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REALTOR.ca is continuing to add features to help make home buying more transparent for consumers.
“The Canadian Real Estate Association and REALTOR.ca are key influencers in the Canadian real estate ecosystem, providing a world-class and preeminent listing platform with millions of daily consumer engagements,” says Patrick Pichette, Vice-President of REALTOR.ca. “Canadians have an overwhelming trust in REALTORS® and REALTOR.ca; ensuring a transparent home buying and selling journey is crucial.”
From real-time visibility into residential and commercial listings, to increased collaboration with industry partners, the goal has always been and remains to be improving the home buying experience for all Canadians.
REALTOR.ca continues to roll out new features to help achieve that goal, and we were able to catch up with Justin Wah Kan, Interim Director of Products with REALTOR.ca, to see what’s new lately.
Sold data on REALTOR.ca listings
How much a property is listed for is one thing, but how much it sold for can also be crucial information. Sold data allows consumers to see the historical sale prices of a property, and is something that’s been available on REALTOR.ca for about a year now in certain areas. But this year in Nova Scotia, things have been taken one step further.
Wah Kan says listings in Nova Scotia will now have a conditional sale tags to let consumers know about the current status of a property, and once the sale is finalized, the sold price will also be made available.
“The top thing on every consumer’s mind is how much a property sold for,” Wah Kan says. “We’re actively advocating for this information to be made available and we continue to work with real estate boards, as there are many provincial restrictions around the data that can and cannot be disclosed for privacy reasons.”
Transparency around prices helps consumers be more informed about the current state of the market, and better understand what’s available to them in their price range.
Accessibility on REALTOR.ca
When it comes to accessibility, it’s important to make sure not only the platform is accessible for everyone, but that information on the physical accessibility of a home is readily available.
“When we talk about accessibility, there are two elements: digital and physical,” Wah Kan explains. “We’re working to make sure REALTOR.ca complies with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) through things like contrast of colours, sizing, etc. But the physical space also needs to be represented. We’re in the process of adding new accessibility fields to listings where things like doorway measurements, hallway measurements, whether there are ramps to the front door, whether there are grab bars in the bathrooms, and other accessible living features are clearly highlighted.”
These accessibility fields will soon be added to listings in Nova Scotia, as the Nova Scotia Association of REALTORS® has recently made it mandatory for all new listings to include this type of information.
The benefits of having a REALTOR.ca account
Having a REALTOR.ca account gives you more features and capabilities to browse and share listings.
“If you keep seeing a house you’re not interested in, and it keeps cluttering your listings, you can now hide it from your view,” Wah Kan explains. “If you end up wanting to see that listing again, you can go to your list of ‘hidden’ properties to find it. Having an account also means you can favourite listings to come back to later, plus have all your data sync between your desktop and mobile devices.”
Being able to curate listings means a more personalized experience for home buyers, which can help relieve a lot of the stress that comes with searching for a new home.
Square footage information on listings
Square footage is often a main curiosity or criteria from home buyers wanting to know if the listing they’re looking at is larger than their current space. But up until now, unless the REALTOR® added this information to the listing itself, it wasn’t as easy for consumers to find it.
Now, shares Wah Kan, square footage information will begin rolling out on listings starting in Alberta—which follows a residential measurement standard that all REALTORS® in that province must follow when listing a home.
“This information shows up on the map view—when you hover over a listing, at the top of a listing, and towards the bottom of the listing as well,” Wah Kan says. “Square footage and total finished area are both included.”
An ongoing endeavour
As consumer needs evolve, so does REALTOR.ca and what it has to offer.
“We’re solving problems,” says Wah Kan. “When we add new functionality to the site, it’s to address a problem in the market. As the market evolves and things shift towards transparency problems in real estate, we’re adding transparency to the space, adding functionality and tools for consumers to use. Until you fully meet a need, you need to keep chipping away at it.”
This includes making small changes on an ongoing basis like updating the gallery on listings to make images front and centre, which improves discoverability and scrollability for users. It’s the little things that can make a big difference.
Wah Kan also says the platform can’t improve without feedback from consumers. Whether you use the feedback button on the right-hand side of every page, the Contact Us form, social media channels, or even directly contacting a member of the product team on LinkedIn—yes, Wah Kan encourages this!—you can provide your feedback and ideas to help make REALTOR.ca an even better place.
