Watchdog says real estate board deflecting concerns

The federal competition watchdog says Canada’s largest real estate board is falsely citing privacy concerns to deflect attention from its allegedly anti-competitive rules on the use of password-protected websites.

The Competition Bureau accuses the Toronto Real Estate Board of sidestepping its concerns about stifling innovation and competition in an updated policy on what are known as Virtual Office Websites, or VOWs.

The comments were made in a reply Friday to TREB’s submission filed with the quasi-judicial Competition Tribunal, in which it claimed privacy laws would be jeopardized if it opened up its database to online access.

The bureau initially filed a lawsuit against the board in May, alleging that consumers were being denied choice because local agents are banned from giving consumers direct access to information through websites.

TREB has since updated its policy on VOWs, but the bureau says the policy still prevents consumers from accessing valuable data online that is available to agents through its Multiple Listing Service.

The board’s new policy still insists that consumers receive that information by hand, mail, fax or email from their agent, but the bureau says it will not quit until TREB’s rules apply to all business models.