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Niagara Falls
Friday, March 29, 2024
Letter: Government needs to cap real estate commissions

Dear editor:

A Vancouver think tank recently recommended that all homes over $1 million should have a new tax levied on their sale in order to tackle the housing crisis.

Tackling our growing public debt and the devastation to our economy and our country’s people as a result of COVID-19, is an even greater crisis.

The time has come to provide for the proper regulatory control of a monopolistic real estate industry that has provided many real estate agents with annual income increases that are so out of whack with the rest of the population as to be disgraceful.

It is surely time to hold the Canadian Real Estate Association and its members accountable for a flawed and multi-level remuneration system, whereby property price increases in recent years have resulted in single home purchases and sales commissions to individuals often being greater than most of us earn in an entire year.  

I would suggest that one way of dealing with this “elephant in the room” would be to cap real estate commissions at three per cent (in Europe they are typically no greater than two per cent, but often only 1.5 per cent), with an additional one per cent payable as a tax to tackle our oncoming public financial crisis – and to help those most in need.

No doubt the CREA and its members will not see it this way.

But for those less fortunate who have clearly struggled and suffered over the past few years, we should view such changes as an improvement in the way we work for each other, for the betterment of society as a whole, and a move toward a much fairer world.

Philip Hoad  
St. Davids

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