A Vancouver property management company says its trust accounts have been unfrozen and its licence reinstated, two weeks after a regulator's "urgent" order against them. Rent It Furnished Inc. hired former B.
C. Attorney General Wally Oppal to defend itself against what it and Oppal called "unfair" order from the B.C.
Financial Services Authority, which regulates a variety of industries in the province, including real estate. In a statement Friday, the company said the BCFSA had rescinded its order "following an urgent legal hearing that included results from KPMG's third-party forensic audit, which Rent It Furnished commissioned to vindicate itself." The company stressed that the BCFSA's July 25 order contained "zero evidence" of a public complaint about it, nor of any misappropriation of trust funds.
Rent It Furnished also claimed the BCFSA didn't give the company a chance to defend itself before issuing the order. "The BCFSA has a legitimate role to protect the public, but this suspension didn’t fit the circumstances and caused widespread disruption to the business and members of the public who depend on it," said Oppal, in the release. "While Rent It Furnished had some administrative issues, the order was unnecessarily punitive, especially considering the business is classified as an essential service.
I am pleased the BCFSA took a second look and rescinded it." The regulator issued its order – and a "consumer alert" – late last month, saying they were the latest steps in "a series of escalating actions" the BCFSA has taken over the last year in response to the company's "repeated failures to provide compliant financial records." According to the BCFSA, the company and the regulator , in which RIF admitted to failing to identify six shortages in its trust accounts between February 2017 and September 2020.
The shortages totalled roughly $5,700. RIF also admitted to failing to take immediate steps to rectify the shortages and failing to notify the BCFSA of a negative balance within 10 days of when it occurred. According to the BCFSA, RIF has shown a "repeated inability to reconcile its rental trust accounts" since entering the consent agreement.
"Without complete and accurate reconciliations, trust accounts cannot be assessed to determine if funds are handled correctly in accordance with the Real Estate Services Act," the BCFSA said in a news release when it first announced the order. "RIF was unable to identify and track specific amounts held in trust for its clients, or how much money its clients were owed." CTV News has reached out to the BCFSA to confirm that the order has been rescinded and request a response to the company's allegations of procedural unfairness.
This story will be updated if the regulator replies. In RIF's statement Friday, founder and CEO Erika Weimer again characterized the misconduct her company admitted to as a matter of "issues with how reports were being reconciled and generated on the company’s automated systems," and said she and her staff were working with the BCFSA to resolve the issues when the regulator's order "blindsided" them. "I am still numb from what happened because there was zero evidence of misappropriation of trust funds, which we fought relentlessly to prove," said Weimer, in the release.
"Though the suspension was brief, thousands of our landlords and tenants were disrupted and had to seek temporary assistance outside of our company to pay and receive rent, and we were forbidden from tending to building maintenance emergencies." Rent It Furnished said it has resumed operations and "is working diligently to process rent transactions between landlords and tenants and tend to maintenance emergencies." A disciplinary hearing has been scheduled for Nov.
12 to 14, and the company is required to provide the BCFSA with monthly trust reconciliation accounts until that time, RIF said. Rent it Furnished describes itself as "a leading provider of luxury rental property in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and New York," with more than 5,000 "luxury furnished properties" under management, serving "local and international clients.".
