Every professional real estate agent knows the importance of maintaining market order and the confidence of the public.

Of course it matters who does this work, and you probably don’t want to pay for it twice. The costs of impartial, effective rules management, enforcement and dispute resolution is something busy people don’t give much thought to. Especially if you keep your nose clean and are fortunate enough to mostly encounter other professionals. Standards must be upheld and we all have a role to play.

In a CREB^® Talk article last week Chair Christian Twomey expressed concerns with a concept raised in the ongoing AREA survey on administrative justice. Now that we’re talking about competition in administrative justice (rules management, which is rules, enforcement and dispute resolution), I’ve been asked to share some background into this important member service.

I could start by going back over 81 years to 1941 when CREB® was formed with a goal to bring order to the growing real estate business in this emerging city of 88,000 people. Or I could go into painful detail (which you know I love doing, ha ha) on the evolution of real estate board and association roles in North America. I could happily follow these paths, but we know the outcome; market order is important. This is just common sense.

Practice standards need to be fair, practical and be consistently upheld. Ideally delivered at a reasonable cost by an impartial organization with credibility and intimate knowledge of what its members deal with in the market, at kitchen tables and in board rooms in your communities.

Instead of rehashing the obvious, it is more relevant to start with what you’ve been telling us. We regularly conduct member satisfaction surveys in addition to the many, many surveys, open forums and brokerage visits we love doing. I’ll focus more on some recent surveys because they provide data that has been the basis for CREB®’s board of directors to consistently maintain this priority for decades and decades.

A good place for us to start is the provincial survey conducted by AREA in 2019 on the future of Alberta REALTOR^® boards and associations, which should provide a benchmark to the current survey. This survey was the outcome of a May 2019 meeting of Alberta boards and AREA that CREB^® convened so we could collectively learn more about the recently approved Saskatchewan merger of all their boards into their provincial association.

The 2019 AREA survey concluded:

• Near universal agreement that there should be consistent rules and services across the province.

• Local Board touchpoints remain important to members.

• Mixed perceptions on current and future board/association structure.

The 2019 survey of Alberta REALTORS^® also asked respondents to rank the most important services provided by local boards/associations. Not surprisingly, the MLS® System was first, followed by member support/ technology tools, then lockbox services followed by:

• Enforcement/compliance,

• Professional development opportunities,

• Member practice advice.

This type of survey work is a hallmark of AREA’s power when they collaborate with the boards. AREA was invited to a meeting to learn more, they willingly participated and agreed to the suggestion of the boards on May 15, 2019. Representatives of CRE^B® and RAE (Edmonton) were invited by AREA staff to help formulate the survey questions and the results were openly presented and discussed.

In 2021 as part of the mandate of a special CREB^® One Alberta Membership Task force, we surveyed CREB® members on the current membership structure. We asked a series of questions to learn more about what the most important services are to our members. We wanted to understand what problems we should be helping you to solve. Of the top 5 most significant issues facing organized real estate, what our members said was similar to the 2019 AREA survey results in ranking rules, regulations and professionalism highly. The first two issues were the economy and new competition, and the next two highest ranked issues of concern were:

• Rules and Regulations,

• Professionalism.

On a regular basis, and for many years, CREB^® has conducted member satisfaction surveys on our products, services and supports. These surveys provide invaluable data, and we can identify gaps in our performance so we can identify trends. From our last survey in 2022, we again see some similarities to previous research in answer to the question, “what is the biggest problem or issue you need to solve right now?” After Leads/Clients and the Economy, the third biggest problem in our members’ business was Other Agents. We noted a similar outcome when we first asked this question in 2020.

When we again asked survey respondents to rank our most valued services in 2022, our members responded in this order:

1. The MLS® System,

2. Member support,

3. Market data,

4. Member practice advice,

5. Professional development,

6. Enforcement/compliance

Interestingly, the response percentages changed very slightly in our 2020 Member Satisfaction survey. The same top 6 emerged with slight variations in placements.
It’s common these days to hear talk of evidence-based decisions, and there is a lot of data to support the importance of maintaining order as a key component of CREB^®’s work. This backgrounder has touched on some reasons for our concerns about fully understanding the importance of rules management, enforcement and dispute resolution.

Next week in part 2, I’ll provide some background on where CREA comes in, the challenges of providing a member service that must have some pointy bits and share some ideas on how AREA could add value to our work.

We are being transparent and respectful in expressing our concerns about introducing competition to this service. Let’s face it, as REALTORS^® live day in and day out, when there is choice, there is competition. No one can be expected to consider the value of any service and program delivery without a full understanding of the matter at hand.