Oh, Canada
Oh, Canada
So our brethren north of us in Canada have come up with an interesting slant on real estate transparency. Seems there’s a government agency called the Canadian Competition Commission that’s taking action to force consumers private information that exists now on private MLS pages to be made public. Info such as the sellers phone number and property access information would thereby be made public and would appear on public sites like Trulia, Zillow and Redfin if they’re in those markets. Currently that type of information is kept off of the public versions of those sites for obvious privacy reasons.
There’s plenty of info that the Canadians are going to also make public that already is down here…like closed sales prices and mortgage information. It’s the inclusion of sellers contact info that’s interesting and sort of strange to me here. The seller’s phone number is included in listings so that agents can call and make appointments to show their homes. Often, these numbers are unpublished cell numbers and the inclusion of them to the general public that may often not even be local is sort of a troubling thing to me. I’m thinking I wouldn’t want my number published to anyone who was looking for a house to buy…or whatever else they might want. This is proprietary information that ought to stay that way if you ask me.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out and whether or not we see something like this around here in the future…in the interest of transparency. Here’s some more on this topic:
"Single-family homes are really cheap now, too," Warren Buffett said yesterday in a CNBC appearance. The other cheap asset class he previously referred to was equities. Buffett said he would personally buy "a couple hundred thousand" homes if it were practical. And if you hold houses for the long term and purchased at today's low rates, he says housing is even better than stocks. Buffett advises taking out a 30-year mortgage and refinancing if rates go down. 
