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August 11–18, 2016

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More details on the survey and more great news inside!

ACROSST H E B O A R D

AUGUST 2016

Table of Contents

Federal Court of Appeal Update on Competition Tribunal Decision

Page 3

Message from TREB CEO on the Competition Tribunal Decision

Page 3

Help Improve REALTOR® QUEST Share Your Feedback and a Chance to

Win a $50 VISA Gift Card Page 3

Sign By-Laws Help Keep Our Towns and Cities Beautiful

Sign By-Laws in Northern York Region Page 4

Join us at the Bloor West Village Toronto Ukrainian Festival – September 16 to 18

Page 4

What’s in Your REALTOR® Toolkit? Teams in Collaborate

Page 5

Let BDC Help You Develop Your Business Page 5

The Educated Professional Page 6

Tenth Annual President's Scholarships Awarded

Page 7

TREB Foreign Buyer Letters to Province and Toronto City Council

Page 7

Introducing TREB Member Home & Auto Insurance Program

Page 7

Mark Your Calendars Page 8

Are Your Clients Considering Energy Efficient Renovations? HELP is here!

Page 8

Privacy Reminder to Members Page 8

Explore the NEW Compliance Map! Page 8

© Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.

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The Toronto Real Estate Board is pleased with the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision to stay the

Competition Tribunal order of June 3, 2016 pending the hearing of TREB’s appeal to be determined on the merits.

TREB continues in its efforts to ensure that the personal financial information of home buyers and sellers is only used

and disclosed where, when, and how they have granted their specific and in-formed consent.

TREB respects the judicial process, will continue with its appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal, and trusts that the GTA consumer’s right to choose will ultimately be respected and restored by that court.

Since TREB announced its appeal of the Competition Tribunal’s decision, we’ve become aware of

much confusion and misunderstanding of our position; I’d like to set the record straight.

TREB has never been opposed to any innovation in the real estate market-place, nor the distribution of property data, particularly the sold price. How-ever, Canadian privacy laws obligate TREB and its Members to obtain ex-plicit informed consent from a buyer and a seller to distribute their personal financial information, a right to privacy that only they may waive. It is a known fact that once any information is made available on the Internet, it’s literally gone and available for anyone to misuse.

Concerns regarding the potential ad-verse effects on competition in the marketplace or on innovation are also

unfounded. As a Member-based orga-nization, it is TREB’s role to provide tools and resources to our Members. TREB does not get involved in how our Members choose to compete. There is a tremendous amount of competition in the marketplace, among TREB’s 45,000 GTA REALTOR® Members.

GTA consumers have entrusted TREB Members as the custodians of their per-sonal financial information. It is TREB’s view that without explicit informed consent from consumers, disclosure is not only a breach of trust, it’s against the law.

TREB is appealing the decision of the Competition Tribunal.

John DiMicheleCEO, Toronto Real Estate Board

Help TREB improve REALTOR® QUEST by sharing your past experience and suggesting

what you’d like to see in the future.

Submit your feedback by completing a simple set of multiple-choice questions (less than 10 in all), and you could win a $50 VISA gift card.

Click here to complete the survey and, once you’ve submitted your answers, you’ll be able to enter the contest.

You’ll have until Thursday, August 18 at 11:59 p.m. to share your insight, and your responses will only be counted once.

Thank you for being a part of improving your Association, and good luck with the contest!

About REALTOR® QUEST

REALTOR® QUEST is Canada’s larg-est real estate trade show and confer-ence and a signature, annual event for TREB. For more info on REALTOR® QUEST, you can visit our 2016 website realtorquest.ca.

Federal Court of Appeal Update on Competition

Tribunal Decision

Message from TREB CEO on the Competition Tribunal Decision

Help Improve REALTOR®

QUESTShare Your Feedback

and a Chance to Win a $50 VISA Gift Card!

