This has been a long time coming and frankly it is about time, but as of July 1st, 2015 the Real Estate Council of Ontario ( RECO) will make it mandatory for the selling brokerages to keep a copy of ALL offers it receives on a property they are representing for a period of 1 year after receiving them.
All too often Realtors are left wondering if there are in fact multiple offers on a property when told so by the listing agent. In many scenarios, additional bids may be fake or non existent. In these cases, these offers are known as Phantom offers and force the bidding buyer to increase their offer price and slim down their offer conditions. I have seen way too many properties sell for way over asking due to multiple bids – but as a Realtor we have no way of verifying that the multiple bids actually existed.
Thank you RECO for putting this in place.