The Commission's Board of Directors have approved bylaw amendments presented by the Licensing Committee. These amendments are new licensing requirements for broker-level licensees, as well as increased frequency of brokerage inspections (formerly audits) for newly licensed brokers. This decision was made after various inspections revealed that many newly licensed brokers were not meeting the minimum passing requirements.

Last year, the Commission released a bulletin to the industry on the use of e-signatures in facilitating agreements and service contracts. Since its release, we have received some questions and comments on the policy and its practicality. After several constructive discussions with licensees, the Commission has amended its policy on document retention with regards to electronic signatures. Brokerages are no longer required to maintain physical copies of certificates of authenticity (confirmations including the service name, a time stamp and the confirmation number to authenticate the signature) in brokerage transaction files.

Read our Special Edition Newsletters, released January 19th, 2016, which includes articles on important announcements and articles on topics such as:

• Commission Office Relocation
• Buyer Brokerage Agreements Mandated for Common Law
• Approved Sales Corporations Licensing Fees Changing
• HST Implementation
• What is kept in a Transaction File?
• Non Applicable Clauses on Agreements

and much more!

Read the Newsletter

Your real estate licence authorizes you to trade in real estate in Nova Scotia as it is defined in the Real Estate Trading Act.

Simply put, trading in real estate is acting on behalf of a consumer to buy or sell real property, which includes land and any dwellings attached to or included with the land, such as houses, apartment buildings, condominiums, commercial space and mobile homes. Trading also includes commercial leasing and commercial property management.

We published an article in January 2016 clarifying the procedure to add new buyers to an accepted Agreement of Purchase and Sale (APS). As noted in the article, the procedures were initially developed using a legal opinion provided to the Commission. We recently discovered that this subject was being covered in the 2015/16 mandatory course “20 Timely Topics for Salespeople” using slightly different variations of the policy by the respective course instructors. As a result, compliance staff met with the instructors to re-examine the policy to ensure consistency between the course instructors and the Commission.