B.C. real estate agent fined $20K for ‘false or misleading advertising’ on road access to rural land

Shuswap Lake and Bastion Mountain are seen from near Salmon Arm in this file photo. (Shutterstock.com)

A B.C. real estate agent has agreed to pay more than $20,000 to a provincial regulator over his marketing of a collection of rural properties in the B.C. Interior.

Lester Twarog entered a consent order agreement with the B.C. Financial Services Authority on March 13, and a redacted version of the document was published online Friday.

In it, Twarog admits to professional misconduct stemming from his efforts to sell six rural lots north of Sicamous beginning in 2021.

In his MLS listings for the properties, Twarog wrote that the land had both waterfront and road access, saying they took about 20 minutes to reach by boat from Sicamous, or about an hour via a forestry road.

“None of the lots in the development had road access as stated in the MLS listing, but water access only,” the consent order reads, noting that Twarog had visited and viewed the area via a forestry road, leading to his mistaken belief that the land had road access.

Twarog also failed to ensure that the owner of the land—an Alberta-based company—filed a required disclosure statement before he began marketing the properties, according to the document.

By the time the first lot sold in December 2021, a disclosure statement still hadn’t been filed.

The landowner finally filed its disclosure statement in March 2022, by which time the BCFSA had already received a complaint about Twarog’s marketing of the property.

In the consent order, Twarog admits that his failure to ensure that a disclosure statement was filed amounts to professional misconduct, violating the provincial Real Estate Services Act’s provisions on acting in the best interests of a client and acting with reasonable care and skill.

He also admits to “false or misleading advertising”—another form of professional misconduct—stemming from his assertion that the properties had road access, when he “knew or ought to have known” they did not.

As discipline for this misconduct, Twarog agrees in the consent order to pay a $20,000 administrative penalty and $1,500 in “enforcement expenses” to the BCFSA. He also agrees to take the “Real Estate Trading Services Remedial Education Course” at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business within an unspecified time period to be set by the BCFSA.