Real Estate Agents: directory of firms

There is no single national real estate licence in Canada. Each province runs its own register, and each regulator publishes a free public search that tells you whether the person in front of you is entitled to trade in real estate right now. Checking takes a minute and is the single most useful step a buyer or seller can take before signing anything.

Search by the person's name or by the brokerage. If the name does not appear, or appears with a status other than active, stop and ask the brokerage to explain before you go further. Registers also surface conditions, restrictions and recent discipline, which a business card will never show you.

The most consequential decision in a transaction is whether you are a client of a brokerage or are dealing with the other side's agent without representation of your own. A client has an agreement with a brokerage and is owed the duties that come with it. Someone who chooses to proceed without representation is treated very differently, and the agent across the table is working to promote the other party's interests.

Ontario makes this explicit. Under the Trust in Real Estate Services Act, an agent must give the RECO Information Guide to a person before providing services or assistance, and must explain it. A person who is not a client of a brokerage is a self-represented party, and before assisting them the agent must provide a prescribed information and disclosure form. Its purpose is to make sure the person understands the risks of taking help from an agent who is promoting the other side's interests, the limited nature of that help, and that they should get independent professional advice first.

Other provinces handle the same problem with their own disclosure rules and forms. Whatever province you are in, ask the agent to state in writing who they act for, what they will and will not do for you, and how the arrangement can be ended.

Remuneration is a matter of agreement between you and the brokerage, and it belongs in the written agreement you sign rather than in a verbal understanding. Ask how it is calculated, what triggers it, and when it becomes payable. Ask what happens if the property does not sell, if you cancel partway through, or if a deal collapses after conditions are waived, since those answers come from the wording of your agreement.

Also ask what falls outside the brokerage's remuneration. Legal or notarial fees, a home inspection, a survey, lender and appraisal charges, title insurance, moving costs and government charges on a purchase are separate, and several of them vary by province and municipality. Getting the full list early prevents unpleasant surprises close to closing.

Selling privately is legal: the licensing rules apply to people who trade in real estate for others, not to an owner selling their own property. What an owner gives up is the brokerage's marketing reach, its experience reading offers and conditions, and someone whose job is to run the negotiation and keep the deadlines. What they gain is direct control and no brokerage remuneration.

The practical middle ground is to be clear-eyed about the parts you are taking on: pricing without access to the same comparable data, fielding enquiries and showings, drafting an offer that protects you, and managing the period between a firm deal and closing. Owners who sell privately often still engage a lawyer or notary early, and some buy an independent appraisal rather than relying on an informal estimate.