TORONTO - Yvonne Kraft feels trapped between listing without using the most widely viewed service in Canada or paying commission on a house she's confident will sell as soon as the sign goes up.

"There's nothing in between, it would be nice to have a choice," said the interior designer from Hamilton who has privately sold houses twice.

Kraft says when she sold her house five years ago, she was one of only a handful of private sellers, but a growth of do-it-yourself websites has made private listing more mainstream.

"The do-it-yourself real estate industry is growing in spite of the real estate board not wanting to budge on their regulations, it's going to grow on its own and if they don't want to join the party then they're going to be left out," she said.

The Canadian Real Estate Association, which represents about 98,000 realtors, loosened its rules Monday to lift restrictions on realtors' minimum service requirements and allow consumers to use an agent to simply list their property and handle the details on their own.

But the Competition Bureau rejected those changes saying they do not create more choice for home buyers and sellers, and instead give realtors a "blank cheque" to impose new anti-competitive rules.

Commissioner of competition Melanie Aitken told the Calgary Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday that there is no guarantee the amendments are permanent.

"Until there is some certainty that the rules aren't going to shift, that it's not going to be a risk of a fleeting opportunity, (realtors are) not going to make the investment to offer up those innovative service and pricing models, she said.

"Until they do so, we're concerned we're not going to see the choice for the Canadian consumer and we're not going to see the downward pressure on prices that we would otherwise expect to see."

The bureau has said it will continue to pursue an application filed with the Competition Tribunal in February seeking to strike down CREA's rules on the use of its Multiple Listings Service, which it has said restrict consumers' ability to conduct real estate transactions without an agent.

CREA allows only its members to post homes for sale on its MLS database, which is operated by regional real estate boards and where 90 per cent of homes in Canada are sold.

Kraft says the rules preventing her from listing her home on MLS drive her to use smaller private web sites that charge a flat fee.

"(But) not everyone knows to look there, I don't even look there myself," she said.

Listing privately also reduces the number of potential buyers who see her home, she said, because part of the CREA rules require a listing agent to give the buying agent a percentage of commission, and they're less inclined to show a home they won't be making a profit from.

Kraft said she wants to be able to decide which services she would like an agent to provide and which she'd do herself.

"There's people like me, if you've bought and sold a few houses you know exactly what an agent has to do, its no big mystery," she said.

John Andrew, director of the executive seminars on real estate at Queen's University, noted most buyers already do online research and no longer wait for an agent to present them with homes.

"Most consumers want to do at least the initial leg work themselves...and it's bad for the industry that people haven't really been able to do that."

He added that CREA could have avoided the anti-competition troubles by updating the site and making more information available to consumers, to help turn casual shoppers into customers.

"The way it is now if you're interested in possibly moving, possibly looking for another house, you've basically got no choice but to hire an agent."

Philip Soper, president of Royal LePage, said the changes to the association's rules do give agents more flexibility to offer "a la carte" services, which will prompt an increase in the number of discount brokerages.

He added the industry is seeing a number of consumer portals cropping up, adding that Kijiji, an eBay subsidiary that operates online classified, is already Canada's second largest real estate site.

But Soper said even if the data available on the MLS system was opened to consumers, the industry wouldn't change dramatically.

"There are many low priced alternatives already competing for the price sensitive portion of the market, so I don't think rule changes will result in a big shift in the way real estate services are offered in Canada."

Soper said it wouldn't be any more complicated than using websites like Kijiji or Craigslist for a homeowner to list a home themselves, but added privacy would be a major concern.

"By far and away the majority of people pay a realtor to act as a screen in order to weed out serious offers from tire kickers or worse, people who are just trying to sell you something."