Forms and contracts

Liability insurance is in a crisis! Real estate brokers are seeing their liability insurance premiums double and even quadruple, due supposedly to a tightening of the market. Insurance companies are blaming the situation on a deterioration of their experience in this area, to a point where most are pulling out of the market. Consequently, we are entering an up cycle, which does not bode well for the coming years. This situation is creating a major problem for real estate brokers and agents. It is also leading to a significant risk for the protection of the public.

An alternative has been put forward by the ACAIQ in the creation of a Liability Insurance Fund, and recommendations have already been made to the government to this effect. However, this project, which the Association has been studying for three years now, has met with some obstacles. To remedy this, the profession must immediately take certain steps, and your cooperation is essential in this regard.

In order to take stock of the situation and the Liability Insurance Fund project, we are organizing a series of information sessions (in French only) for chartered real estate brokers, to be held in several Québec regions, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

The Association des courtiers et agents immobiliers du Québec recently held a series of information sessions for chartered real estate brokers in several Québec regions to take stock of the professional liability insurance crisis that is currently hitting the real estate brokerage industry.

These sessions have enabled us to observe that real estate brokers view the creation of a Liability Insurance Fund very favorably as a means of remedying the situation. It is now time to proceed with phase 2 of the creation of this Fund. This step will enable the Association to show the government the urgency of the situation by clearly stating facts, i.e. the rarity of insurance and prohibitive costs involved as well as the formal support given to this project by members of the profession.

We urge you to do the following immediately:

Brokerage Contract – Purchase Committee
Serge Brousseau, chairman
David Farber
Paul Robert
Daniel Pelchat

President and Chief Executive Officer’s Evaluation Committee
Serge Brousseau, chairman
Robert Aubin
Pierre Paradis
Daniel Pelchat

Syndic’s Evaluation Committee
Serge Brousseau, chairman
Robert Aubin
Pierre Paradis
Raymond Desbiens

Finance Committee
Daniel Pelchat, chairman
Serge Brousseau
David Farber
Jean Mathieu

Education Committee
Robert Aubin, chairman
David Farber
Serge Brousseau
Jean Mathieu
Diane Bourbonnière

Professional Inspection Committee
Raymond Desbiens, chairman
Jean Laurin
Christiane Saint-Jean
Pierre Martel
Toufic Noubani

Committee on the commercialization of electronic forms
Diane Bourbonnière, chairman
Serge Brousseau
Daniel Pelchat
Johanne Roy

Committee on the nomination and compensation of Discipline Committee members
Serge Brousseau, chairman
David Farber
Pierre Lafond
Daniel Pelchat

Real Estate Brokerage Award Committee
Madeleine Plamondon, chairman
David Farber
Jean Mathieu
Serge Brousseau

Discipline Committee

On August 1, Louise Clément resigned her ten-year tenure as Director of the Chambre immobilière de Québec (CIQ). Mrs. Clément will pursue her management career with the Association des médecins d’urgence du Québec.

Well-known for her involvement in business and real estate, Louise Clément studied communications at Université Laval and has an MBA from UQAM and Université de Paris-Dauphine. Before heading the CIQ in 1993, she was Director of Communications for the Société des designers d’intérieur du Québec and Sales Coordinator for Hôtel des Gouverneurs in Trois-Rivières.

Louise Clément was also the representative designated by the Office des professions to the Ordre des comptables généraux licenciés du Québec from 1996 to 1999. In 1999, Mrs. Clément was nominated to the board of the Fonds d’indemnisation du courtage immobilier by the Québec government, a post which she still holds.

The ACAIQ would like to thank Mrs. Clément for her invaluable assistance in organizing various professional development events as well as for her contribution as a member of the task force on the Association’s business forms.

We remind you that a new version of Annex B – Residential Immovable has just been released by the ACAIQ. It is now available and it will become mandatory to use it on January 1, 2003.

