In the midst of a bidding war, star real estate broker Christine Girouard allegedly used bluff to push buyers to offer more money for a house she was selling in Repentigny, we learned during testimony before the disciplinary committee of the ‘OACIQ.
In 2021, a broker made a promise to purchase a house sold by Christine Girouard in Repentigny. According to documents presented during the disciplinary hearings Wednesday in Brossard, there are five offers on the table. The promise to purchase of the broker who testifies before the committee is by far the highest.
However, this broker and his buyer clients have no way of knowing this, because the law prohibits the disclosure of the amount of offers presented to the sellers of the property.
After submitting the promise to purchase, the broker tells the committee that he has no acknowledgment of receipt from Ms. Girouard. He therefore decides to call him and at the same time ask him if his offer is “in the running”, “in the game”, given that there are five in total.
“No, she said, ‘You’re not in the game. You’re completely not into it. You’re off track,” the broker said.
The broker then calls his clients back, explains the situation to them and they decide to add money even if their offer was already the best.
Conversations between brokers are neither recorded nor filmed. As the broker who testifies reports the words of Ms. Girouard, the latter’s lawyer, Mr. Martin Courville, contests the admissibility in evidence of the sentences “No, you’re not in the game” and “You’re next to the track”. The issue will be debated later this week.
Still in the same file, the broker representing the buyers maintains on several occasions that Ms. Girouard never revealed to him the price of the other allegedly higher promise to purchase. The law prohibits it.
“I didn’t ask about the price. She revealed nothing, no figures,” assured the broker.
However, his client who came to testify after him did not have the same version. “Yes, he [my broker] told me a price. He told me it was $400,000, $402,000, I don’t remember,” she said.
“To be in the running, you had to offer more than $400,000,” she recalls, because another buyer was particularly interested in the garage detached from the house.
The consumer, who told her story before the committee on Wednesday, had filed a complaint with the OACIQ in January 2022 about this transaction, but for another issue. Fifteen months later, his case became a priority after the publication of the La Presse investigation.
The lady from Repentigny wanted to denounce the “pressure” and “threats” made by Ms. Girouard during the purchase of her house. According to what Ms. Girouard’s marketing sheet indicated, the property was sold with the legal guarantee, and this is what encouraged this consumer to come visit it and submit a promise to purchase.
The transaction became complicated when the seller realized that he was selling his house with the legal guarantee, even though he wanted the opposite.
Before the committee, the seller affirmed that there had never been any question of legal guarantee when signing the brokerage contract with Christine Girouard, whom he had chosen simply because her photo was in the bus shelter in front of his home. “I used to see her from my kitchen,” the broker’s former client said.
Finding herself faced with an impasse with this legal guarantee issue, Ms. Girouard would have told her client that he would have to start the entire process from the beginning if he did not change his mind, while she would have informed the buyers that she was going to put the house back on the market if they refused the purchase without legal guarantee.
The seller was eventually forced to change his mind, he said, because he had already signed an expensive lease.
Christine Girouard will have the opportunity to tell her version of the facts on Thursday during her interrogation before the disciplinary committee.
