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.

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.

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.

Published August 7, 2013
Updated July 7, 2025

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