The Competition Bureau obtained a court order for its ongoing investigation into the Canadian Real Estate Association’s (CREA) potential anti-competitive conduct.

CREA is required to hand over records and information relevant to rules about real estate commissions and the realtor cooperation policy. The Bureau is also seeking information from home buyers, sellers, realtors and other market participants about their experiences with commissions and alternative listing services.

The Bureau is looking to uncover if CREA’s commission rules discourage buyers’ realtors from competing to offer lower commission rates or affect competition in other ways, which could result in less competition and higher costs for both buyers and sellers.

The probe also aims to determine if CREA’s realtor cooperation policy makes it more difficult for alternative listing services to compete, reduces competition among realtors, or gives larger real estate brokerages an unfair advantage over smaller ones.

Alternative listing services are platforms that provide an alternative to traditional multiple listing services (MLS) systems for listing and marketing real estate properties.

The Bureau is also inviting Canadians – home buyers, sellers, realtors and other market participants – to share their experiences with real estate commissions and CREA’s policies in the Canadian real estate market. The feedback will help the Bureau assess if CREA’s commission rules or Realtor Cooperation Policy raise issues under the law.

People interested in sharing feedback can consult the call-out details on the Bureau’s website by November 6, 2024. The Bureau said all the information will be thoroughly reviewed and considered, and kept confidential, subject to certain exceptions.