This change would be similar to the cooling off period in place for pre-construction condominium sales in which buyers would have 7 days to rescind their accepted offer without any consequences.
While the thought of putting a system in place to help cool off our "runaway" real estate market is long overdue, the government did not get input from professionals in the industry. Personally, I feel it is more important to control the blind bidding process where we are seeing winning bids significantly higher that the other bids in multiple offer. In my view, the cooling off period will only see buyers putting high bids on multiple properties and then sitting back during the week and picking which properties they will collapse offers on. This will have many consequences that should be considered.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and what form the final legislation will take after the BC Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) finally consults the real estate profession and other stakeholders to develop the parameters of this proposed cooling off period.