The Liberal's Proposed Home Buyers' Bill Of Rights - Explained!

Canada's housing market is a hot topic for #CanadaVotes2021 and each platform brings its own approach to trying to provide buyers with some relief.

I want to break down the Liberal's proposed Home Buyer Bill of Rights because Platinum Mortgages has been getting a ton of questions about what this may mean for consumers and the market in general.

Some key points of the Liberal's proposed Home Buyer Bill of Rights:

Ban blind bidding

Historically, realtors would discuss the pricing back and forth. Blind bidding was essentially put in place to try and protect consumers across North America but is it having the opposite effect? Will we find ourselves looking to blind bidding again in the future? In reality, bidding and a lack of inventory, in general, is likely the bigger issue and not necessarily just blind bidding.?

Price transparency

Realtors have these details available on hand but the consumer currently has to jump through some hoops and put together data to try and find sales history for prospective properties. So while this information is generally publicly available *somewhere*, this may make sales prices more easily found.?

Legal right to home inspection

The idea is to eliminate bidding advantages by those willing to waive inspection in hot markets as we see now. This is a good thing for consumers but may actually affect sellers in the long-term if buyers start using inspection as an out or an invitation to put in multiple offers, knowing they have that out available to them. (NDP has also mentioned they would do this)

Double-end disclosure

While rules vary by province, this already exists, in one form or another, across many provincial regulations.?

Guaranteed mortgage deferrals

The government wants lenders to provide mandatory deferrals to those with the need. While many already do this, having it as a requirement, thus making them more frequent, banks may actually pass on those costs to everyone.?

Beneficial ownership registry

The focus of this initiative is for money laundering purposes which won’t actually apply to a large chunk of buyers. This will force corporations to disclose the people behind the corporations instead of hiding property registrations behind a corporation. People can jump through some hoops now to see who is behind a corporation but this may make that data more accessible.

Require lenders to act in your best interest

While this has never been an issue for Platinum Mortgage clients, there are certainly predatory lenders out there who may not always act in your best interest. The idea behind this initiative is to put the onus on lenders to clearly disclose all options available to you, including the first-time homebuyer plan.

So, while some of this may benefit the everyday buyer, a lot of it will not have a direct impact on the pricing and availability of homes on the market or already exists in a similar capacity.

The Canadian housing market has been hot for so long and so one of the major issues we people raising is "why now?". Why not a year ago when the market needed it?

Stay tuned for more breakdowns of each party's housing platform and what it means for the average Canadian consumer.