2018 Year End Review

We hope you and yours are enjoying a safe and happy holiday season!

As 2018 draws to a close, it’s a good time to reflect on what your Association has accomplished on your behalf this past year. Your Board of Directors and RAHB staff worked to improve services for you, which will allow you to better serve your clients and customers:

• Monthly statistics packages have been upgraded and expanded to include more – and more comprehensive – regional information, as well as CREA’s Home Price Index.

• OpenHouses.ca now includes all local active listings – not just open houses.

• Our member value package, RAHB Advantage, was developed to provide you, and in some cases your clients, with discounts not available to the general public.

 

• RAHB acted quickly to put in place Virtual Office Website (VOW) rules and regulations to enable our members to comply with the Supreme Court of Canada decision and the Competition Bureau’s view that the ruling against TREB applies to all boards/associations.

• We investigated how to increase professionalism among members and have taken steps, through Professional Development offerings and collaboration with the City of Hamilton (re: signage bylaw compliance), to more fully inform members on ethical and professional issues.

• We continued to improve and expand on how we connect with members:  Lunch with the President, video updates for members immediately following each Board of Directors meeting, Broker of Record meeting updates, weekly NewsReal newsletter, social media campaigns and even more videos.

• Government relations remained an important focus with our work against rental licensing in Hamilton, as well as advocacy at Queen’s Park and on Parliament Hill.

• RAHB offered various networking and professional development options through member meetings, spring and fall Open Forums, ProDev+, Real Estate Outlook 2019 and Broker of Record meetings.

• Your monthly service fees in 2019 will be reduced from $39 per month to $38 effective January 1, 2019. This is the second year in a row that we have reduced your fees while maintaining or expanding services to you.

• This year saw the greatest number of RAHB members on record. We hit a high of 3,167 members at year end, the highest on record for RAHB making us the second largest real estate board/association in Ontario, clearly indicating REALTORS® value what we offer.