President Cliff Iverson CEO Gary Simonsen (2011–) | Website crea.ca Headquarters Ottawa | |
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The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is a trade association that represents real estate brokers, agents and salespeople in Canada.
Contents
Work
CREA’s members are known as "realtors", which means they are members of their provincial real estate association or members of both their local real estate board and CREA, depending on the province.
A real estate agent may become a member of a local board within the CREA, which confers the agent with membership in the CREA. Local boards are represented by a provincial association within the CREA. The local boards operate the multiple listing service for their market. There are 101 real estate boards in Canada.
Both the Multiple Listing Service or MLS trademark and the Realtor trademark are owned by Realtor Canada Inc, a subsidiary of CREA. Local real estate Boards or Associations operate a local database under a licensing agreement with the national association. CREA also operates the realtor.ca (previously MLS.ca and ICX.ca) web site.
Property owners who do not want to fully engage the services of a Realtor, can hire one to only list their property on the MLS system. In these instances, the property owner is responsible for ensuring the listing information is accurate and agrees to handle all other details of the transaction directly. The seller may have to pay a commission to the buyer's real estate agent, if the buyer uses one. Approximately 90% of real estate transactions in Canada in 2009 were conducted via the MLS.
Its 2016-17 president is Cliff Iverson.
Study
In 2015 CREA commissioned a study of the Canadian real estate industry by trend analysts Stefan Swanepoel. The goal of report was to provide the Canadian residential real estate industry with a comprehensive and objective analysis of the most significant threats, risks, and black swans that could possibly impact the industry. The report identifies 36 specific threats and challenges and delivers its finding in four sections: Danger impacting salespeople, Dangers impacting brokers, Danger impacting Board and Associations and Dangers impacting The MLS System. The report was released March 19, 2016.
History
The association was founded in 1943 as the Canadian Association of Real Estate Boards. In 1951, the Photo Co-op System, a precursor to MLS, was introduced. The association was established in 1954.
In 2013, the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board voted to break away from the CREA, and all of its listings were removed from the CREA's website.