B.C. Realtor who ‘intentionally undermined’ client has licence cancelled, must pay $120K

Real estate sale signage is shown on a street in Oakville, Ont., west of Toronto, on Thursday, Nov.7, 2024. (Richard Buchan / The Canadian Press)

A B.C. Realtor who lost a court case against a former client earlier this year has now had his licence cancelled by the provincial real estate regulator.

Alan Hu and his Personal Real Estate Corporation recently entered a consent order agreement with the B.C. Financial Services Authority, in which they agreed to pay a $120,000 fine and have their licences cancelled.

The penalties stem from the same incident that led to a court decision against Hu in January, in which B.C. Supreme Court Justice Amy D. Francis found Hu had “intentionally undermined” his client Pei Hua Zhong by purchasing for himself the Surrey home that Zhong had made an offer to buy.

• Read more: B.C. Realtor ‘intentionally undermined’ his client’s offer, then purchased property himself, court finds

Francis’ decision in the case describes Hu’s conduct as “deceptive and underhanded” – a description that is repeated in the consent order document published on the BCFSA website Friday.

What happened

The court case revolved around Zhong’s attempts to purchase a property on 174 Street near 20 Avenue in Surrey. The one-acre parcel had an assessed value of just over $3 million for 2025, according to BC Assessment.

Zhong met Hu in November 2017 and hired the Realtor to facilitate both the sale of his home on Poplar Drive and the purchase of a new home, according to the court decision.

Through Hu, Zhong made two offers to purchase the 174 Street property. The first, for $2.1 million, was accepted, but expired when Zhong was unable to sell his home in time to raise the necessary funds for the down payment.

While the first offer was expiring in late December 2017, Hu was in Las Vegas with his wife and another couple – Lingxia Tao and her husband Zhi Chen.

According to the decision, what exactly was discussed between the parties in Las Vegas was disputed during the court proceedings, but the end result was that Tao made an offer on the 174 Street property for slightly less than $2.1 million, which was accepted, while Zhong made a new offer of $2.05 million, which was rejected.

Two weeks later, Tao assigned her contract to purchase the property to Hu, who ultimately completed the transaction.

Hu later sold the property in September 2021 for $3.35 million – a profit of more than $1.2 million over what he had paid when he assumed Tao’s contract less than four years earlier.

Francis ruled in Zhong’s favour, ordering Hu to “disgorge” his portion of the profits, a number that remained unspecified in the court decision because of ongoing litigation between Hu and Tao over their purported agreement to invest in real estate together.

Regulator-imposed consequences

The BCFSA consent order details these same circumstances, albeit with the names of the other parties and the address of the property redacted.

According to the document, Hu’s client (Zhong) learned that Hu was the owner of the property when he performed a title search in September 2021.

Zhong filed his civil lawsuit in January 2022. In April of that year, he submitted a complaint to the BCFSA, the consent order indicates.

The document notes that Hu made false statements to BCFSA investigators about his agreement with Tao and falsely claimed that he had offered Zhong the opportunity to take the assignment of the contract to buy the 174 Street property. He later admitted during the trial that he had never told Zhong about the assignment.

Hu also failed to notify the BCFSA when the B.C. Supreme Court judgment against him was issued earlier this year, according to the consent order.

In the agreement, Hu admits to a lengthy list of conduct unbecoming of a licensee and professional misconduct, including:

• Failing to act honestly in providing real estate services
• Failing to disclose “all known material information” to a client
• Failing to maintain the client’s confidentiality
• Failing to act in the best interests of the client
• Failing to take reasonable steps to avoid a conflict of interest
• Failing to promptly and fully disclose a conflict of interest to a client
• Providing trading services outside of the brokerage with which he and his PREC were licensed
• Collecting funds in relation to the purchase of a property without promptly remitting the money to his brokerage
• Failing to keep the brokerage’s managing broker informed of the assignment contract
• Failing to promptly notify the BCFSA of the court judgment
• Failing or refusing to co-operate with an investigation
• And making false or misleading statements in relation to an investigation

Hu and his company admitted this misconduct and agreed to the cancellation of their licences. They are jointly required to pay the $120,000 fine within six months of signing the consent order agreement.

“Real estate licensees have an enshrined duty to act in the best interests of their client, and Hu’s actions ran wholly contrary to that duty,” said Jon Vandall, the BCFSA’s senior vice-president of compliance and enforcement, in a news release issued Friday.

“Hu undermined his own client for personal gain and demonstrated a clear disregard for the established ethical expectations for licensees. The significant penalty issued to Hu, including the outright cancellation of his real estate licence, reflects the severity of Hu’s actions.”