Sign By-Laws in Northern York Region

Compliance with Sign By-laws is IMPORTANT!Please remember that most municipal sign by-laws provide a convenient level of leniency for real estate signs, and, in many cases, TREB has worked hard to maintain these conditions to allow Members to conduct their business. However, municipalities have the au-thority to significantly strengthen their sign by-laws as they apply to real es-tate signs, and repeated infringements could lead to such tightening of the rules, including potential requirements to pay sign permit fees (not currently required), an outright ban of open house signs, and increased fines, etc.

Sign By-Laws Help Keep Our Towns and Cities Beautiful

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Join us at the Bloor West Village Toronto Ukrainian Festival September 16–18

Join us as we celebrate your commu-nity at the Bloor West Village Toronto Ukrainian Festival September 16 to 18.

Visit the TREB street promo tent and iden-tify yourself as a TREB Member to receive REALTORS® only giveaways!

Post a community event REALTOR® selfie on Instagram using #TREBevents for your chance to win amazing prizes!

See you there!

Click here for more information on the festival.

In this third article of our ongoing series, we examine the role of sign by-laws in preserving our com-

munity and review the sign by-laws of York Region’s northern municipalities: Georgina, East Gwillimbury, Newmarket, King, and Aurora.

Municipal sign by-laws regulate all as-pects of signs and are intended to pre-serve the safety and appearance of our communities. TREB strongly encourages all Members to comply with all munici-pal sign by-law requirements. In recent months, TREB has received numerous complaints from officials of various mu-nicipalities, including the City of Toronto, about sign by-law infringements by TREB Members.

Sign by-laws also preserve the beauty of our communities by limiting the place-ment, duration, type, and number of all signs. Without sign by-laws, our streets, public spaces and private property would be littered with a variety of signs.

So, let’s keep our communities attractive! TREB encourages Members to review York Region’s sign by-laws to ensure com-pliance. Click here to review the munici-pal sign by-law.

By-law highlights from the northern municipalities of York Region:

• Georgina – For sale/lease signs shall be removed within (10) days after the prop- erty is no longer for sale or lease.

• East Gwillimbury – For sale/lease signs shall be removed within ten (10) days after the property is no longer for sale or lease.

• King – For sale/lease signs may not exceed 0.5 sq. m.

• Newmarket – Open house directional signs may only be displayed on the day when the open house takes place and must include the address of the prop- erty and the open house date.

• Aurora – For sale/lease signs shall be removed within (14) days after the property is no longer for sale or lease.

Next month, we will highlight municipal sign by-laws for York Region’s southern municipalities: Whitchurch-Stouffville, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, and Markham.

Did you miss last month’s article? Click here to review Peel Region’s sign by-laws.

What’s In Your REALTOR® Toolkit?Teams in Collaborate

Do you work in a team? Even if you don’t, at this time of year when many of you are go-

ing on vacation, you may want another REALTOR® to assist your clients while

you’re away. Collaborate can help. You can create teams with REALTORS® in your firm and share your clients with them. The team can then interact with the clients on your behalf. When you no

longer need to share your clients with the team, you can just as easily stop sharing. Even if you don’t nor-

mally work in a team, this is a great way to ensure that your clients get attention when you’re not available.

If you choose to use a team while you’re on vacation, you can send a reminder broadcast message with your vacation dates to them and all of your clients by using the Post feature. It can save you a lot of time by eliminating the need to email each person individually.

Let BDC Help You Develop Your Business

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is a Crown Corporation dedicated to helping

entrepreneurs like you face the challenges in running and developing a business. Unlike traditional banks, it doesn’t hold deposits, but it does provide loans and services to small- and medium-sized businesses. We invite you to visit their website BDC.ca which contains a vast quantity of valuable information that REALTORS® can use to increase client sales, improve operations, optimize technology, and build management capacity.

In the coming months, we’ll feature con-tent from BDC’s site. This month, we are featuring a free website assessment tool.

Start improving your website today!

Take the first step towards improving your site’s performance with this free and easy website assessment tool. Get profes-sional feedback on up to five pages of your website and receive a personalized PDF report instantly.

