You can see it in the systems we log into, the rules they embed and the rituals that follow. It governs without ever being named; a living document we inherit but no longer author. 

Over the past several years, new technologies, leadership shifts and branding debates have revealed just how far that constitution has drifted from its original intent.  

What follows isn’t a history – it’s an excavation and, I hope, the beginning of a rewrite. 

I. The illusion of control 

Every morning, Realtors log into the systems that decide what they can say, how they can say it and how visible their work will be. 

We call it technology, but it’s governance by another name; a rulebook written in code instead of bylaws. 

This is about power, and how quietly it moved out of reach. 

Each field, validation rule, and search filter enforces policy in ways few members ever see. 

We think we’re entering data; we’re actually performing compliance. 

The platforms we use don’t just reflect the profession; they define it, and somewhere between the first upload and the latest system migration, control slipped. 

Organized real estate still speaks the language of democracy, but its constitution has already been rewritten inside the software. 

II. From representation to ritual 

Boards were never meant to be monuments. They were tools built by practitioners to solve shared problems. But over time, the procedure became the product. 

Today, most boards operate less like professional communities and more like small parliaments. Quorums small enough to fit in a classroom can amend bylaws for tens of thousands of members. Proxy stacking concentrates control. Consultations are staged after decisions are made. 

This isn’t malice; it’s muscle memory. Every cycle inherits the same playbook: stability first, scrutiny second. “Continuity” becomes “competence.” “Dissent” becomes “disloyalty.” 

And soon, the process itself becomes proof of purpose. 

When power becomes insulated, accountability fades. What follows is a ritual in the absence of reform. 

The ritual looks busy: new logos, new task forces, new vendor contracts. 

But motion isn’t evolution.

Outside, the species looks unchanged.  

III. From bylaw to backend 

Governance didn’t die; it migrated into software. 

Every time a listing rejects an input because a field doesn’t exist, that’s regulation. 

Every time Realtor.ca decides which properties rise to the top of a search, that’s policy. 

Every automatic warning, every hard stop, every required field, every “invalid value” message is a digital descendant of a forgotten committee motion. 

But unlike those committees, code doesn’t interpret intent. It enforces outcomes. 

When a provincial prop-tech collective expanded its MLS infrastructure through subscription agreements in 2024 (a shift that brought most Ontario boards into a unified subscription framework), decisions about listing standards and data structure effectively moved from volunteer committees to contract clauses. 

And when its leadership quietly changed earlier this year through an internal governance realignment, oversight of Ontario’s core MLS infrastructure shifted again. 

No member referendum. No public notice. Just a new slate, appointed internally.   

That’s not scandal. It’s system design. 

Governance didn’t fail; it changed medium.   

Realtors still carry the liability for every misstep the system allows or forbids. 

If an input error misrepresents a property, the board doesn’t face the client. The agent does. The brokerage shoulders the risk. Yet neither has meaningful authority over the infrastructure that defines compliance. 

That’s the quiet inversion of power: the governed held accountable for rules they no longer write. 

IV. Paying to be governed

Membership used to buy representation. Now it buys access. 

Realtors pay dues to boards. Boards pay vendors to manage the systems. Vendors, in turn, enforce compliance frameworks that determine how Realtors work. 

It’s a closed loop of authority without ownership. 

At the national level, the same pattern repeats. CREA licenses the trademarks and operates Realtor.ca; the public face of the profession. 

Yet the listings feeding it come from local systems governed by independent contracts, each with its own structure and rules. 

The result is a federation of dependencies: members finance everything but control nothing. 

Sold as modernization, this consolidation resembles enclosure more than efficiency. 

When Realtor.ca was restructured into a for-profit subsidiary, the move was practical but symbolic. 

It marked the moment the profession’s most visible asset became a product. 

Belonging turned into a business model and representation became a side effect. 

We stopped belonging to the system when the system learned to bill us for belonging. 

V. The relevance test: What is a board for? 

If access to data is all we value, then the question isn’t whether boards are broken; it’s whether they’re still necessary at all. 

Only one board in Ontario owns the technology. The rest are tenants, licensing the systems they claim to govern. 

They administer dues, hold meetings, and issue statements, but their primary role is custodial: collecting money on behalf of platforms they don’t control. 

As a couple of writers have recently debated, the Realtor identity itself is under review. 

Some call the name baggage, tied to NAR’s scandals and American dysfunction. 

Others defend it as a badge of honour, a symbol of professionalism and trust hard-won over decades. 

I would argue that both sides miss the point. The word isn’t the issue. The structure beneath it is. 

