The Real Estate Council of B.C. has rejected a complaint against a West Vancouver Realtor, agreeing that the man who filed the complaint was making a mountain out of a molehill.
The council ruled recently that Paul Howard Isaacs was not guilty of professional misconduct, as alleged by the spouse of a former owner of a West Vancouver lot that Isaacs sold for them.
The three-member discipline committee reached that conclusion following a hearing in February.
The complaint, launched by former owner Frank Cassidy, was over Isaacs’ allowing a prospective buyer for a $3-million lot on Proctor Avenue to excavate for soil tests without the consent or knowledge of the owners, who live in Hong Kong most of the year.
As part of the testing, a small backhoe was used to dig three samples on the lot down to bedrock.
Isaacs didn’t deny that, but argued the excavation was of a relatively minor nature on a vacant lot and that he had implied authority based on a 20-year friendship and previous dealings with the owner.
The discipline committee agreed, noting that while Isaacs’ version of events was straightforward, Cassidy’s was at times exaggerated and coloured by a strong emotional reaction.
In particular, while Cassidy described the results of the soil test on the lot as “an absolute mess” when he saw it, photos showed that description was “significantly exaggerated,” according to the committee’s written ruling, adding the lot couldn’t plausibly be described as landscaped or a garden.
The committee added it was difficult to see how Cassidy thought any buyer could do “due diligence” on the lot – a condition of the sale – without soil tests.
Isaacs was “clearly acting in (Cassidy’s) best interests in doing what was necessary to sell the property,” which the owners had bought 16 years earlier for $650,000, and had previously listed for sale a number of times, the committee concluded.
The committee noted in its decision that the excavation didn’t prevent the lot from being sold soon after to the next-door neighbour for over $3 million – a deal that had already been signed when Cassidy saw the condition of the lot.
Isaacs stated in an email that the decision shows not all real estate agents who have complaints launched against them are “bad.”
The most recent assessed value of the still-vacant Procter Avenue lot is just under $3.5 million.
