Maureen’s phantom phantom bids

The secret’s out. “It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.”

The incoming head of the Toronto Real Estate Board has come out swinging against phantom bidding tactics after denying they even existed when she ran for the job three months ago. “It’s dirty realty, it really is,” Maureen O’Neill said of agents who fabricate offers during bidding wars. She is now calling on the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) to yank the licences of agents convicted of using phony bids.

O’Neill made her comments after learning that the Toronto Star had received documents proving the Real Estate Council of Ontario has been called upon to deal with complaints about bidding war tactics. Until this week, she steadfastly refused to acknowledge made-up bids occur, saying the Ontario council’s CEO Tom Wright and registrar Allan Johnson assured the Toronto Real Estate Board’s directors on July 19 that no complaints had ever been received.

But the Ontario council’s spokesperson Sandra Gibney said Friday that Wright and Johnson made no such statements and that “RECO does not know why Maureen O’Neill is claiming otherwise.” Ms. Gibney added in an emailed statement, “If Ms. O’Neill had contacted RECO prior to responding to questions about RECO’s complaints statistics, RECO would have provided the same information that you (the Toronto Star) received”.

Read more about “phantom bids” in the Toronto Star, here and here …