A B.C. real estate agent has agreed to pay her profession’s provincial regulator more than $33,000 to resolve allegations that she managed rental properties without a licence to do so. Anh Thuy Hoang entered a consent order agreement with the B.C. Financial Services Authority on June 26, and a redacted version of the document was published online earlier this month. Hoang has been licensed under B.C.’s Real Estate Services Act since 1998, according to the agreement. However, until July 2024, she was licensed only as a “trading representative”—the act’s term for Realtors and other agents that represent buyers and sellers of property—and not as a rental property manager. Since July 2024, Hoang has been licensed in both rental property management and trading services. Hoang’s misconduct began in December 2018, when she “entered an informal agreement” with a former client whose homes she had listed for sale earlier that year, according to the consent order. The document indicates that Hoang agreed to provide property management services for the client’s homes in Port Moody and New Westminster, as well as for an additional property in Port Moody owned by the client’s sister. The informal agreement called for Hoang to manage the properties “without receiving remuneration,” according to the consent order, which does not make clear what benefit—if any—Hoang gained from this arrangement. Hoang collected rents on the three properties and deposited the funds into the client’s accounts, arranged property tax payments on the client’s behalf, advertised the properties for rent and organized showings for prospective tenants, prepared rental agreements, negotiated rent increases and co-ordinated with tenants on repairs to the properties and replacement appliances, the consent order indicates. “Ms. Hoang acknowledges that the activities she engaged in with respect to the properties … constituted the provision of rental property management services,” the document reads. “At no time did Ms. Hoang pay or deliver to the brokerages, with whom she was licensed, all money held or received from, for or on behalf of (the client) in relation to rental property management services provided by her in relation to the properties.” In signing the consent order, Hoang admitted that her provision of property management services while unlicensed amounted to professional misconduct, as did her failure to inform her employers about the arrangement and to route the rent payments she collected through her employers’ trust accounts. She agreed to pay the BCFSA a $30,000 penalty, plus $3,764.28 in “enforcement expenses” to resolve the issue. The consent order notes that Hoang has no previous history of discipline from the regulator.