You are already aware of your obligation to complete a notice of disclosure to disclose the existence of any conflict of interest in a real estate transaction, whether in the performance of your duties or not (section 22 of the Real Estate Brokerage Act). However, real estate brokers and agents sometimes have trouble completing this notice of disclosure, especially when it comes to the identity of the intended contracting party and the documents to be transmitted to the ACAIQ. To help you identify the intended contracting party, we have added the following to section II of the form: “Identify the contracting party to whom you must disclose your quality as certificate holder and not the person with whom you have a connection”.

You must transmit a copy of the duly completed and signed notice of disclosure as well as a copy of the promise to purchase and its attachments to the ACAIQ as soon as possible, i.e. before the date of signing of the notarized act. The purpose of the disclosure is to create a level playing field for all parties; it is therefore crucial that the intended contracting party receive the information before the promise to purchase.

Failure to complete a notice of disclosure can have disciplinary and civil repercussions. For a clearer understanding of your obligations, we suggest reading the following articles:
Who is this mysterious prospective contracting party?, ACAIQ Magazine / October 1999
Cottage, lake, rosebushes Goodbye to all that!, ACAIQ Magazine / September 1994
When agents sell their own homes / ACAIQ Magazine / March 2001

Only a few days left before December 10 deadline to send your renewal form duly completed and your payment to the Association. Requests received after December 31 cannot be processed as a renewal and will be considered a new issue, with the corresponding fee.

No change has been made to the certificate renewal forms this year. Much of the information to be provided by the applicant is already printed on the form; all the member has to do is check for accuracy and enter any necessary corrections. You can check the status of your certificate renewal online on the Association's extranet site at:

Please take note that the sale price will be increased by $5.00 each pack of forms produced by the Association des courtiers et agents immobiliers du Québec, starting January 1st, 2004. This increase applies to all ACAIQ mandatory and recommended forms.

Following is the schedule of continuing education activities offered in English by the Association des courtiers et agents immobiliers du Québec. To register, click on the link for the activity and date of your choice. A form will appear. Simply print it, complete it and return it by fax.

Continuing education activities are also offered in French. For a schedule, see the section entitled “Activités de formation continue”, which can be accessed from the home page of the French version of our website.

Montréal, February 17, 2004 – The Association des courtiers et agents immobiliers du Québec (ACAIQ) is asking Government to implement, as soon as is feasible, a set of regulations for the building inspection practice. For a majority of people, the purchase of a home represents the greatest investment of a life time. An effective inspection aims at identifying any potential problems in order to ascertain the repairs that may be necessary, thus allowing the buyer to conclude his transaction with full knowledge of the facts and the buyer to greatly diminish the risk of a civil action for hidden defects.

Presently, to qualify as a building inspector, a person need not follow any particular training, nor is there any standardize code of deontology. Certain inspectors voluntarily subscribe professional liability insurance. While tens of thousands of inspections are conducted yearly by a few hundred persons in Quebec, the majority of these persons are no longer able to subscribe professional liability insurance. Indeed, the Quebec Association of Building Inspectors, at the present time, is no longer requiring of its members that they subscribe such a coverage for that very reason.

“Even though the building inspection practice is not legally regulated, a real estate agent must recommend to a buyer that he make his offer to purchase conditional on an inspection,” said Mr. Robert Nadeau, President and CEO of the ACAIQ. “ Given this situation, we have undertaken to define a minimum inspection standard to protect one and all, which standard, in fact, is the strictest in North America.”

While waiting on the Government to act, the ACAIQ and the Quebec Association of Building Inspectors (QABI) have provided forms to buyers and sellers of real estate that, once completed, include all of the relevant and required information (work conducted, plans, permit, invoices, warranties) for a just and successful transaction. Designed as a data collection tool, the Declaration by the seller of the immovable form enables the seller to describe, to the best of his knowledge, the major components of the property involved in the transaction. The ACAIQ believes that the Declaration by the seller of the immovable should, in the future, be an obligation imposed upon the seller under the offer to purchase.