If governance and accountability collapse, even the most sacred title loses meaning. 

The brand can survive scandal; it cannot survive structural irrelevance. 

The Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA)-led call for Ombudsman oversight of the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) exposed that hollowness. 

It sounded bold, but misunderstood the law it invoked. 

The Ombudsman Act excludes self-regulating professions. 

If boards truly want to end self-regulation, they should say so. 

If they don’t, then the campaign misled the very members who fund it. 

Realtors didn’t connect with that letter because it wasn’t written for them. 

It was written to look responsive. It was a performance of relevance, not an act of it. 

VI. The ROI of representation 

If advocacy is the last defense of organized real estate’s layered structure, then it’s fair to ask: what’s the return? 

Every Realtor measures productivity and cost-per-lead.  

But the organizations that preach professionalism can’t quantify their own value. 

OREA’s own disclosures show millions spent annually on advocacy and communications, yet no member-facing metrics explain outcomes or savings. 

In business, unmeasured value isn’t value. It’s overhead. 

The loss of the OREA College exposed that vacuum. 

Education once gave OREA purpose: a tangible service tied to competence. 

When that mandate moved to the regulator, what remained was advocacy without measurement. 

And advocacy without measurement is faith, not strategy. 

Would we, knowing what we know now, voluntarily build a system that compels every Realtor to join an association, fund mandatory insurance and underwrite lobbying whose outcomes we can’t audit? 

If this system didn’t already exist, could you convince anyone to invent it? 

If we built a system today, we would not build this system. 

VII. The case for a controlled burn 

That doesn’t mean demolition. It means renewal. 

The first boards were grassroots cooperatives: small, voluntary networks built on trust and reciprocity. 

They created order before law. Their purpose was cooperation, not control. 

Over time, that cooperative impulse hardened into hierarchy. 

What began as a network of peers became a lattice of dues, committees and closed sessions. 

We now call that professionalism, but is it? 

The future doesn’t need to abolish boards; it needs to release them. 

As one industry commentator recently wrote, even Microsoft now behaves like a startup, forced by AI to relearn how to innovate. 

Real estate could do the same, not by chasing disruption but by rediscovering ownership. 

Innovation without consent isn’t transformation. 

Sunsetting legacy structures isn’t destruction; it’s hygiene. 

A controlled burn clears what it is that protects structure over service. 

The replacement need not be ideological. 

Imagine a platform cooperative: a Realtor-owned, technology-driven utility where brokerages and agents hold real stakes. 

Policy would be ratified by digital referendum. 

Vendor contracts would expire automatically unless renewed by member vote. 

Data standards and governance would be transparent by design. 

Boards that survived such a transformation wouldn’t have to defend their relevance. 

They have already proven it. 

VIII. The constitutional moment 

Every profession has a constitution: an unwritten agreement about who decides what. 

Ours has been rewritten without consent. 

Control migrated from members to boards, from boards to associations, and from associations to vendors. 

Elections continue, meetings occur, minutes are approved, but democracy isn’t procedure. 

It’s consent. 

When governance moves into code, consent becomes a checkbox. 

When advocacy drifts into performance, representation becomes branding. 

When boards mistake data for trust, the profession loses both.   

This isn’t a technical crisis, it’s constitutional.  

The choice ahead is stark but simple:   

1. Continue the drift and let governance consolidate in the hands of those who own the tools. Or;  
2. Reclaim authorship and rebuild from the ground up, guided by the same cooperative instinct that once defined the Realtor. 

If we built organized real estate today, we wouldn’t replicate the layers. 

We’d design a single, accountable, member-governed institution: transparent, data-competent and morally literate. 

IX. The path back to purpose 

Boards were never meant to be monuments. They were instruments built to serve those who work in the field, not to rule over them. 

We still need cooperation. We still need shared data, clear standards and public trust. 

But those don’t require the architecture we’ve inherited. 

They require will, imagination and consent.   

If organized real estate still believes it exists to put members first, it must prove it. Not with statements, but with structure. 

If access is all that defines membership, the public will soon ask what defines the Realtor. 

Our constitution isn’t in Ottawa or Toronto. It lives in the collective consent of those who practice. 

The system won’t rewrite itself. 

Brandon Reay

Brandon Reay brings a multifaceted background in real estate practice, policy, and governance. Before stepping into brokerage leadership, Brandon spent several years in organized real estate, contributing to strategic initiatives and advocacy efforts with CREA and OREA, and various Chambers of Commerce. His work has included shaping housing policy, supporting regulatory reform, and improving REALTOR® engagement across the country.

