This is going to be a relatively short blog - back in 2012 I lodged a complaint with the Real Estate Council of British Columbia (RECBC) in regards to my less than satisfactory experience with Scott Fraser (www.scottfraser.ca) of Royal LePage in the Comox Valley, who advised me, repeatedly, not to bother with having a home inspection done on a new home I was considering to purchase, for which at the time Scott gave me this advice he knew next to nothing about the actual builder (Richard Boedeker of Tiki Construction).

In this instance the advice given to forgo having a home inspection in my opinion was nothing short of disastrously bad advice. Had an inspection been done by a professional home inspector, this would have undoubtedly detected numerous defects, which would have almost certainly been enough to convince me not to buy this house. I base this on the fact that later on, when an actual inspection was undertaken in 2011 by an independent appraiser (hired by Echelon General Insurance), numerous defects were sited which all told tops out at approximately $20,000 & even though (so far) all of these defects have been covered by home warranty this ongoing fight to get things put right has significantly impacted my life in a negative way with quite literally hundreds of hours of my time having been eaten up dealing with this mess.

In the end, on May 7th 2013, after weighing the evidence I had provided the RECBC with, Compliance Officer Jane Kolonsky wrote this closing assessment:

"“While it is clear that Mr. Fraser protected his client when he prepared the contract with an inspection clause, it appears Mr. Fraser gave advise upon which Mr. Thompson relied which does not appear to be in the best interest of the client.”

Now here’s where things get interesting, written in black & white in the Real Estate Council of British Columbia Rule Book (Ministerial Order: M417) is the following:

Part 3 — General Responsibilities of Licensees, Duties to clients:

3-3 (1) Subject to subsection (2), if a client engages a brokerage to provide real estate services to or on behalf of the client, the brokerage and its related licensees must do all of the following:

(a) act in the best interests of the client;

(d) advise the client to seek independent professional advice on matters outside of the expertise of the licensee;

It doesn't get much clearer than this, unfortunately for me in the end this complaint process relied on 5 active Real Estate Agents whose job it was to rule on the actions of one of their own, which at the end of the day & for reasons unknown, it appears some Real Estate Council of British Columbia rules are deemed important & others, it seems, not so important & as such I am left in a state of total disbelief – in that; who I was ultimately counting on to defend my rights as a customer, I believe has failed me in the worst manner imaginable.

I will close off this blog with the words of Larry Buttress, Deputy Executive Officer for the Real Estate Council of British Columbia - I spoke with him him earlier today and during our conversation I asked him whether or not he would ever do this to me (referring to what Scott Fraser did, i.e. recommending not to have a home inspection) > his response was: "would I personally? no, no I wouldn't."