Re/Max Hallmark CEO Ken McLachlan says the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) has “lost its way” and now acts more as a training platform, rather than a real estate board.
McLachlan told Real Estate Magazine that TRREB is “not operating according to its purposes.”
“In the last year, it has gradually turned into a training board for the Realtors, providing services which are frankly the job of brokerages,” he said in an email to REM.
“More and more broker-owners are now relying on the board for their training platform. In my opinion, brokerages that have invested heavily in training and education are at an extreme disadvantage to broker owners who do not invest but have the board as their training platform.”
Interfering with competition
McLachlan’s comments have opened a debate over the role real estate boards should play in the industry.
Re/Max Hallmark agent Brandon Reay told REM that other boards, not just TRREB, have been overstepping their jurisdiction for years now.
“We’re subsidizing education for brokerages that don’t provide what we provide, but we keep them in competition,” he said.
Reay argued that by relying on boards for training and education, standards are being lowered in the industry to the “lowest common denominator,” which has raised some alarms. He warned that Re/Max could lose out on talent since its heavy investment in education may no longer be seen as a competitive advantage.
He noted boards carry no liability and are not in a position to determine what should be taught since they are insulated from market signals and bear no risk.
Education, instead, should be the responsibility of brokerages, as it has in the past, according to Reay.
He added that boards are distorting the marketplace by expanding their offerings to not only education, but also to tools.
“It’s really shifted how we have to compete because we’ve never had to compete with real estate boards historically until the last 20 or 30 years,” he said.
Reay said RE/Max is now at a crossroads and must decide whether it wants to continue to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in education.
TRREB CEO responds
In a statement to REM, TRREB CEO John DiMichele said that the board has a mandate to “elevate professionalism and support all Members in delivering consumer value,” and that the board’s courses complement the training brokerages offer.
“Our offerings are developed in collaboration with industry experts and provide timely, practical, and accessible learning,” he said. “TRREB continuously evaluates and streamlines the education and training programs we offer, adjusting based on members’ needs and the ever-evolving real estate landscape.”
In favour of board-provided education
Not all real estate agents are opposed to boards offering more education. Dorian Rodrigues, a broker and partner for PSR Brokerage and one of the founders of education platform The Listing Academy, told REM that he believes more education is better, regardless of where it comes from.
“At the end of the day, the more educated the sales representative is, the better the experience (the customer) is going to get and the less issues that will arise further down the road when you’re dealing with them,” he said.
Rodrigues said that receiving education from the board means all sales representatives will have the same messaging, which he thinks is a good way to avoid discrepancies.
He said that brokerages are still free to delve a little deeper into certain topics that boards don’t cover, and that the different sources of education will complement each other.
He said his agents on his team are more self-sufficient now due to more education and can look up answers to questions themselves rather than relying on the broker.
“If there’s a lot more education and the consumer and the client knows that we’re getting educated not just once but multiple times and we’re continuing to learn, I think it only benefits us as an industry,” he said.

Eric Stober has over 10 years experience as a journalist and writer at publications big and small, including Global News, Toronto Life, Post City Magazine, Greencamp.com, the Toronto Star and The Grid.