Brandon’s approach blends hands-on brokerage experience with a systems-level understanding of how policy, market forces, and professional standards intersect. He is known for helping professionals navigate evolving market conditions and advocating for higher standards within the industry. In addition to his leadership role at RE/MAX Hallmark Realty Group, he remains an active REALTOR® focused on agent development, business strategy, and client service.

Brandon regularly contributes commentary on market trends to media outlets and industry publications and has served as a spokesperson on housing issues in Ottawa. He is also a frequent speaker at real estate events, offering data-driven insights on brokerage strategy, professionalism, and the future of the industry.

He holds a Master of Business Administration from the Sprott School of Business. Brandon lives in Ottawa, where he remains closely involved in local policy discussions on housing affordability and real estate governance.

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Every month, Kate Teves, HR consultant, recruiter and founder of The HR Pro, answers Realtors’ questions about anything and everything related to human resources. Have a question for Kate? Send her an email.

I will start this post with a funny story because we all need a bit of humour in our day. 

Years ago, when I started my HR consulting business, my clients were few and my expenses were painful. 

So, to save myself some cash, I decided that I could manage my own bookkeeping and remittances to the Canada Revenue Agency. Cue a long list of emails from Service Canada about outstanding balances and immediate payment requests for thousands of dollars.  As if starting a business wasn’t stressful enough, there was now another layer to the complexity of being a solopreneur. 

After three days of phone calls, online searches, questioning whether or not I was cut out for this, and a few mental breakdowns, I found an accounting company geared towards small businesses and never looked back. It is one of the best investments I have made in my business.

The old saying of “time is money” is as true today as it has been for centuries. Every hour you spend on a task that isn’t directly tied to closing deals, mentoring an agent or nurturing client relationships is an hour taken away from your core business. Yet, many real estate professionals, brokers, team leads, and independent agents alike fall into the trap of DIY-ing everything: hiring their own staff, managing their own books, even piecing together their own marketing campaigns.

On the surface, this seems practical, especially when the market slows and cutting costs feels like the only way forward. But the reality is that trying to “do it all” is not only inefficient, it can also cost you more in the long run.

Truth Bomb: Most real estate professionals didn’t get into the business to become payroll managers, social media strategists, or accountants. But when those roles are done haphazardly, the impact shows. A poorly written job posting can bring in the wrong talent. Inconsistent marketing means your brand gets lost in the noise. Errors in bookkeeping can create serious compliance headaches.

The result? Stress, wasted time, and missed opportunities – all of which often result in hiring a professional to clean up the mess anyway.

The good news

Avoiding the DIY route doesn’t mean you have to hire a full-time team and balloon your payroll. Especially in today’s economic climate, adding permanent staff isn’t always the smartest move. What you can do instead is outsource selectively, tapping into professionals who live and breathe their craft and can get a task done in a third of the time.

The outsourcing advantage

When you outsource to specialists, you’re not just offloading tasks; you’re gaining access to expertise, industry insights, and proven best practices. Consider these examples:

• Recruitment & HR – A specialized HR consultant knows how to write job descriptions that attract the right candidates, streamline onboarding, and set up systems that keep your business compliant.
• Marketing – A real estate-savvy marketing professional can craft campaigns that resonate with buyers and sellers, while teaching you tricks to maintain consistency long-term.
• Bookkeeping and accounting – A real estate-focused bookkeeper ensures your records are clean, your deductions are maximized, and your financials are investor- or lender-ready.
• Deals support – for brokerage deals processing is as crucial as oxygen is to life, a remote deals administrating service will keep your transactions FINTRAC compliant, ensure your agents are paid on time and that you aren’t paying for a full-time position when the deal flow decreases.

Last but absolutely not least – beyond the immediate benefits, outsourcing is also a learning opportunity. Partnering with experts allows you to pick up skills and strategies you can apply in your own practice, without having to stumble through costly trial and error.

Focus where it counts

Real estate success comes down to relationships and results. Your clients don’t care if you balanced your own books or designed your own marketing flyer. They care about the service you deliver, the trust you build, and the deals you close.

The best real estate professionals know when to call in experts. Don’t view outsourcing as an expense; view it as an investment in efficiency, professionalism, and peace of mind. Stop DIY-ing the parts of your business that don’t need your personal touch. Instead, surround yourself with specialists who will help you thrive—while you focus on what you do best: real estate.

Kate Teves

Kate Teves is the founder and COO of the HR Pro, a recruiter and a Human Resources Professional who focuses on the real estate industry by finding incredible people to support solopreneurs, teams and brokerages.  She also helps leaders and managers build HR processes and design a culture and mindset that facilitate business growth and employee development.

