A real estate salesperson from the Niagara region has been ordered to pay a significant fine and complete ethics training after a discipline panel found she engaged in a years-long conflict of interest with her own client, which included secretly removing the client from a purchase agreement, entering into a private trust and loan agreement, and later attempting to sell the same property back to the client’s family for a profit and commission.
The Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) has ordered Kamaljeet Kaur Ghotra to pay a fine of $33,000.00 following a disciplinary hearing that reviewed her conduct in a series of transactions involving a Niagara Falls property. Ghotra, who was employed with Century 21 People’s Choice Realty Inc. at the time, was found to have breached numerous sections of the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act (REBBA) Code of Ethics, including those pertaining to fairness, acting in a client’s best interest, and unprofessional conduct.
The case began in February 2017 when Napinder Kaur, who held a Canadian work visa, retained Ghotra to help her family find a home. In March 2017, Ghotra showed her client a property located at 7786 Spring Blossom Drive in Niagara Falls. According to an Agreed Statement of Facts submitted to the discipline committee, Ghotra advised Kaur that she would assist in securing a mortgage, as Kaur would not qualify on her own.
On March 12, 2017, an unconditional Agreement of Purchase and Sale (APS) was signed for the property for a price of $770,000.00. Unusually, both the client, Kaur, and the salesperson, Ghotra, were listed as joint buyers on the agreement. Ghotra was also named as the salesperson representing the buyers. The following day, Kaur paid the required $25,000.00 deposit. The committee noted that at no point did Ghotra formalize her representation of Kaur with a written buyer representation agreement, a direct contravention of industry rules.
Events took a significant turn on April 28, 2017, when Ghotra signed an amendment to the purchase agreement that removed Kaur as a buyer, leaving Ghotra as the sole purchaser on paper. The facts state that Kaur did not sign this amendment and was not aware it had been executed. Furthermore, Ghotra failed to provide a copy of this critical document to her brokerage, People’s Choice.
As the May 15, 2017 closing date approached, it became clear that Kaur’s immigration status would trigger a non-resident requirement for a 35% down payment and other international buyers’ fees. This led to a new arrangement. Ghotra and Kaur entered into an oral trust agreement, whereby Ghotra would secure the mortgage and hold legal title to the property in her name alone, while Kaur would be responsible for all carrying costs, including the down payment, mortgage payments, taxes, and utilities.
Kaur was short on the down payment, and Ghotra agreed to advance her $40,000.00. This arrangement was formalized in a Trust Agreement on May 13, 2017, which was drafted by Ghotra’s lawyer. The agreement stipulated that Ghotra would hold a 100% interest in the property on behalf of Kaur for one year. It also included a clause requiring Kaur to pay Ghotra a total of $52,000.00 by the end of that year. The facts revealed this amount represented the repayment of the $40,000.00 advance plus an additional $12,000.00 in interest or fees for Ghotra’s service. Kaur was reportedly unaware of this $12,000.00 charge until the moment of signing. The committee noted that Ghotra never advised Kaur to seek independent legal advice before entering the Trust Agreement, nor did she provide a copy of it to her brokerage.
The property sale closed on May 15, 2017, and Ghotra was subsequently paid $20,664.87 in commission as the buyer’s representative. From that point on, Kaur and her family resided in the home and paid all associated costs, eventually repaying the full $52,000.00 owed to Ghotra by mid-2018.
In January 2018, before the one-year term of the Trust Agreement had expired, Ghotra informed her clients that she no longer wished to hold the property in trust. As Kaur and her family were not yet able to secure their own mortgage, they agreed to list the property for sale with Ghotra acting as their listing agent. The property was listed nine separate times between January 2018 and March 2020 without a successful sale.
By the spring of 2021, the clients were finally in a position to obtain their own mortgage. They requested that Ghotra transfer the title of the property to Kaur’s son, Akshak Kanda, as per the original understanding. Ghotra refused. Instead, she offered to sell the property to Kanda for $860,000.00, conditioning the sale on her acting as both the seller and buyer representative and collecting a 5% total commission.
An agreement was signed on April 6, 2021, under these terms. Again, no written buyer representation agreement was created for Kanda. Ghotra also required that her own closing lawyer handle the entire transaction. The deal fell apart on the closing date of April 30, 2021, when Ghotra failed to provide a direction to her lawyer confirming that the proceeds of the sale would go to Kaur. Ghotra remained on title to the property.
The dispute escalated, leading Kaur to file a lawsuit against Ghotra in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in August 2021. According to the agreed facts, Ghotra later claimed that the Trust Agreement had “expired” and that she was a 50% “partner” in the property, entitled to half of any sale proceeds in addition to a commission.
The RECO discipline committee found Ghotra had violated multiple sections of the Code of Ethics by failing to use written representation agreements, amending a contract without her client’s knowledge, placing her own financial interests above her client’s, failing to honour the terms of the Trust Agreement, and concealing key documents from her brokerage. These actions were collectively deemed to be disgraceful, dishonourable, and unprofessional.
In addition to the $33,000.00 fine, which must be paid within 275 days, Ghotra is required to successfully complete the “Ethics in Business Practice” course from the Real Estate Institute of Canada within 90 days of the decision.
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