Out of the blue, I was contacted by the Canadian Bureau de la concurrence which is the The Canadian Competition Bureau. The Canadian Competition Bureau is the equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission or the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division in the United States. I was asked to be interviewed about minimum services in real estate just as I had been involved with the Georgia Real Estate Commissioner’s Task force with the USDOJ. They wanted to know how my real estate business model works for both me and for the client. They were very thorough and showed up with at least 4 pages of questions. The questions ranged from how I do things to how the customer responds in each instance. They came to my office for the interview and toured every department. Think of that, wow, they flew to Georgia to meet me – I really didn’t think too much about this until afterwards. They said that they researched me on the Internet – amazing the resources out in the public today.

Apparently, the Canadian MLS boards have very strict rules about what you can and can not do as agent members regarding listings. The MLS boards there are owned by the Realtor Associations just like they are in the U.S. This was odd to me as we as agents and brokers should be regulated by the U.S. and state laws, not the MLS boards who simply supply the tools. I don’t know how this has gotten so backwards. Well at least the DOJ is doing something about it now.

Anyway, all went well. They said that the Duffy real estate model would conform to the current rules of the Canadian MLS boards because we handle every aspect of the contract and we coach our clients on the selling side and that we appear to be as much of full service as any other full service company that they have in Canada or that they have researched in the U.S., although all of their interviews are confidential. We talked mainly about the selling side and briefly touched on the buying side and the buyer cash bonus that we give to our clients.

Thank you Canada for thinking of your consumers too! I personally appreciate all the work that the DOJ has done to protect consumers in the U.S. And I know that my clients appreciate it too. Saving over one billion dollars in listing commissions while getting a successful transaction done at the same time has really helped a lot of my clients with their personal transaction and help them eliminate their own personal recession.