Help with your next move.

Start with where you are, not with what to call it

Most people arrive at a page like this already knowing what they want to do and unsure what the industry calls it. The four headings below are labels for four different moments, and the useful question is which moment you are in rather than which service you need.

If you are looking at homes and working out what is available and what it costs, that is the search. If you have decided to buy and want somebody whose duties run to you rather than to the seller, that is buyer representation. If you are selling and need the property on the market, that is seller representation. If you want to understand what a home is worth before deciding anything, that is a market evaluation, and it is often the first step rather than the last.

Several of them overlap. A search usually turns into representation at the point where a specific property and a price enter the conversation. A market evaluation often happens months before a listing. You do not have to pick correctly at the start.

What each of the four actually involves

Home search is the work of narrowing a market down to properties worth visiting, then finding out what the listings do not say. The listing fields tied to a registry can be checked. The rest, from the floor area to the age of the roof, is a question rather than a fact.

Buyer representation is a relationship with defined duties. Once you are a client, section 30 of the Real Estate Services Rules requires the brokerage and its licensees to act in your best interests, keep your information confidential, disclose known material information to you, present every offer objectively, use reasonable efforts to discover relevant facts about a property you are considering, and send you outward for advice on anything beyond their expertise.

Seller representation is the listing side of the same rules, plus a set of disclosure obligations about the property itself. Known material latent defects have to be disclosed to a buyer whether or not anybody asks.

A market evaluation is an opinion about where a specific property sits in the current market, supported by completed sales. It is not an appraisal, which is a separate document from a separately qualified professional and the only one a lender will accept.

What the rules give you before any agreement exists

Two protections apply from the first conversation, and neither depends on you having signed anything.

The first is the Disclosure of Representation in Trading Services form. Before a licensee provides trading services to you, they have to give you that form and go through it, and it says plainly whether you are being treated as a client with the full set of duties, or as a non-client with much less. Signing it is optional. Signing only records that you received it, and the licensee still has to review it with you if you decline.

At an open house the obligation has a threshold worth knowing. A licensee can host the event and answer general factual questions without producing the form. It applies once confidential information is asked for or offered, which is the moment the conversation stops being general. Until you know which side of that form you are on, do not volunteer your maximum price, your reason for moving, or your deadline.

The second protection runs the other way. Where you are not represented, the licensee acting for the other party has to disclose in writing the risks that arise because their duties are owed to their own client, the limited assistance they can give you, and a recommendation that you get independent professional advice.

The three business days that apply to every residential sale

Since January 3, 2023, a buyer of residential property in British Columbia can cancel the contract within three business days after the offer is accepted. Only the buyer holds this right, and neither side can waive it or agree it away.

Using it costs 0.25% of the purchase price written in the contract, paid to the seller. Four categories of sale sit outside it: property on leased land, a leasehold interest, a sale at auction, and a sale under a court order or the supervision of a court.

It matters to both sides of a transaction for the same reason. Three business days is long enough to reconsider a decision and too short to complete an inspection, a strata document review and a financing approval. Subject conditions in the contract still do that work.

Agreements and fees, which are questions to ask once

Buyer agreements and listing agreements are contracts, and their terms differ between brokerages. Every question below has an answer that can be written into the document, and all of them are easier to raise before signing than afterwards.

Two of the section 30 duties deal with conflicts specifically: take reasonable steps to avoid a conflict of interest, and disclose any conflict promptly and in writing, in a document separate from any other agreement. That separate-document requirement exists so a disclosure cannot be folded into a clause of the agreement you are signing.

• What the agreement covers: which areas, which property types
• How long it runs, and exactly how it ends before that date
• Whether it is exclusive, and what that prevents you from doing
• How the fee is calculated, who pays it, and when it becomes payable
• What happens if you buy privately or from a builder's own sales centre
• For a listing: what portion of the fee is offered to a cooperating brokerage
• For a listing: whether the fee is payable if a sale is agreed but does not complete
• How a conflict of interest would be disclosed, and in which document
• Who your day-to-day contact is, and who covers when they are away

The people a real estate licensee cannot replace

One of the ten duties owed to a client is to advise the client to get independent professional advice on matters outside the licensee's expertise. Read it as a boundary rather than as a disclaimer, because several of these are not optional in a real transaction.

A lawyer or notary prepares the transfer, registers it, and produces the statement of what you owe on completion day. An inspector reports on condition. A lender or mortgage broker decides how much you can borrow and on what terms, and their approval of the specific property is what makes a financing condition removable. An insurer has to be willing to cover the home, which is not guaranteed on an older building or one with a past claim. An appraiser gives a lender an independent value, which is a different exercise from a market evaluation.

Arrange those relationships before you need them. The week between an accepted offer and a subject removal deadline is the worst time to start looking for a notary with capacity.

What to put in a first message

A specific enquiry gets a specific answer. A general one gets a general answer, which is rarely what anybody wanted.

If you are buying, send the areas you are considering, the property type, your rough price range, your timing, and whether you already have a pre-approval. If there is a particular home, send the MLS number, because it is the only identifier that reliably points at one listing.

If you are selling, send the address, the property type, what work has been done and when, anything you know is not working, and your intended timing. If it is a strata unit, say what you know about upcoming building work or levies.

If you are not sure yet, say that. Reviewing your options and preparing to sell need different answers, and it saves a round of messages to name which one you are doing.