WHY WAIT? DISCLOSE GROW-OPS NOW

Your front page article and editorial comment (Leader: Jan. 18) fail to
appreciate that the realtors and their real estate boards do not need any
legislative authority to back them up.

All listing contracts (realtor and seller), and all sales contracts
(seller and buyer) are freely negotiated contracts between the
respective parties. Ethical, cautious, or courageous listing sales
agents, and their sponsor realty company, could insist that the seller
make the written representations that the particular house has been
used neither as either a "grow-op" nor as a "drug lab."

Similarly, an ethical, cautious or courageous selling agent,
representing a buyer, could advise the buyer to insist that the sales
contract contain the same two written representations.

An unscrupulous seller is going to lie in all circumstances, and
therefore, in order to appease the privacy laws and constitutional due
process, vendors should be required by the realtors, or the buyers, to
obtain from the RCMP a letter confirming that "to the knowledge of the
RCMP, no information has been obtained by them that leads them to
believe on reasonable and probable grounds, that the home in question
has not been used as a grow-op or a drug lab."

Similarly, an ethical, cautious or courageous bank, credit union, or
other mortgage lender, could insist on all of the above before lending
any money.

Why wait? The realty companies and their agents, and the mortgage
lending community can adopt and advertise their own tough policy now.
The marketplace of ethical, cautious and innocent buyers will say thank you.

Thomas S. Peach

Surrey