March 22nd, 2010 is a day that will be remembered for a long time. That was the day that the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA®) voted and amended its rules to allow for posting services such as OneFlatFee.ca to be able to list on the MLS® without offering other services.

This was done to appease the Competition Bureau but Melanie Aitken, Commissioner of the Competition Bureau was not quite convinced. However, with the changes already made the consumers now have a choice to pick and choose the services they want from a Realtor®. A Realtor® is still free to charge whatever he or she wants but it is going to get tougher for the listing agents. I reckon they won’t be out of business but they will be held accountable and the overall price structures will drop and hence home sellers will now end up saving money.

In 4 months of us in business, we have listed over a 100 properties. We have had very a good success ratio in selling the properties we have listed. The market was really hot when we first started and was a very well balanced market. However, currently the situation is slightly different, the market has tipped and it is now a buyer’s market. This is a great time to buy a property with interest rates still at historic lows and a good level of inventory to choose from.