Toronto-area home owners and house-hunters are one step closer to being able to find out online how much the house down the street sold for without meeting personally with a real estate agent.

A Federal Court of Appeal has upheld an April 2016 decision by Canada’s Competition Tribunal that ordered the Toronto Real Estate Board to allow its members to share the sales histories of listed properties online.

TREB says it will appeal the decision and ask the Supreme Court of Canada to stay the tribunal order that the new rules take effect immediately.

Meanwhile, Commissioner of Competition John Pecman says Friday’s ruling is an important win for competition and consumers.

“It paves the way for much needed innovation in the real estate industry,” he said in a statement about the case has been going on for six years.

Realtors say it’s also a victory for online brokerages, which are members of TREB, who want to offer sales histories to their clients online, as well as other information from TREB’s Multiple Listings Service (MLS), such as commission rates, previous listings on the same property and transactions that haven’t closed.

TREB wants that information to be disclosed directly by realtors to their clients.

In April 2016, the tribunal upheld an argument by the Competition Commissioner that TREB’s restrictions on online realtors was stifling competition and innovation.

The court upheld the tribunal’s finding that TREB has the ability to influence the competitive landscape; that it isn’t genuinely concerned with consumer privacy, and that it had copyright issues around the use of its MLS database.

Lawrence Dale, who is suing TREB and the Canadian Real Estate Association, claiming it shut down a real estate business he started with Bell Canada about 10 years ago, said the restrictions on internet-based brokerages hurt “my own attempts to offer innovative and low-cost brokerage services.

“TREB’s conduct has improperly stifled legitimate businesses and harmed consumers by limiting the choices of residential brokerage services. It’s apparent that this conduct has prevented any new entrants from cracking into the marketplace,” he said.

TREB’s continued fight against the release of data on the sales of individual properties is at odds with many of its 46,000 member agents, said broker John Pasalis of Realosophy, who assisted the Competition Commissioner in its case.

He said he doesn’t buy TREB’s privacy argument. He believes the board was trying to protect the traditional way of doing business.

“What they do is a reflection of what (TREB) believes,” he said, noting that two established Toronto brokerages were sharing sold information online, one for nearly a year, and the board did not act.

Condos.ca, a specialized Toronto brokerage, won’t switch on the sold data to immediately, said vice-president Andrew Harrild. But more online data is inevitable and there’s nothing for real estate agents to fear.

“It’s a sad state of affairs if being the gatekeeper to historical sales is your value proposition as a realtor,” he said.

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Selling prices and mortgage information are publicly available through the Ontario Land Registry office. U.S. websites, such as Zillow.com, have been publishing property sales histories for years.

The decision to uphold the Competition Tribunal ruling is expected to have widespread ramifications and affect how other real estate boards provide services to customers on the internet.

With files by The Canadian Press