This tool provides the following reports:

• An executive summary

• Link analysis

• Analysis of 19 essential criteria

• Accessibility (e.g., mobile users)

• A user experience analysis

• Plus a look at all the behind-the-scenes data essential for proper site optimization.

Click here and enter your site’s URL to begin your free website assessment. It should take about 30 seconds to complete.

Please note that Flash sites, including links developed in Flash, are not supported by the assessment tool.

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Aug. 18 Assignments-Condos and Others: The Confusion is Over

Aug. 23 Tax Implications for Residential REALTORS®

Aug. 24 Multiple Offers: The Seller, the Buyer and You!

Aug. 25 Top Tips for Staging a Home to Sell Quickly!

Sept. 6 Bookkeeping and Record Keeping for the Real Estate Professional

Sept. 15 Residential Rental Properties

Sept. 16 Tech Tips - CMA

Add/Edit in Stratus August 17 September 12

Creating a CMA in Stratus August 23 August 25 August 30 August 30 (York) September 7 September 9 September 12 September 13 (Miss.) September 15

Residential Statistics in Stratus September 22

Searching in Stratus – Commercial September 1

Searching in Stratus – Residential August 19 August 22 August 26 August 30 September 6 September 8 (Miss.) September 9 (York) September 13

Working with Public Records August 19 August 23 August 25 August 30 (York)

Working with Public Records September 2 September 8 September 13 September 13 (Miss.) September 16

Working with WEBForms® August 16 (York) August 25 August 26 (York) August 30 September 1 September 8 September 15 (York)

Participate in a seminar or workshop to learn directly from the subject matter expert and through class discussions. Network with your fellow REALTORS® to learn from each other. These seminars/workshops range between two and six hours.

Participate in technology training for step-by-step instructions that will help you serve your clients better. Hands-on training is provided in a computer lab and is led by one of our staff Technology Learning Specialists. These labs range between three and four hours.

August 30 – Position Your Business for Profit Certified Real Estate Team Specialist (C-RETS)This certification is designed for team leaders, team members, those looking to start a team, brokers or manager with teams in the office, and those who simply want to sharpen their leadership skills. The C-RETS curriculum integrates ready-to-implement strategies and solutions and provides a comprehensive foundation of skill development, training, and resources to build, lead and manage a high performance team. NOTE: To earn the C-RETS certification, completion of the 2-day “Understanding and Leveraging Teams” core course followed by any two of the three electives, including Position Your Business for Profit, is required. September 7 & 8 – Seller Representative Specialist (SRS)Designed to elevate professional standards and enhance personal performance, this program focuses on providing REALTORS® with the tools necessary to represent Seller Clients in a variety of formats. Particular attention is given to differing listing models, office policies, field issues, and legal ramifications to representing Sellers in today’s changing environment. Whether you are new to the industry or a seasoned veteran, the SRS course will redefine your 'normal' and reinvent the way you represent Sellers. You will learn tips and tools that will equip you to list in today's marketplace. September 13 & 14 – REIC 2280 – Legal Issues in Real Estate Fellow of the Real Estate Institute (FRI) This course will assist you in not only recognizing potential pitfalls but also how to avoid and navigate through them to reduce your exposure to risks and liability.

Although TREB endeavours to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information, it is not guaranteed.

Upcoming Seminars and Workshops

Hands-On Technology Training

August 17 September 14 CollaborateAugust 24 MPAC–Residential

August 31 WEBForms®September 7 Creating a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) in Stratus

The Educated Professional

Upcoming Professional Designations/Certification

Webinar Wednesdays

Click e-Commerce to register for courses and to access further details, including course descriptions and instructor biographies.

A Member benefit that provides exclusive group rates on home

and auto insurance to you, your spouse and children.

Start saving immediately!

Introducing TREB Member Home & Auto

Insurance Program

TREB Member Benefits is pleased to announce that you are au-tomatically eligible to save on

your insurance through a NEW home and auto group insurance program with The Personal! Click here to learn more.

