Anonymised, illustrative composite. A London, Ontario broker dropped by a for-sale-by-owner listing, walked the main floor at the seller's invitation, and told them their asking price was too low. No paperwork changed hands — but under TRESA, paperwork was never the test that mattered.
At a glance
A broker driving a target neighbourhood spotted a for-sale-by-owner sign and stopped. The seller, home and happy to talk, invited the broker inside for a look around. Over about twenty minutes, the broker walked the main floor, commented on staging and a few visible repair items, and volunteered that the listed price — set by the seller using an online estimate — was “probably $30,000 light for this street.” No card was formally presented as a listing pitch; the broker's own account of the visit was that it was “just a conversation, nothing official.”
The seller did not sign anything, did not agree to list with the broker's brokerage, and in fact sold the home two months later through a different agent entirely. That agent, reviewing the file, heard about the earlier walk-through from the seller and flagged it as a possible TRESA issue.
Before TRESA, an unsigned, informal conversation like this one would likely have been framed as ordinary customer service — friendly, non-binding, no duties attached. That category no longer exists. RECO's own bulletin is explicit: “there is no equivalent to a customer or a customer agreement under TRESA,” and any surviving customer arrangement from the old regime automatically expired March 30, 2024. A real estate agent dealing with anyone on a trade is either representing them under a written agreement, or the person is a self-represented party — a materially different relationship with its own duties, not a synonym for the old customer tier.
Bulletin 2.7 names the specific conduct that creates an implied representation agreement even with nothing signed: “giving advice related to a trade” and “acting in a way that requires the use of your judgment or discretion on which a buyer or seller might rely.” A walk-through opinion that the list price was $30,000 light is advice related to a trade in exactly that sense — it is the kind of judgment call a seller would reasonably rely on.
The seller's self-set list price was $549,000; the broker's verbal opinion put fair value closer to $579,000, based on a twenty-minute walk-through with no comparative market analysis prepared, shown, or left behind.
The home ultimately sold two months later, through a different brokerage, for $562,000 — a figure the complaint did not turn on, since the issue was the conduct of the earlier visit, not whether the broker's opinion had been numerically accurate.
The determining question was not whether an agreement was signed — TRESA does not require a signature to create the relationship in the first place. It was whether the broker's conduct fell inside Bulletin 2.7's list of conduct that implies representation. Volunteering a specific dollar opinion on an active listing, unprompted by any request for a formal appraisal, sits squarely inside that list.
Once an implied representation agreement exists, the fiduciary duties that come with it — loyalty, disclosure, avoiding conflicts — attach automatically, whether or not the broker turned out to be prepared to service them. That is the structural risk TRESA's elimination of the customer tier was built to surface: an agent cannot informally “help out” a for-sale-by-owner seller without the possibility of having created exactly the relationship a formal representation agreement is supposed to define on purpose.
The broker's managing brokerage required a written note to the seller clarifying the visit had not created any representation relationship and that no fee or exclusivity obligation existed — sent as a precaution, since the seller had already engaged a different agent by that point and no ongoing dispute over compensation followed.
The complaint did not proceed to a RECO discipline hearing but produced a documented coaching note in the broker's file, and the brokerage updated its own guidance for agents approaching for-sale-by-owner sellers: a first visit may confirm interest and schedule a proper conversation, but may not include a walk-through valuation opinion.
For the expired-listing variant of the same implied-representation trap, see outreach to an expired listing, timed wrong, and for the category TRESA removed altogether, the customer-service-agreement glossary entry.
The tell was the broker's own description of the visit as “nothing official.” Under TRESA, that framing does not exist as a legal category — a real estate agent's conduct with a member of the public is either inside a representation agreement, or it is a self-represented-party interaction with none of the advice-giving that Bulletin 2.7 flags. There is no informal middle ground left to retreat to once a valuation opinion has actually been given.
A short call is enough to see how AI-assisted scripting keeps a first FSBO conversation on the right side of TRESA.
