The request rarely arrives as “break the rules for me.” It arrives as “just tell them there are more offers than there actually are” or “don’t mention that yet.” Knowing precisely what a client can lawfully instruct you to do — and what they cannot, no matter how they phrase it — is what lets you hold the line without turning every conversation into a confrontation.
Key takeaways
By far the most frequent variant is a seller wanting you to overstate competing interest — “tell them there are three other offers” when there are none, or one that has not actually been submitted. RECO is precise about what actually counts: the competing-offer requirements “apply to written offers received by the seller’s brokerage.” “A verbal offer is not a competing offer under the legislation. An offer that has not yet been submitted is not a competing offer.” (RECO Bulletin 4.1) Telling a bidder there are competing offers that do not exist is not a grey area within this rule — it is stating something false about a defined term the legislation itself controls.
The line worth knowing exactly is this: “without the seller’s written direction, the seller’s agent is prohibited from sharing the content of offers” — the seller controls whether and how much content is disclosed to other bidders, and can change that instruction at any time. But that is a different question from whether the agent presents an offer to the seller at all — RECO’s bulletin governs disclosure between competing parties, and a separate duty establishes the obligation to present offers to your own client. (RECO Bulletin 4.1) A seller telling you “don’t share my terms with the other side” is inside their rights. A seller telling you “don’t bring me that offer” or “tell them something that isn’t true about how many offers I have” is asking you to do something the rule does not give them the authority to instruct.
RECO’s Code of Ethics gives you a principled way to decline without turning it into an accusation. Registrants must act with “integrity, honesty, good faith, courtesy,” where good faith specifically means “acting reasonably, refraining from actions that could cause harm to any party, and avoiding abusive and arbitrary behaviour,” and the rule for a registrant who cannot competently continue is to “advise the client or potential client to obtain services from another person.” (RECO Bulletin 1.1) Framed this way, declining is not a lecture about ethics — it is simply telling the client you cannot continue on the instruction as given, and that they are entitled to work with someone else if they want to pursue it.
RECO’s discipline process does not evaluate a single incident in isolation. When deciding what action to take on a complaint, RECO explicitly “considers whether the real estate agent or brokerage involved has a history or pattern of misconduct.” (RECO, After a complaint is submitted) A single bent instruction, done once as a favour to a client under pressure, rarely stays a single incident once a file is actually pulled — it tends to sit alongside every other place where a shortcut was taken, which is exactly what a pattern-of-conduct review is designed to surface.
The other frequent ask is a seller wanting a known problem left unmentioned — a leak, a past flood, a structural issue. RECO’s material facts bulletin names exactly this kind of item on its own list of what is “often considered to be material facts”: “A history of flooding, structural damage, or any previous dwelling fire,” alongside things like knob-and-tube wiring, lead or galvanized plumbing, and whether a property was used as a grow operation. (RECO Bulletin 7.3) RECO’s own four-step process for these is disclose, then advise the client to consider whether it might affect their decision, then obtain an acknowledgement — a client asking you to skip that is asking you to skip a defined obligation, not a matter of professional judgment. Separately, RECO’s Code of Ethics is explicit about what sits on the other side of the line from an ordinary negotiating position: conduct “reasonably be regarded as being disgraceful, dishonourable, unprofessional, or unbecoming,” and specifically “misrepresentation” and “fraud,” are named as prohibited outright. (RECO Bulletin 1.1)
Alberta’s discipline structure makes the escalation risk concrete. RECA’s sanctions run from a Letter of Reprimand for minor or technical breaches, up through an Administrative Penalty, to a Hearing Panel whose outcomes “can include fines, costs, education requirements, terms or conditions on a licence, and/or suspensions.” (RECA, Submitting a complaint) A first bent rule, handled informally by a broker as a minor issue, is not the same file as a second or third one — the ladder exists precisely because regulators across provinces treat repetition as the signal that separates an isolated lapse from a pattern worth escalating.
A seller with one written offer on the table asks you to tell a second, still-interested party that “there are already two other offers, so they should come in strong.” You can lawfully decline to share the actual offer’s content without the seller’s written direction — that is their call. You cannot lawfully invent a second offer that does not exist, because RECO’s own definition of what counts is not something the seller’s instruction can override. The honest version of the same negotiating pressure — “there is strong interest, and the seller would like your best offer” — achieves the same commercial goal without misstating a defined fact.
Related: see the fuller sequence for declaring a conflict before you act, and the case file on a conflict nobody declared for what a similar shortcut costs once it surfaces.
No source supports a seller directing their own agent not to present an offer — the seller’s control is over what offer content gets shared with other bidders, not over whether their own agent brings them an offer that has been made.
RECO’s discipline process does not evaluate a rule against how commonly it may be broken elsewhere — it evaluates the specific conduct against the Code of Ethics and TRESA, and a pattern of similar conduct is treated as an aggravating factor, not a defence.
State plainly what you can and cannot do, and why — RECO’s own competence rule frames a referral elsewhere as a legitimate outcome, not a failure, so a client who genuinely wants the rule bent is free to find someone else, and that is a better outcome than continuing on those terms.
A short call can help you script the conversation before the next client asks you to bend something.
