaries and related to

$13.4 million or 43% of that $31.2 million goes directly toward paying for 144 warm bodies in yet one more bloated bureaucracy headed by insiders uninterested in actually cleaning up their rank and file.

267,537 emails and calls enquiries of which:
~Less than 10%, just 2,524 new complaints opened and added to 711 carried forward.
~2,674 were closed on which no action was taken.
~Administrative action (usually a letter or such) taken on 1,070,
~prosecutions on 134 of which
~99 were disciplined with
~88 paying fines of $738,500 ($8,392 avg) into RECO’s revenue
~ just 5% of direct registrant paid fees fund the salaries which includes just
~ 6 investigators in total

What makes those complaint numbers important is the fact that over the last 20 years 15,894 necessitated insurance claim payouts from $150,000 to more than $1,000,000 on severe transgressions.

That’s an average of 794 severe cases per year versus RECO’s 88 (24 per the AG) fined. Put another way, 90% of the annual complaints that are actually investigated and punished are severe in nature and the lowest payout is 1700% the in-house oversight fine. All of these, which would have either been decided in front of a judge or by the insurance company are glossed over on RECO’s website as it’s left to the reader to figure it out from the annual report.

On top of which, per the AG’s report,1700 registrants with criminal activity/record were rubber-stamped and 122 disciplined were shielded from public disclosure. It’s safe to say, RECO is not doing a good enough job to protect the consumer from the expensive route of the courts.

but then again the rest of the industry’s member associations aren’t particularly vigilant in cleaning up the industry from the inside either.

Once upon a time the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act was printed in a Queen’s Printer booklet of about 20 1/2 sized, double-sided pages (uni-ingual days).

Then self-styled Organized Real Estate in Ontario decided to push the Ontari-ari-ario Gov’t for something called Self-governance or Self Regulation (akin to what the Life Insurance business then-enjoyed).

Not too long afterwards Organized Real Estate found itself not-self anything-ed by way of a 3-headed (Public, Gov’t, industry) Real Estate Council Ontario with a two-pronged mandate to protect the consumer as well as regulated the registrants.

It took many tens more pages of full-sized paper to outline the statutes, rules, regulations, codes, guidelines et al that were dreamed up to shape-up the Real Estate business.

AND then, TRESA The Trust in Real Estate Services Act to supplant the REBBA but yet … the Auditor General brings down a not-laudatory report.

Sadly. it’s true that when Boom Market conditions prevail (most of the time from 1996-2002) that most registrants pay most attention to making hay while the sun shines – and who can blame anyone?

BUT sadder still when a regulator primarily acts on a Claims Made basis … and the registrants are so busy making hay that complaining about a scofflaw neighbour consumes just too much hay-gathering time for such a thankless task.

So now, in an effort to keep any egg from touching their own faces and in the much-demonstrated public spirit of plausible deniability-of-responsibility, we watch a line up of woe-is-them lamenters telling it like is was … when they stood by and did nothing.

And we registrants can expect a new and more rigourous tranche of rules, regulations, codes and guidelines to descend from the Special Committees and Joint-Task Forces of Queen’s Park … just in time to solve problems that have already disappeared or been otherwise dispatched.