Derek Hooper, founder and general manager of FirstList/contributed.

 

For years, real estate agents have relied on office conversations, Facebook groups and WhatsApp chats to share information about properties coming soon to market.

Ottawa’s Derek Hooper, a third-generation real estate agent, says he’s found a better way of doing things. 

He’s behind FirstList, a real estate technology company looking to take pre-marketing beyond brokerage offices and private agent networks, allowing upcoming properties to appear on major real estate websites before they are officially listed for sale.

FirstList, acquired by myAbode last November, has launched a coming soon distribution network that allows agents from any brokerage to advertise properties through participating websites, which already include Property.ca and Condos.ca, brands owned by MyAbode.

The service allows agents to publicly market coming soon listings for up to three days before their official launch, giving properties an opportunity to attract buyer interest ahead of time.

 

How the network works

 

 

Buyers can view property information, including the neighbourhood and specifications, but must register to see the address and asking price. Those registrations are passed along to the listing agent as potential leads.

Agents and brokerages can also embed the same feed on their own websites, allowing visitors to browse upcoming listings from across the network.

Hooper says the listing brokerage remains identified wherever its properties appear.

 

From office conversations to a national network

 

Hooper says FirstList grew out of frustrations he encountered as an agent.

Agents often begin working with sellers months before a property is ready to be listed publicly. Some homeowners need time for repairs or staging, while others face personal circumstances that complicate the timing of a sale.

During that period, agents may want to share information about upcoming properties without launching a full public marketing campaign.

“Some were doing it by standing up at their office meeting talking about what they had coming down the pipe,” Hooper says. “Others were putting it in WhatsApp and Facebook groups.”

Despite advances in how consumers search for properties, he saw little comparable progress in how agents shared upcoming opportunities.

That frustration led Hooper and Andrew Paliga, a former Shopify product leader, to establish FirstList in 2023. The system is designed to facilitate collaboration among agents while giving brokerages control over who can access their listings.

Its acquisition by myAbode in November 2025 provided an opportunity to expand that model.

Hooper says he came to recognize that the business was as much about building a marketplace as developing software, connecting agents with properties and finding ways to distribute listings more widely.

Pre-marketing has also attracted attention in the U.S., particularly through Compass and CEO Robert Reffkin’s promotion of private exclusive listings. Hooper says the growing prominence of pre-marketing south of the border helped shine a spotlight on the need for similar services in Canada.

With thousands of agents already using FirstList across Ontario, Hooper says the company recognized an opportunity to build on its existing network by distributing coming soon listings more widely, including through public-facing property websites.

 

Navigating Canada’s listing rules

 

The expansion comes as Canadian agents operate under the Canadian Real Estate Association’s (CREA) Realtor Co-operation Policy, introduced in January 2024 and subsequently amended.

The policy distinguishes between private exclusive listings and publicly marketed properties, requiring the latter to be submitted to the local multiple listing service within the applicable board’s deadline, which cannot exceed three days.

Hooper acknowledges the policy addressed legitimate concerns about how some agents handled coming soon listings.

“There was a lot of inconsistency in the market with how coming soon and off-markets are being handled,” he says.

Some properties, he recalls, were advertised as coming soon for weeks without ever appearing on the multiple listing service. In certain cases, sellers may not have fully understood the marketing strategies their agents were using.

But Hooper believes those practices represented a relatively small portion of the industry, while many agents were simply looking for additional ways to serve clients.

FirstList says it has incorporated CREA’s requirements into its technology, allowing agents to share listings privately or distribute eligible coming soon properties publicly.

The company says exclusive and assignment listings remain within its restricted network and are not included in the public feed.

“We took all of the rules in the policy and we built them into the sharing logic of our platform,” Hooper says.

 

Building beyond Ontario

 

FirstList soft-launched the distribution network in Ottawa on Oct. 13 and is expanding into the Greater Toronto Area.

Hooper says more than 10,000 agents already use its platform, including agents from several major brokerages such as REVEL Realty and Harvey Kalles Real Estate.

The business operates on a subscription model, charging individual agents $49 per month, with discounted plans available to brokerages based on their size.

Participating brokerages receive their own internal listing-sharing networks, while agents can also distribute eligible listings through the broader network.

Hooper says the company intends to expand nationally, positioning its technology as something individual brokerages would find difficult to replicate.

“We really felt like we’re in this unique position that most brokerages won’t be able to build what we’ve built in terms of the cross-brokerage sharing capabilities,” he says.