Paul Azar boasts on his website, of the luxury agency Sotheby's, to be a brokerage authority who places "integrity" at the heart of his practice.
In 2012, he also participated in the show Dans l'œil du dragon to present a concept of beanie-mittens that would have received the support of the dragons François Lambert and Dany Vachon, according to his profile on the Sotheby's site.
However, this broker who was active in the Gatineau region was fined $4,000 last January. His license was suspended for 60 days and he was reprimanded.
He found himself before the Disciplinary Committee of the OACIQ for having bought at a very low price the house of a client that he was nevertheless supposed to sell at the best possible price.
The property in question, located in Chelsea, Outaouais, was first listed by Azar on Centris at $1.15 million. The price was later lowered to $899,000. However, on Facebook, Azar went so far as to write that the property could be sold for just $699,000 and that was still negotiable.
This significant price drop obviously did not take long to attract the interest of potential buyers.
LOTS OF INTEREST
“Overall interest: very high. Buyer will make an offer: probably,” another broker wrote to him.
However, rather than respond to this interest, Paul Azar ultimately decided to purchase his client's property himself, for $450,000, two and a half times less than what was originally requested.
Two years later, in 2019, he put the same property back on the market, with the same photos, for $1.1 million. He eventually sold it for $880,000, which was $430,000 more than he paid.
These are photos posted on Facebook that aroused the suspicions of the broker who had not received any news from Azar.
As part of his investigation, the OACIQ trustee was able to obtain Azar's admission that there was a lot of interest in the price displayed for the house.
"According to Me [Isabelle] Martel [l'avocate du syndic], the respondent prioritized his own interest to the detriment of that of the seller, who was deprived of obtaining the best price", is it summarized.
NO REGRETS
Paul Azar told us he had no regrets in this case. It was his client who asked him to sell quickly and it was the latter who himself offered to buy his house at a very good price, he argued.
“They never gave me the chance to explain myself. […] There were exaggerations during the trial, ”he said of his disciplinary disputes with the OACIQ.
He described his decision to plead guilty as "a business decision."
He said the 40-foot indoor pool in particular made electricity costs for the 8,000-square-foot home run up to $20,000 a year, which put off a lot of potential buyers.
He said he invested $10,000 to $15,000 to re-stage the property and "make it look flashy" after it was acquired, which helped boost its value.