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Upcoming Professional Designations/Certification

TREB's Past President's Scholarship Program, now in its tenth year, expanded in 2012 to offer two

additional scholarships. Two $5,000 first place scholarships and two $2,500 second place scholarships are awarded annually on behalf of REALTORS® to four graduating high school seniors pursuing post-secondary education (e.g., university, college, trade school, etc.).Early this year, applications were

distributed to nearly 300 public and Catholic secondary schools in the GTA, as well as posted on Stratus, TREBhome.com, TREB social media websites, and scholarshipscanada.com.A record of academic achievement and a range of leadership qualities and community involvement are required for application; however, judging is based on a 1000-word (or less) essay.We offer the winners our congratulations

and best wishes for their future studies.The first place winners are Jingyuan Helen Feng and Mansi Sheth.The second place winners are Janet Wang and Tiffany Bouchard.We thank all scholarship applicants for their submissions and wish them much success in their future endeavours.Click here to read the four winning essays.

Recently, the issue of foreign in-vestment in Canadian real estate, particularly in the Toronto and

Vancouver markets, has received sub-stantial media and government attention.

Most significantly, the British Columbia provincial government has implemented a 15% tax on foreign buyers. In addition, the federal government has created a working group, which includes Ontario government representatives, to review this issue and make recommendations for potential federal action.

As a result of this attention, TREB has sent the following letters to the provin-cial government (Minister of Finance), Toronto Mayor John Tory, and all of Toronto City Council.

Click here to view the TREB Letter to Ontario Minister of Finance

Click here to view the TREB Letter to Mayor John Tory and Toronto City Council

TREB will be monitoring this issue closely and taking action as necessary.

TREB Foreign Buyer Letters to Province and Toronto City Council

Tenth Annual President's Scholarships Awarded

Now in its third year, the City's Home Energy Loan Program provides low-interest loans to

homeowners who want to improve their home by installing energy-efficiency fur-naces, windows, doors and insulation.

Results show that homeowners who make these kinds of improvements can reduce their energy use by an average of 25% and save over $800 annually on their energy bills.

How does it work? The City provides up to 100% in funding for energy improve-ment, and the homeowner repays the loan over time via installments on their property tax bill. The loan can be repaid at any time, without penalty.

In addition to a low-interest loan, HELP provides easy access to energy assess-ments, utility rebates and incentives, and more.

Program funding will end in December 2016. Learn more about HELP and apply at www.livegreentoronto.ca

Top 5 Benefits of HELP

1. HELP removes the large upfront cost of energy improvements and lets you pay for them over time.

2. HELP financing is attached to your client’s property – it is not a personal loan. If they sell the property before they repay the loan, the new owner will assume the loan and continue to repay it through their property tax bill.

3. Clients can pay off their HELP loan any time, without penalty.

4. Your clients will benefit from low interest rates and longer payment terms, compared to conventional financing.

5. Clients can access up to $2,750 in utility incentives to reduce their project cost.

As real estate professionals, you have to keep on top of a great deal of government legislation,

and Association rules and policies. It’s no easy task! Where to go for help is also confusing. TREB has created a Compli-ance map that will direct you to the right place to find the information you need, including the RECO Code of Ethics,

PIPEDA, FINTRAC, CASL, the Do Not Call List, Municipal sign by-laws, and Association rules and policies. The Compliance map can be found under the Membership link on the home page, in the new Tools & Ser-vices Map, or by clicking here.

Are Your Clients Considering Energy Efficient Renovations? HELP is Here!

Explore the NEW Compliance Map!

Suggestions & FeedbackIf you have content suggestions for Across The Board or comments about this publication, feel free to email us at acrosstheboard@trebnet.com

Get Social With TREB

Mark Your Calendars

TREB’s Annual Meeting is Tuesday, October 25, 2016 at the Toronto Congress Centre,

North Building, 650 Dixon Road, Toronto. Keep watching for more information in the weeks to come!

Privacy Reminder to Members

Members should continue to handle consumer per-sonal information with

great care, adhere to all privacy laws, and always be mindful of protecting consumer privacy rights.

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