The rules around self-represented parties can be less frightening than the stories agents tell. (Photo created with the help of AI)

 

Every brokerage has its campfire stories, and around Halloween they get told a little louder. The agent who lost a deal over one missing initial. The buyer who sued over a damp basement. And since December 2023, when Ontario’s new rules on representation took effect, a whole new set about the self-represented party (SRP).

SRP stories are some of the scariest in the business, judging by how agents tell them. I hear them in the office, in Facebook groups and in questions that still reach my desk regularly, nearly three years after the rules arrived. Most of them have a real rule buried inside. The rule is almost never the frightening part.

A quick note for readers outside Ontario: what follows is Ontario law, under the Trust in Real Estate Services Act (TRESA) and its regulations. Your province handles unrepresented parties its own way, so check your own rules. The habits at the end travel anywhere.

 

‘You can’t help an SRP at all’

 

Agents tell this one as though the unrepresented buyer on your listing is a ghost you are forbidden to speak to. The real rule is narrower. Section 10 of the Code of Ethics says a registrant cannot provide services, opinions or advice to a self-represented party, or encourage them to rely on the registrant’s knowledge, skill or judgment.

RECO’s Bulletin 2.4 then describes what you can do: assistance that is a service to your own client, in your client’s best interests and in line with your client’s lawful instructions. Booking the showing, sending the documents your seller wants shared and explaining how offers will be handled are your client’s business being done, with the SRP on the other end of it. What stays off-limits is anything that sounds like advice to them. The bulletin names price, terms and offer clauses.

 

‘Get the form signed and you’re covered’

 

This is the most dangerous story of the lot, because it sounds like good compliance. Before you assist an SRP, you must give them RECO’s Information Guide and the Information and Disclosure to Self-represented Party form, explain them and make best efforts to get a written acknowledgement. Do all of it.

Then read the warning in the same bulletin. Even with the acknowledgement signed, if you exercise discretion, give advice, offer opinions or advocate for the SRP, you risk creating an implied representation agreement. At that point you may be in multiple representation without the disclosure and consents it requires. The form records what you told them. Your conduct afterward decides whether it stays true.

 

‘If the seller has no agent, you won’t get paid’

 

Buyer agents dread this one. It is true that a brokerage cannot have its own agreement with a party it does not represent, and RECO’s TRESA FAQ is clear that you cannot collect remuneration from an SRP. It does not follow that you work for free.

The commission agreement is signed between your buyer and the seller on OREA Form 223, and OREA’s standard clause directing the seller’s lawyer to pay the brokerage from the sale proceeds goes into the agreement of purchase and sale. At my brokerage we add that clause every time, even when the deposit looks large enough to cover the commission. Deposits have a way of shrinking at the worst possible moment.

 

‘Where did the OREA SRP forms go?’

 

A smaller ghost, but it still haunts a few filing cabinets. OREA created a family of SRP acknowledgement and consent forms and then discontinued them in November 2024. If someone in your office still has old copies saved as templates, bury them (the forms) in your backyard or give them a proper bonfire on Oct. 31. The document that matters is RECO’s disclosure form, which carries its own acknowledgement.’

 

‘Once they choose to go it alone, they’re stuck that way’

 

RECO’s own guide says very few buyers or sellers choose to represent themselves, and it tells them plainly they can become a client of a brokerage at any point in the transaction. When an SRP needs more help than you are allowed to give, the bulletin’s answer is to encourage them to get their own representation. Say it early and say it kindly. It protects them, and it protects your client’s deal from an SRP who panics at the lawyer’s office.

 

How to deal with one, in order

 

1. Ask first. Before anything substantive, find out whether the person is working with a brokerage.
2. Paperwork before help. Give the Information Guide and the RECO disclosure form, walk them through both and make best efforts to get the signed acknowledgement. Keep a copy and give them one.
3. Say who you work for. Tell them you represent your client, you do not represent them and anything they tell you may go to your client.
4. Run every request through RECO’s test. Is this a service to my client, in my client’s interests, free of advice to them and not inviting them to rely on me? If any answer is no, the answer to them is no.
5. Write it down. Note what you said, when and how they responded.
6. Point them to help. When they need more than you can give, recommend they get their own agent or a lawyer.
7. Tread carefully on offers. Opinion is split on whether you can create an offer when working with an SRP. The safest bet is to send them to their lawyer to draw up the offer. The other option could be to draft the offer purely for your seller client’s benefit. Have a chat with your broker of record to confirm which is best for your situation.

 

The real villain

 

The scariest SRP story I know does not have an SRP as the villain. It has an agent who wanted to be helpful, answered one question too many and ended up representing both sides of a deal with none of the paperwork that requires.

The first section of the Code of Ethics asks us to act with courtesy, honesty, good faith and integrity toward every person we deal with. That includes the SRP. So be polite to them and be honest with them. Just remember you are not their agent.