If you like being updated about the real estate scenario in Toronto and have been put off by the recent happenings in the property market, real estate brokers are working towards a better solution.

Two of the three brokers who have severed their online services, complying with the Toronto Real Estate Board's (TREB) decision to keep their customers away from home sales’ information. However, eventually the agents have realised that they are hardly flouting any rules by sharing information about recent property prices.

Canada’s largest real estate board, TREB, gives its brokers the access to latest final homes sales prices. However, the board told the realtors not to widely distribute that information over the Internet respecting privacy issues.

The TREB wrote to the real estate brokers in a letter, "to ensure that the [real estate] database is only used for your exclusive and internal use." Interestingly, when realtor Fraser Beach cut off customers' access to sales prices last Monday, he informed them, "Stay tuned … We will be back.” By Thursday, his website went back in the game.

Fraser Beach, the Broker of Record for Select/Plan Real Estate Inc. also believed that public protest is another driving force for him to resume his service. "You're doing it for your own purposes, which means it's 'internal' and it's 'exclusive' because it excludes anyone who isn't registered," Beach added.

The brigade is getting bigger:

Another real estate firm, Spring Realty also plans to start sending its home sales emails to the customers. The broker who has initially hesitated to go against the board's decision, is now saying, "TREB has serious issues with people publishing this information online. The big difference with us is people are asking us for the information and we are manually sending it to them just like we would any of our clients." Ara Mamourian, broker of record/owner of Spring Realty plans to continue his service later this month once he clears our all the doubts.

Zoocasa.com, touted to be Canada's largest real estate database, revealed, "We will always work within whatever the regulatory requirements are and in this case TREB says not to do it. Whether we were within our rights or not to provide that information, we'll keep to ourselves,"

Meanwhile, check out the property markets in Toronto and Vancouver.

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