Residential Real Estate Broker Industry Council Update
| February 24, 2022
Summary of activities since November 2021 from Sano Stante, Chair
I want to begin my update by sincerely thanking all of the people and the organizations who have participated in the various engagements the Industry Council and RECA have undertaken this past year. Your feedback is essential to RECA achieving effective regulation. Our Council believes in meaningful engagement with stakeholders at all levels for all major decisions, and we will continue to action this as we move forward under this modernized governance model for RECA.
Education Divestment
In December 2021, our Industry Council approved competency profiles for residential real estate associate and real estate broker licence classes. Thank you to the over 1,000 individuals and the two project teams established by AREA who invested the time to provide feedback on the respective competencies. I know they contained a lot of information, and giving meaningful feedback required a good chunk of your valuable focus and time. It was extremely valuable feedback and was appreciated by the Industry Council, enabling us to move forward with providing these approved competencies to third-party course providers for them to create their courses.
The Board has set June 1, 2022 as the divestment date for all licensing education at RECA, and I know there are many course providers working on courses for the residential sector to be in place by that date.
For those brokers wondering how to tackle recruitment during this transition period, please be aware that RECA’s existing licensing education is still in place until education is divested to third-party providers. Education completions will be transferrable, meaning that, for example, should a potential new licensee you are looking to licence complete the Fundamentals of Real Estate prior to divestment, but not get to the Practice of Residential Real Estate prior to divestment, they will not have to retake a fundamentals course from a third-party provider in order to take the Practice of Residential Real Estate with that provider. Similarly, if you have potential licensees enrolled in RECA courses and they have not completed them by the divestment date, those courses do not disappear. They will be permitted to complete those courses from RECA, as long as they do so by December 1, 2022. The divestment date simply means there will be no new enrollments.
To assist your prospective licensees you may want to refer them to the information RECA has created to assist learners.
If you are interested in RECA’s Education Divestment Process please see RECA’s Education Divestment page.
Strategic Planning
As you are all aware, the Board and Industry Councils sought stakeholder feedback for strategic planning purposes from November to January. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback. All Industry Councils convened with the Board on February 14, 2022 to discuss your feedback and to discuss some broad strategic themes. The Board will create a proposed strategic direction for RECA in the coming weeks, and will seek stakeholder feedback on that proposed direction before finalizing a multi-year strategic plan.
At the February 14 meeting, the Board and the Industry Councils committed to a complete review of the Real Estate Act Rules. The standards of practice described in the Rules are set out by the Industry Councils for each particular sector. I look forward to engaging with all stakeholders during this review to hear your views on how we can modernize the Rules to benefit the industry while retaining and enhancing consumer protection.
Stakeholder Engagement
Beyond the engagement for strategic planning purposes, our Industry Council will once again be hosting a Spring Engagement Session. We are planning an in-person engagement session in Calgary and Edmonton later in the Spring, with the ability for those outside those cities to join virtually should they choose to. More information about these sessions will be coming out in a few weeks, so please stay tuned. I am looking forward to engaging directly with stakeholders in person for the first time since the creation of the Industry Council.
RMS
As I have mentioned before, RECA has created an Ad Hoc RMS Committee to review the RMS. That committees work is ongoing, and will hopefully consult on the RMS in the coming months.
Related to the RMS, and together with the Residential Property Manager Industry Council, the Residential Real Estate Broker Industry Council sent a letter to the Minister of Service Alberta initiating the concept that the RMS could apply to condominiums and new home builders. The hope is that a consistent measurement standard for all types of homes in Alberta (regardless if purchased new direct from a builder or re-sale) will better allow consumers to make meaningful size comparisons and protect consumers from potential misleading measurement claims.
