What you should know about the listing of your new home

What you should know about the listing of your new home: Ask Joe

By JOE RICHERRegistrar, Real Estate Council of Ontario

Sat., Jan. 26, 2019

I bought a home several months ago, and yet the listing photos are still online in an ad placed by the seller’s brokerage. Can RECO help me get them taken down?

Yes, the Real Estate Council of Ontario can look into the matter if the brokerage hired by the home’s previous owner is unwilling — or unable — to take down the advertisement.

If your new home, and its photos, are still listed for sale, ask the seller’s real estate agent to have the ad taken down.  (MARUZHENKO YAROSLAV / DREAMSTIME)

Your first step, however, should be to get in touch with the seller’s agent and, possibly, their broker of record; that’s the person who oversees a brokerage and its compliance with the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act, 2002, and its Code of Ethics.

Most real estate brokerages want to make things right when a problem emerges and are committed to following the advertising rules that we enforce. Those rules help ensure that real estate ads are accurate, and consumers aren’t tempted with false or deceptive claims. They also exist to protect the privacy of buyers and sellers. Here are some of the basic rules:

When a home is listed for sale, the seller’s representative may market the property on the Multiple Listing Service or other websites with the seller’s permission. Once an offer has been accepted, the seller’s brokerage can then advertise that the home is now off the market and use a “SOLD” designation in their marketing.

The brokerage is allowed to run such ads until the home’s ownership changes hands. Once that happens, the brokerage can’t make any reference to the property in advertising without the new owner’s written permission. That includes posting photos of the property on the brokerage website or anywhere else.

And if the seller’s brokerage wants to include pertinent details of the transaction, such as the selling price or the closing date, it needs written permission from both the buyer and seller, regardless of who owns the home when the advertisement is published.

It sounds as though the seller’s brokerage probably forgot to remove the ad after you assumed ownership of your home. I imagine a gentle reminder of their responsibility to respect your privacy will do the trick. If that doesn’t work, feel free to contact RECO.

A final word about listing photographs: salespeople will often advise their seller clients to declutter and depersonalize their homes before a photo shoot because mostly-empty homes are easier to market.

But that’s also good advice from a personal safety point of view. If you decide to sell your home, make sure your valuables, keys and confidential information (bills, bank statements and other documents, family photos and computer passcodes, for instance) are safely hidden before the photographer takes any pictures, and personally review any photos your representative wishes to post online. You don’t want to inadvertently assist web-surfing burglars.