Well, here’s the answer (in Alberta at least):

Here’s a quote from the Real Estate Council of Alberta Advertising Guidelines:

“The advertising of sold properties is problematic. When an industry member advertises that they have sold, or participated in the sale of a property and the property is identified, the industry member requires the written consent of the property’s owner(s) at the time of the advertisement. If an industry member was representing a seller in the sale of a property, with the seller’s consent, the industry member may advertise the completed transaction until the seller ceases to be the owner of the property. For any industry member to advertise the completed transaction after that point, he or she would need the permission of the new owner (the buyer).

This means industry members may not include on their websites or in other advertisements, a list of properties (pictures and/or addresses) they have sold unless they, at all times, have the consent of the property’s current owner to do so.” (see page 26)

So, if you want to advertise solds on your website:

• You can do so without limitation BEFORE the new owner takes possession
• If you want to advertise AFTER possession, you MUST have the current owner’s permission to do so

What about BC?

Yeah… Well… It’s complicated…

I spoke to a representative at The Real Estate Council of BC today and she told me that there is currently no legislation dealing with the display of sold listings.

“Ok, so I can display any solds I want then?”

Not so fast. The big three real estate boards (Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Chilliwack) shut off third-party access (website providers) to sold data about 3 months ago, making it impossible for us to display sold listings automatically. RealPageMaker has setup an “off market” category for listings removed from the active data set that can be added to a sold portfolio by any listing agent with a RealPageMaker website.

“So what should I do?”

The big three boards are having a meeting within the next month or two to hash firm rules regarding access to sold data. Until then RealPageMaker recommends that you contact your broker about your office’s current rules.

Other service areas

Advertising past sales in other RealPageMaker service areas is generally much less ambiguous. To find out, just contact your board or association, or drop us a live chat.

Using Free Email Services

Free email services are great: lots of space, accessible from anywhere in the world, relatively good spam filtering. But there are downfalls:

• Hotmail/Yahoo add their branding to the bottom of every message you send
• Emails received in online mail accounts  might not render correctly, hiding critical details

Be careful when deciding to use a free email service; if you do choose to use one, we recommend GMail from Google.

Creating the Right Email Address

The following shows what respondents to a survey (conducted by  CentralNic.com), thought was most important when choosing an email address:

• 41% – Must Be Easily Memorable

• 23% – Absence of punctuation symbols and numbers (including underscores and hyphens)

• 19% – Geographical identity in the address suffix (.us, .ca, etc.)

• 17% – Full name in prefix