Plan for Affordable Housing
by woodley wonderworks

A survey says Canadian realtors are not in favor of deregulation. Majority of 1,726 real estate professionals polled by Royal LePage Real Estate Services believes the proposed changes to MLS represent a wrong way to improve the real estate industry.

The debate concerns mainly the extent, to which the MLS listings should be administered only by accredited professionals. While agents generally welcome competition, 85.9% believe that that "the push to foster increased competition in my industry will result in lower customer service standards," due to potential entrance of amateur service providers, who wouldn't be able to offer the necessary safeguards to protect consumers. Agents disagree the real estate brokerage environment in Canada is not competitive – 76.1% see is it as highly competitive and further 19.2% as competitive.

The survey also tried to find in what way real estate professionals help buyers and sellers in completing their transactions. The top three considerations when advising a client on a transaction were ranked as follows: Optimizing and protecting client’s financial well-being, completing the transaction in a timely manner and providing the full package of brokerage services. Only 0.6% of polled realtors said, they never helped a client avoid financial or transactional mistakes. 51.4% said they did so 'very often' and 37.1% 'often'. Poll showed agents are active when it comes to marketing. MLS, open house, local advertising and own websites were regularly used by more than three quarters of surveyees.

Finally, the question about experience and ongoing education revealed that agents have been members of Royal LePage for 15.5 years on average and almost 90% of them participate on formal conferences, seminars or courses one to four times a year.

The Royal LePage Real Estate Advisors Survey was conducted online in April 2010 and can be found on the official website.