Quebec real-estate brokers are to gain automated access to property data under a Canadian competition settlement intended to make room for new digital services.
The Competition Bureau announced the agreement with the Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers on October 15. The association must provide its members a data feed covering information relevant to brokerage services, including sale prices, listing history and property characteristics.
The change concerns how brokers can use information, not simply whether they can see a listing. They already had access through the association’s collaborative system and could display listings on their websites. A structured feed would allow them to bring information into their own systems and develop comparison tools, alerts and other applications.
The Bureau said its investigation concluded that the association and its subsidiary, Société Centris, had restricted competition by refusing or failing to provide such a feed and limiting data use. Those are the regulator’s conclusions supporting a consent settlement, rather than a newly litigated judgment on liability.
The agreement is registered with the Competition Tribunal, lasts ten years and is legally binding with the force of a court order, according to the Bureau’s backgrounder.
It does not turn the underlying brokers’ system into an unrestricted public database. Nor does it remove privacy-protection duties or other legal obligations.
The Bureau linked the outcome to its earlier Toronto Real Estate Board litigation, which addressed restrictions on historical transaction data and online brokerage services. In Quebec, the practical test will be whether members can now use the promised feed to offer services beyond the existing interface.
