BCREA Advances Anti-Money Laundering Recommendations

Illegal funds have no place in BC’s real estate market. Real estate playing an important role in the lives of British Columbians, serving as one of the key economic drivers in the province. BCREA shows leadership on behalf of REALOTRS® by advocating for smart policy to ensure integrity and transparency and supporting Realtors to help identify and combat money laundering in real estate transactions.

“The real estate sector in BC takes the issue of money laundering seriously,” said BCREA CEO Darlene Hyde. “We have taken a wide variety of internal steps to strengthen our education for membership and practices in the field, and we are pushing to work more closely with regulators to more collective tackle an issue that exists in the shadows.”

BCREA has already made substantial progress on previous recommendations. We lobbied the Real Estate Council of BC to implement mandatory anti-money laundering education, which was launched in January 2020. BCREA’s anti-money laundering work was applauded by the Attorney General and the Minister of Finance in a government news release in April 2019.

BCREA is also updating our anti-money laundering course for managing brokers. The self-paced online course is set to launch in September 2021, reinforcing practice guidelines based on survey data and follow-up with participants who took the course in October 2020. The next version will reflect input from managing brokers, and is expected to launch in June 2021.

Apart from supporting the Cullen Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia, BCREA recommends that the BC Government:

• let the Cullen Commission complete its work before implementing additional significant anti-money laundering measures, and
• coordinate actions with the federal government to create a comprehensive, efficient enforcement and regulatory regime.

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