Boring Technical/Political stuff that really WILL effect your listing.

Oakville and Toronto no longer openly share listing information.

If you List your home in the west end of the GTA (Burlington, Oakville, Milton, Mississauga, Brampton, Georgetown, Etobicoke), active agents should be members of both boards to provide full service.

The News media love to talk about the multiple offers, and the roller coaster of the housing market going up and down and all around...however this recent change will effect you in a very tangible way. 

As of May 16, 2013 the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) and Oakville Milton District Real Estate Board (OMDREB) no longer automatically share information.  Whereas prior to May 16 searching on either the Toronto Real Estate Board or the Oakville Milton District Real Estate Board would capture nearly all board listings, we now must set up those searches on BOTH boards otherwise some listings simply will no longer appear.

How does this effect the you? If your listing is listed by an agent who is not a member of both boards, there is a good chance that it will go unnoticed by thousands of agents. Some agents will try to work around this by ‘interboarding’ the listing. This is a cheap and  incomplete way of getting around the issue of not being a member of both boards (which comes at a much higher cost).

Scenario: You live in Oakville/Milton and you list your property with an Oakville agent who is not a member of the Toronto Board. Your listing is not automatically available to agents who are only members of the Toronto Board. Active agents who work the west end should be members of both.  If a buyer is migrating from the East end of town, there is a very good chance that their Agent is not a member of the Oakville/Milton Board (there really is no reason for them to be a member) and therefore your listing will not automatically be seen by their agent. 
The listing is available on a rudimentary database called Connect. At this time Connect is cumbersome and not nearly as technologically advanced as the native systems. 

At Sutton Group Icon we have been members of TREB, OMDREB, and RAHB (Burlington/Hamilton) since 2003 and will continue to be. Regardless of where your home home is located we will ensure that it placed on  its native board and if near the border or OMDREB and TREB, we will post it on both boards so as to expose it to as many agents as possible.  

DS