TORONTO – Real estate companies that were promised access to a Toronto Real Estate Board feed of Greater Toronto Area home sales data on Tuesday say they’re still waiting to get their hands on the numbers.
HouseSigma Inc. chief executive officer Joseph Zeng says his company put in a request for the numbers early Tuesday, but was still waiting for access a day later.
A Zoocasa spokesperson says it is also awaiting access to the feed and was told TREB is working through a high volume of requests.
TREB did not immediately respond to a request from The Canadian Press about how long it would take for the companies to get access, but it sent a letter to its members earlier in the week that said the feeds would be available on Tuesday and that members would be allowed to use the feeds to post data on their password-protected websites for clients.
TREB’s pledge to release the data comes weeks after the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear an application from the board that aimed to keep the numbers off password-protected sites because the board was concerned about privacy and copyright.
Some real estate companies immediately published the data after the Supreme Court’s decision, only to receive cease-and-desist letters from TREB warning of loss of data access, revocation of TREB membership or legal action against members TREB believes were violating its user agreement by posting sale numbers online “in an open and unrestricted fashion.”
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