Real Estate Rule Changes

If you live in BC or are invested in BC real estate, you’ve had a front seat to the unfolding of the drama that is BC’s ever-changing and currently unstable housing market. The BC and Fraser Valley markets went almost wholly unchecked throughout the pandemic, allowing them to burn red hot. At the market’s peak, sellers were enjoying upwards of 10 offers on their homes while buyers were stuck throwing down their last dollar and making unconditional bids on homes.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen many people purchase properties without the luxury of a home inspection, a proper viewing, or even more than an hour to think about whether owning this home is worth unloading their life savings. The buyers are either left bitterly disappointed after losing their bid or winning the grand prize, which turned out to be an old home with more flaws than anticipated. Worse yet, some of the buyers (none of them mine) found out long after they won their bid that they had no way of completing their purchase.

BC has a problem in that it has too little housing for too many people. Something needs to change. As a realtor and a community resident, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to sell somebody a property unless they’ve had an inspection, a property appraisal, and a decent amount of time to review the documents. I want to help people make sound investments into properties that are within budget and stated expectations. Better yet, I’d like them to stew on their decision for a few days.

With the recent market slowdown, the problems of competing, subject-free offers are almost gone. But this is BC, and the market will heat up again. We need new rules to ensure that nothing like this happens again. Fortunately, a few people in charge agree that change needs to happen. As a result, a mountain of changes is coming to the real estate industry. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting about the upcoming changes and how they will affect you.

Some of these rules will help, but many will make no difference, and quite a lot of them will be introduced with so many loopholes that they will be nearly unenforceable. Nevertheless, it is my job to know them inside and out, and while memorizing all of the changes, I will explain them to you.

Below is a list of the changes to come:

• • Changes to the rules of Co-Operation for agents – October 17th, 2022

• • Changes to the Strata Property Act – November 22cond, 2022

• • Land Owner Transparency Act – November 30, 2022

• • Foreign Buyers Ban – January 1st, 2023

• • Home Buyers Recission Period – January 3, 2023

• • New Real Estate Team Rules – April 1st, 2023

• • CREA’s Clear Cooperation Policy June 1st, 2023

• • Federal Underused Real Estate Tax, unknown

• • Provincial Flipping Tax, unknown