Turn the sign-in sheet into a dated record, send one factual message to the people who asked to hear from you, and route everyone else to a person rather than a sequence. The step most teams skip sits before the door opens: in Ontario the seller has to give a written direction for the open house, and one of the safeguards RECO expects you to plan for is registering attendees. The sheet that results is personal information, and handing over an email address at a front door is not the same thing as consenting to a newsletter.
Key takeaways
Open house follow-up is where three separate rulebooks meet: the provincial real estate rules that govern the event, the federal privacy rules that govern the sheet, and the anti-spam rules that govern the message. Automation is genuinely useful in all three, but only if the record it builds carries the right fields. A sign-in sheet photographed into a mailing list is the single most common compliance mistake in residential practice.
RECO treats an open house as something the seller authorises, not something the agent schedules. The seller’s written direction must include the date, start time and end time of the open house, the name of the agent or agents hosting it, and any restrictions related to access. To obtain informed consent, the seller’s agent must explain the potential benefits and risks of permitting this type of access, and create a plan for how the agent and the seller can minimise risk, including steps like the removal of valuables and personal information, the registering of attendees, and any restrictions related to access.
Note that registering attendees is framed as a risk-mitigation safeguard agreed with the seller, not as a lead-capture tactic. That is a useful thing to be honest about when you design the form, because it affects what you can say the purpose of the collection is.
Who hosts matters too. Under a brokerage representation agreement any of the brokerage’s agents can represent the seller at the open house. Under designated representation, if the host is not the seller’s designated representative the seller must consent, and the designated representative must explain that the seller’s confidential client information cannot and will not be shared with the hosting agent, that the hosting agent does not represent the seller and must treat them objectively and impartially, and that the hosting agent may actively attempt to engage prospective buyer clients. The hosting agent in that situation must make it clear to attendees that they do not represent the seller, present only factual information about the property and the market, and avoid sharing advice and opinions with attendees they do not represent. Your follow-up template has to match whichever of those is true, or it will misstate the relationship.
Names, emails, phone numbers and often an address collected from identifiable individuals in the course of a commercial activity is personal information. PIPEDA’s principles require identifying the purposes for which personal information is collected at or before the time of collection, obtaining consent, limiting collection to what is necessary for those purposes, and limiting use, disclosure and retention. The Privacy Commissioner’s summary of the Act adds that individuals have a right of access to the personal information an organisation holds about them and a right to challenge its accuracy.
The consent guidance is stricter than most sign-in sheets. Organisations must emphasise what personal information is being collected, with which parties it is being shared, for what purposes, and the risk of harm, with third parties enumerated as specifically as possible. A sheet on a clipboard that says nothing at all satisfies none of that. A short line under the fields — what this is for, who sees it, how to reach the brokerage, how to be removed — does. Our sister firm covers the customer-data rules a small Ontario business has to follow.
This is the step automation most often skips. CASL implies consent in closed categories, and the ones people reach for do not fit a consumer at a front door. The published-address and disclosed-address limbs both require that the message is relevant to the person’s business, role, functions or duties in a business or official capacity — that is not a family looking at a bungalow. The existing business relationship limb that could apply is the inquiry limb, which covers an inquiry made within the six-month period immediately before the message is sent, and if you are relying on it you should be able to show what the inquiry was and when.
The clean answer is to ask expressly, at the door, with the wording the regulations require: the business name, the name of anyone on whose behalf consent is sought with a statement of which is which, a mailing address, one of a telephone number, email address or web address, and a statement that consent can be withdrawn. The regulations allow the request to be obtained orally or in writing, so a tick box on a tablet with that text beside it is enough — and it converts a six-month window into an indefinite one. Our sister firm explains the difference between implied and express consent.
Whatever the basis, the message itself must still identify you and let people out. Subsection 6(2) requires the identification information, a contact route and an unsubscribe mechanism, with effect given no later than 10 business days, and the contact points must stay live for 60 days. If you plan to phone rather than email, the CRTC’s real estate guidance applies instead: the National Do Not Call List is registered and subscribed at brokerage level, the subscribed numbers must be downloaded every 31 days, and call lists must be scrubbed against the National DNCL and the internal lists.
A busy open house is also where implied representation gets created. RECO’s examples are directly on point: handing a feature sheet to each visitor is providing information, and so is answering factual questions about the property. The moment the conversation turns to what they should offer, or a visitor starts telling you what they can afford and why they need to move, caution is required, because when you begin providing advice or services you are creating implied representation.
The follow-up message inherits that. A template that says “based on what you told me, this is the right house for you” is advice sent to someone with no agreement. A template that says what the property is, who you are, which brokerage you are registered with and when you are available is information.
What the sign-in record should actually capture
Identity and channel — name, and only the contact fields you will genuinely use.
Consent — a separate tick box with the prescribed wording, its exact text stored, plus timestamp.
Representation status — whether they said they have an agent, which changes who may contact them.
Property and event — which open house, which hosting agent, and whether that agent represented the seller.
Purpose statement shown — the version of the privacy notice they actually saw.
Four things, none of them clever. Read the sheet or the tablet form into the CRM with every field above, so the consent basis is recorded at the moment of collection rather than reconstructed later. Suppress anyone who indicated they are represented, because RECO requires communication through the other agent unless the other agent’s written consent is obtained. Draft one factual follow-up per person against a locked template carrying the identification block. And schedule the seller’s report — how many attended, what was asked about, what was said about condition — which is the thing the seller actually wants and the thing that never gets written.
What it should not do is generate a “just sold” or “just listed” blast off the same list without checking consent, or name the property and its price. RECO requires written consent, with a stated effective date and expiry date, before an advertisement identifies a party, identifies a specific property, or reveals the contents of an agreement of purchase and sale.
The following is illustrative — a composite of how the workflow is usually assembled, not a measured result.
Before the Saturday open house, the listing agent sends the seller a short written direction generated from the file: date, 2pm to 4pm, the two hosting agents by name, no access to the basement office, valuables and personal papers removed, attendees registered on a tablet. The seller signs it electronically and it goes into the file.
At the door, visitors sign in on the tablet. The screen states the brokerage, what the information is for, and who to contact; a separate tick box asks permission to send market updates, with the prescribed wording beside it. One field asks whether they are working with an agent.
By 5pm, everyone who ticked the box has a factual message naming the brokerage and offering two times. Those who are represented get nothing; their names go into the seller’s attendance report instead. Those who did not tick the box get one message only, relying on the six-month inquiry basis, which the record shows and dates. On Sunday morning the seller gets a one-page report drafted from the hosting agents’ notes, edited and signed by the listing agent.
Not on the strength of the sheet alone. Signing in is not one of CASL’s implied consent categories, and the business-capacity limbs do not describe a consumer visiting a house. Ask expressly with the prescribed wording, and record the answer per person — that record is what you would need to produce.
In Ontario you need their written direction with the specified contents, and the informed consent conversation behind it. RECO frames the alternatives clearly when the agent the seller works with cannot attend: another agent from the brokerage steps in, or the seller postpones the open house until their agent is available. Automation should be generating that direction from the file, not assuming it exists.
Be careful. Information about competing offers is governed separately, and RECO publishes guidance for consumers inquiring about the number of offers on a property, alongside its wider explanation of what TRESA changed for buyers and sellers. State the process facts the seller has authorised you to state, and route anything else to a person.
For the message that follows once someone is genuinely in your database, see staying in touch with past clients. For what the co-operating agents said about the property, see collecting showing feedback.
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