Real estate group approves MLS changes

The Canadian Real Estate Associationapprovedchanges tothe rules governing the use ofits Multiple Listing Service at its annual general meeting in Ottawaon Monday.

"CREA is pleased that the amendments have passed,"CREA president Georges Pahud said in a newsrelease.

The association issued an earliernews release stating thatthe amendments had been rejected by its membership a position it later retracted.

CREA did not provide details of the nature of the changes approved Monday, and spokesperson Alyson Fair said the association would not be commenting further on the outcome of the vote.

The changes are meant to addresscomplaints raised by theCompetition Bureau, which hascomplained that CREA's Multiple Listing Service or MLSlimits consumer choice and forces people to pay for services they might not want whenselling a house through MLS.

CREA owns the Multiple Listing Service, which includes the public websites MLS.ca and Realtor.ca. People who want their homes listed on the MLS system must pay for severalother services the association offers, even if they don't want them.

The bureau filed a complaintlast month with the Competition Tribunal in an attempt to force CREA to change its sales rules.

The Competition Tribunal is an independent body that rules on recommendations made by the bureau after it has investigatedcomplaints.

On Monday, the CREA saidthat now that the rule changeshave been approved, "the concerns raised by the Competition Bureau are fully addressed."

Greg Scott, the bureau'ssenior communications adviser, disagrees.

"The rule changes passed by CREA amount to a blank cheque allowing CREA and its members to impose and enforce rules even more restrictive than the existing ones," hetold CBC Newsin an email.

Consumer choice

Melanie Aitken,commissioner of competition with the bureau, said the bureau's mainconcernhas beenconsumer choice.

The real estate association requires all sellers wanting to useMLS to pay for a full suite of services, she told CBC News Network's Lang & O'Leary Exchange in February.

In the bureau's view, this requirement interferes with competition, she said, especially given that some ofCREA's members are willing to sell only some of the services and chargea lower commission.

The bureau filed the complaintagainst the association after three years of trying to negotiate changes to the rules, Scott said.

"We've been negotiating with them for three years," Scott said. "We've been negotiating with them intensively since October.

"Clearly, we've arrived at a point where CREA's leadership wasn't willing to agree to the changes that we felt were necessary to open up the real estate market. At that point, we felt we had no option but to proceed with an application to the tribunal."

The bureau will continue its case before the Competition Tribunal, Scott said.