What you do counts. Literally.
Every day, REALTORS® help clients buy and sell homes – a non-health essential service – but your work also produces critical home resale data that is relied upon by the general public, all levels of government, housing policymakers, the banking and mortgage industries and so on.
Hundreds of industry stakeholders – big and small – rely on your sales and listings data to understand housing demand, future needs and whether housing legislation and regulation is effective.
Data integrity matters
This is why as a Board we work hard to promote and ensure MLS® data integrity. You might think, who really cares if it’s listed as a detached or a detached with acreage? Stop for a moment and ask yourself, would the District of Mission or Township of Langley care? Most likely.
And you too would care if you specialized in selling acreages. Think about the long-term implications of too many members misclassifying a listing or filling in the Data Input Form (DIF) incorrectly. Our crackerjack MLS® department ensures that FVREB’s thousands of listings – over 31,000 last year – are displayed correctly in Paragon, but it all starts with you. Having the most accurate, up-to-date resale housing data possible not only helps you serve your clients it helps communities plan for the future.
So, who wants a piece of the MLS® data pie? You might be surprised at the variety and scope of these organizations and just how often the FVREB is contacted for data.
The obvious ones are Housing Canada (CMHC), BCREA, and CREA.
Both our provincial and federal professional associations compile, analyze and forecast sales and pricing data for you, the public and governments. The most accurate home pricing tool in Canada is CREA’s MLS® Home Price Index which, based on your MLS® data, measures the change in home prices over time and produces monthly Benchmark prices, or predictive prices of ‘typical’ homes in a given area.
From individuals to huge public institutions, FVREB stats requests come from far and wide
In addition to hundreds of media outlets, including social media, we send our monthly Statistics Package to Central 1, the Royal Bank of Canada, and Altus Group.
FVREB’s communications department – which takes the lead on compiling and analyzing the monthly stats – receives on average one specialized stats request every week – in addition to fielding questions from members.
Here’s just a few of the organizations that have recently reached out for historical MLS® data:
- Canada Revenue Agency appraiser
- District of Mission
- Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD)
- UBC
- Urban Development Institute
- Urban Matters CCC
We also receive numerous requests from homeowners – who most often are looking for a comparative market analysis – which we don’t have the expertise to do, so we direct them to contact you, their local Realtor.
What happens to the data we provide industry stakeholders? It’s crunched, analyzed, and reported on and often they share their findings with us. Here’s a link to the recently released Housing Needs Report for the FVRD’s Electoral Areas. Nine months in the making, this is an in-depth investigation into the need for affordable housing in eastern Fraser Valley including analysis of MLS® data from both FVREB and CADREB.
The Board thanks members for helping to maintain accurate MLS® data. If you have any questions about our monthly statistics package or are trying to track down historical statistical reports on REALTOR Link®, contact us at communications@fvreb.bc.ca or (604) 930-7600.