KAYTEE SHARUN
KELOWNA – Last week, the Association of Interior Realtors released their new report Breaking Down Barriers: Pathways to Modernizing Municipal Property Information in the British Columbia (B.C.) Interior to approximately 240 municipal and provincial government officials and industry stakeholders at the Southern Interior Local Government Association Conference in Kamloops.
The report conducts a qualitive study of 13 municipalities across the interior of the province to identify challenges and best practices in processing and delivering property documents. The report makes 7 recommendations (3 provincial, 4 municipal) to ensure consumers get the information they need and that the home buying and selling process runs smoothly and efficiently.
For the provincial government the report recommends that they set up a municipal modernization fund, review FOIPPA requirements and explore implementing a provincial zoning atlas for public data. On the municipal side the report suggests implementing electronic payment systems, enhancing application interfaces, creating clear and accessible property information request guidance, and enabling online tracking of applications.
“Realtors take their professional obligation to provide consumers with the necessary information and documentation on a property seriously. A big part of that information—from, inspection reports, to permits, to sewer hookups— is only available in municipal property documents,” says Association of Interior Realtors President Kaytee Sharun.
“Unfortunately, we know that in a lot of cases getting these documents can be a long and arduous process full of expenses, exceedingly long timelines and inefficiencies. There’s definitely room for improvement.”
Many of the inefficiencies identified related to the lack of digitization of documents which resulted in long timelines and multiple trips to already extremely busy city halls.
“Despite being in an era where almost anything can be accessed online many of these documents remain undigitized and inaccessible in an online format. Digitization is a necessary step to bring this component of the home buying process into the 21st century,” adds Sharun.
Increasing digitization and breaking down unnecessary barriers to obtaining municipal property documents not only streamlines an otherwise frustrating process for Realtors but also is a win for consumers and a benefit to resources-strapped municipalities who could spend less time processing these documents in the future.
“Our goal is to collaborate with the government to find a way forward on this, we don’t want to just be pointing out problems, we want to be bringing solutions forward to really improve the home buying process for consumers. I think with this report we’ve exemplified that,” notes Sharun.
Kaytee Sharun is President of the Association of Interior Realtors