The Competition Bureau has filed an amended complaint with the Competition Tribunal, stating that TREB’s proposed VOW policy would “continue to thwart the development of new, innovative and efficient methods of providing real estate brokerage services using the Internet.”

TREB’s proposed policy for Virtual Office Website (VOW) rules was released on June 23, and the members have 60 days to review it before it can be approved or rejected by the membership. The board said it had been working on the proposals for more than a year and had been meeting with the Competition Bureau during this process. The bureau filed its original complaint on May 27, 2011.

But the Competition Bureau says in its amended complaint that the proposed rules would “impose obligations and restrictions on member brokers who wish to operate VOWs that are not imposed on traditional brokers. As such, TREB’s Proposed Rules entrench and perpetuate the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ business model for providing real estate brokerage services; accordingly, TREB’s Proposed Rules are discriminatory and their enactment will constitute a further anti-competitive act.”

The complaint says the proposed rules would not allow VOWs to provide MLS data on solds, including pending solds, or compensation offered by the seller’s broker to the buyer’s broker.

“In addition, and significantly given the value potential customers place on this information, the data feed provided to member brokers for VOWs will not include any MLS data pertaining to sold properties, unless the data is ‘readily publicly accessible.’ This restriction does not apply in a ‘bricks and mortar’ environment; as such TREB’s Proposed Rules discriminate and are in violation of the Act.”

TREB had said that it could not release this information to VOWs because that would not be in compliance with privacy laws.

“It is instructive to note that, for all the concerns now suddenly expressed by TREB about privacy laws and compliance with (the Real Estate Council of Ontario), TREB has made no attempt to enact or enforce rules to restrict traditional brokerages from providing, at their sole discretion, all information relating to historical solds, pending solds and other information that they would now propose to exclude from the data feed provided to member brokers who want to operate VOWs,” says the Competition Bureau complaint.

It says, “The effect of TREB’s Proposed Rules will be merely to allow TREB’s member brokers to display current listings on their own websites using a data feed from TREB, but significantly, a data feed intentionally compromised to exclude the very information of value to consumers…..TREB’s Proposed Rules will continue to require customers to contact a member broker personally to obtain such information, entrenching the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ model and discriminating against member brokers wanting to innovate.”

The complaint also alleges that the rules are “vague and ambiguous, allowing TREB to frustrate or disadvantage member brokers who wish to offer VOWs, in the very same way TREB has done, to date, using the existing set of TREB MLS Restrictions…The resulting uncertainty reduces the likelihood of investment in, and thus impedes the entry of, innovative real estate business models.”

TREB responded by calling the amended application “more legal and publicity manoeuvres by the Commissioner of the Competition Bureau.”

“The Commissioner is pressuring TREB to make changes to TREB’s own property listing system (MLS) that TREB believes would violate consumer privacy laws, reduce the quality of the system, and diminish protection for consumers who list their homes in the Greater Toronto real estate market,” said TREB president Richard Silver in a statement.

TREB says,”The commissioner is pressuring TREB to go further to release private data about individual consumers openly on the internet. TREB believes that would be reckless and, in fact, a violation of the law.”

“TREB appreciates that the commissioner has a job to do, but TREB is the wrong target,” said Silver in the statement. “The commissioner obviously has recognized that her initial application back in May was faulty. Instead of working with TREB to find a practical solution for consumers, the commissioner has today decided to pursue an additional legal process that will further delay improvements and further disadvantage consumers.

The amended complaint also alleges that the proposed rules are “vague and ambiguous, allowing TREB to frustrate or disadvantage member brokers who wish to offer VOWs, in the very same way TREB has done, to date, using the existing set of TREB MLS Restrictions…The resulting uncertainty reduces the likelihood of investment in, and thus impedes the entry of, innovative real estate business models.”

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