The post Ask Kate: Is being a jack of all trades helping my business – or hurting it? appeared first on REM.

Sales clocked in at 5,211, slightly higher than last year, but on a seasonally adjusted basis, it was the first monthly decline since March. Prices remain under pressure: the benchmark fell to $978,100, continuing a nine-month streak without gains. More importantly, the mix of which products are falling hardest is surprising even to seasoned observers.

Detached homes and condos lead the decline

Conventional wisdom said 416 detached homes would prove more resilient than condos. Instead, they have posted one of the steepest drops of this cycle, down more than 10 per cent year over year, the largest decline in the core and among freehold properties. The only segment that fared worse was 905 condominiums, which fell 10.6 per cent annually. These are not marginal adjustments; they are some of the deepest corrections seen in recent memory.

Other product types were not spared either. Average prices are down across nearly every category, with one exception: 416 townhouses, up about one per cent. For investors and builders, that small uptick hints at a potential redevelopment angle. Townhouse-style multiplexes on detached lots could pencil in more favorably if the spread between detached and townhouse values persists. But that is more of a niche silver lining than a broad market trend.

Inventory surge reshapes market power

The biggest story is not just about falling prices, but also about swelling supply. Active listings surged 22.4 per cent compared to last August, one of the largest year-over-year increases on record. Only May 2025’s 41.5 per cent spike rivaled it.

And the momentum is not slowing. Active listings historically rise in September, and early tracking suggests another record could be set. Last year, inventory jumped five per cent from August to September. With 2025 already running 20 to 40 per cent higher year over year, a comparable gain would push Toronto into uncharted territory for supply:

This imbalance is shifting the balance of power. With more options, buyers can demand price cuts. Sellers who resist price discovery face longer wait times. The average days on market rose from 29 to 33, with properties now typically taking more than a month, sometimes two, to sell.

Sales are up for the wrong reasons

TRREB and bullish analysts may point out that sales are higher than last year. But the data reveal why: more people are transacting because prices are falling, not because confidence or fundamentals have improved. In July, sales briefly outpaced new listings, hinting at demand catching up. But in August, that reversed. New listings jumped 9.4 per cent while sales crept up only 2.3 per cent. Supply growth is once again outpacing demand growth, a hallmark of deepening buyer’s market conditions.

The broader policy dilemma

The Bank of Canada faces pressure to restart rate cuts this fall. Monetary easing might pull sidelined buyers back in, but without structural affordability through higher wages and more attainable supply, it risks reigniting speculative churn. Lower rates cannot solve a market defined by abundance without affordability.

Meanwhile, TRREB has called for infrastructure spending to support growth. That is the more durable fix: aligning housing with incomes, transit, and services. Otherwise, the market risks bouncing between boom and bust on the back of credit cycles.

What this means for buyers and builders

For buyers, today’s environment is one of rare leverage. Longer days on market and swelling inventory mean bidding wars are evaporating, replaced by opportunities to negotiate. The risk is not missing out, but over-reaching, especially if prices continue to slide into the fall.

For builders, the era of assuming perpetual scarcity is over. Projects premised on constrained supply may underperform. The developers best positioned will be those who deliver family-sized units, rentals, and mixed-income communities, products resilient to speculative cycles.

A market that mirrors the economy

The GTA housing market has always been a proxy for the broader economy. Today’s weakness coincides with slowing exports in Ontario’s steel and automotive industries, pressured by U.S. tariffs. Housing, once the locomotive of economic recovery, cannot be counted on alone this time.

Whether the market stabilizes or continues correcting will hinge less on interest rates and more on structural alignment: matching supply to incomes, inventory to demand, and housing policy to the realities of the twenty-first-century economy.

Daniel Foch

Daniel Foch is the Chief Real Estate Officer at Valery.ca, and Host of Canada’s #1 real estate podcast. As co-founder of The Habistat, the onboard data science platform for TRREB & Proptx, he helped the real estate industry to become more transparent, using real-time housing market data to inform decision making for key stakeholders. With over 15 years of experience in the real estate industry, Daniel has advised a broad spectrum of real estate market participants, from 3 levels of government to some of Canada’s largest developers.

Daniel is a trusted voice in the Canadian real estate market, regularly contributing to media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, CBC, Bloomberg, and The Globe and Mail. His expertise and balanced insights have earned him a dedicated audience of over 100,000 real estate investors across multiple social media platforms, where he shares primary research and market analysis.

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