For many years, B.C.’s attorney general has been touting the benefits of greater transparency in real-estate transactions.

For example, in unveiling the Land Owner Transparency Registry earlier this year, David Eby said that information in this database “is essential to empowering authorities to help us level the playing field between those who prefer to cheat, and those hard-working British Columbians playing by the rules, paying their taxes, and following the law”.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and making it harder for people to hide dirty money in the shadows of our real estate market will benefit British Columbians,” Eby, also the minister responsible for housing, declared.

But the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver is not keen to allow data from individual transactions in the Multiple Listing Service to end up in the hands of the media.

It recently ordered Holywell Properties to deactivate any accounts linked to the Georgia Straight or reporter Carlito Pablo from its Zealty.ca virtual office website (VOW).

Pablo relied on sales information from the Zealty.ca database for a recent Georgia Straight cover story revealing the most affordable regions to buy a home in the Lower Mainland.

In another story relying on Zealty.ca data, Pablo was able to show the most jaw-dropping property flips.

The REBGV also demanded that the Sunshine Coast company hand over a list of all registered users to the board by December 7.

Moreover, the REBGV ordered Holywell Properties to turn over “the log of activity on the VOW (search history, saved searches, saved properties, etc...) for the identified users”.

“If Zealty does not have the means to track and log user activity, this needs to be implemented as soon as possible as it is a requirement of all VOWs,” wrote REBGV third-party contract and compliance administrator Timothy Yee in an email to Holywell’s managing broker, Adam Major.

Yee’s email cited the following REBGV rule regarding MLS data: “Except as provided in the Rules of Cooperation, no Member, or their unlicensed assistants or administrators where permitted by the Board, except in the ordinary course of their business, shall make available to any unlicensed person, firm or corporation information distributed by the MLS® System. The Member will be held responsible for any misuse by non-Members of MLS® information supplied by the Member.”

Major told the Straight by phone that his company is complying with the REBGV order and has forwarded a list to the REBGV of about 40,000 people who have used his company’s Zealty.ca website.

He noted that the REBGV has made it easier in recent years to download data by making pictures available through links rather than via downloading.

However, Major also said that his company launched its Zealty.ca website in the wake of a Competition Bureau legal victory over the Toronto Real Estate Board.

Prior to this ruling, the TREB was preventing brokers from providing customers and clients with access to historical home-sales data.

In 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada’s refused to grant the TREB leave to appeal. This cleared the way for real-estate agencies to create virtual office websites.

Zealty.ca has online tools enabling clients to compare the market history of properties listed in the same area.

“There’s definitely years of programming on our site,” Major said. “It’s a huge undertaking for anybody to do it—a huge investment.”

A Competition Bureau spokesperson, Jayme Albert, declined a request for an interview, telling the Straight that it would be inappropriate to comment on whether the REBGV’s decision to cancel Pablo’s account with Zealty.ca contravened the Competition Act.

Meanwhile, REBGV spokesperson Craig Munn said that his organization worries about “sensitive information” being released that could hurt sellers, such as details about a deal that hasn’t closed even after the subjects preventing a sale have been removed.

He also claimed that Pablo acknowledged and accepted that he would abide to terms of service upon entry to the site, including not using the data for “commercial purposes”, something that Pablo said he doesn’t recall doing.

Munn would not answer the Straight’s question about whether his organization takes a position that it owns MLS data, saying he would have to get back to the newspaper in the future on that issue.