Seller's Guide
Selling a Home Worth Less Than the Mortgage
The offer on the table does not cover the balance of your loan. The sale is still possible, but it will not be …
You sign the brokerage contract on a Tuesday evening. By Thursday your property is online, and you find out what it says at the same time as everyone else. Yet almost every line of that ad is governed by a precise regulation. Here is the real path of a listing, what the broker must put in it, what they have no right to put in it, and what stays visible when you drop the price or pull the property off the market.
Centris is two different things
The word covers both a public website and a professional system, and the confusion costs sellers money.
Centris, the company, describes what it does this way: consolidating and distributing real estate data on behalf of all real estate brokers who are members of an association or a real estate board, and managing the data of a transaction management system available 24 hours a day. Centris.ca is the public-facing window of that system.
The database reserved for brokers is considerably more complete. According to the APCIQ, it holds roughly five times more information than the public site, notably the asking price, the sale price and a property’s sales history, so that a broker can follow how it has moved on the market over several years. Again according to the APCIQ, as soon as a property is entered there, it can be seen by every broker who is a member of a real estate board, roughly 13,000 professionals.
It is this unified provincial database, completed in June 2008, that also produces the sales, median price and days-on-market statistics you read in the press releases.
What the contract provides about the exposure of your listing
Section 6 of the listing brokerage contract deals specifically with the information distribution service. The name of the service is written in, and a box lets the seller opt out.
If you accept, the broker’s obligation has a date attached to it. Article 44 of the Règlement sur les conditions d’exercice d’une opération de courtage, sur la déontologie des courtiers et sur la publicité (the regulation on brokerage practice, ethics and advertising) is explicit: the licence holder must “list the immovable with that service when the marketing of the immovable begins”. Not three weeks later, once the photos are ready.
If you decline, the OACIQ asks three things of the broker: informing you that a refusal means reduced visibility, which can lower the number of potential buyers; documenting that warning in the file; and still allowing other brokers to show the property, with no right to refuse a showing on the grounds that the property is not being distributed. A fiche descriptive (the descriptive listing sheet) must exist in the file even in that case. Changing your mind during the contract remains possible, through a Modifications form that you sign.
What a listing must contain, and what it cannot say
First rule, often ignored: nothing gets published before signing. Article 111 of the same regulation prohibits a broker from distributing information about an immovable without express written authorization. The OACIQ draws a concrete consequence from it: before the contract is signed and the listing completed, posts along the lines of “coming soon” or “being evaluated” are prohibited on social media. The contract must also be in force for the entire time the advertising runs.
Article 118 lists what every fiche descriptive intended for the public must state.
| Mandatory mention | What it means |
|---|---|
| Owner’s declarations | Their existence and the availability of the documents that set them out |
| Legal warranty | The statement that the immovable is sold without legal warranty, where applicable |
| Identification | The name of the broker or the agency, followed by the licence, in the same colour and in a size at least equal to the rest |
| Interest in the immovable | Whether the broker holds a direct or indirect interest in it, with the disclosure notice |
| Nature of the document | The sheet is not an offer binding the seller, but an invitation to submit promises to purchase |
To that is added the identification required by article 114: the broker’s name as it appears on their licence, the licence category, and the name of the agency followed by its licence.
On the prohibition side, article 112 targets representations and advertising that are false, misleading or incomplete, or that stay silent on an important fact, notably as to the broker’s competence, the scope or the effectiveness of their services, and the sale price of the immovable, “which must be the one provided for in the real estate brokerage contract or in the transaction proposal”. Article 113 adds two details that surprise people: advertising cannot contain a statistic without stating its source, nor a photograph of the broker more than five years old.
Photos and description: accuracy comes before effect
Article 5 of the regulation is the backbone of the entire sheet: the licence holder must verify the information they provide to the public “in accordance with generally accepted practice and the rules of the art”, and “must at all times be in a position to demonstrate the accuracy of that information”.
The OACIQ’s inspection department draws an unqualified rule from it: all the information on the sheet must be confirmed by the documentation in the file, and “where the broker is not in a position to verify a piece of information, it cannot be reproduced on the sheet”. A surface area rounded up, an approximate year of construction, an assumed zoning: if it is not documented, it does not get written.
For images, the OACIQ is direct: images that fundamentally alter the actual appearance of an immovable contravene the regulation. When an image is generated by artificial intelligence, the advertising must carry a clear and visible statement along the lines of “Image generated by artificial intelligence”, and that covers added furniture and virtual staging as well. The broker remains responsible for the accuracy of the advertising, even when a tool produced it.
Price changed, listing withdrawn: what disappears and what stays
The fiche descriptive is not a frozen document. The OACIQ guideline on verification calls it “a constantly evolving document”: as soon as a new relevant element comes to their attention, the broker validates the information already transmitted, discloses it to the parties concerned and corrects the sheet. They cannot go on distributing information that has become incomplete or inaccurate. After an inspection that reveals a significant problem, for instance, the seller’s broker must update the sheet and the Déclarations du vendeur sur l’immeuble (the seller’s declarations on the immovable) by means of a Modifications form.
A price reduction follows the same logic: it gets signed, then the sheet follows. Before touching that number, situate yourself with an estimate of your property’s value, then ask which comparable sales the new recommendation rests on.
On withdrawal, the advertising stops: the broker must remove the sign and all advertising at the earlier of two events, the signing of the deed of sale or the expiry of the brokerage contract. But that does not erase the history. The Centris database keeps the sale data and the property’s history, and other brokers have access to it. A represented buyer will therefore know that your property was listed before, at what price, and for how long. That is a negotiating input, and it is the real reason the starting price matters so much. The full diagnosis is in the article on a property that is not selling.
The “sold” mention obeys rules of its own: it appears only once all the conditions of the promesse d’achat (the promise to purchase) have been fulfilled. As for “sold in X days”, the count runs from the signing of the brokerage contract to the fulfilment of all the conditions, not from the date the promise was accepted.
Exposure and marketing are not the same thing
Exposure is the fact of being seen: the listing in the system, the sheet, the sites, the sign. It can be verified. Marketing is what gets decided around it: the price, the preparation of the premises, the quality and the order of the photos, availability for showings, follow-up on the feedback received, the adjustments.
No rule and no public data allow anyone to assert that a given level of exposure will produce a promise to purchase. A broker who promises you a result goes beyond what the regulation lets them claim: article 112 specifically prohibits misleading or incomplete representations about the scope or the effectiveness of services. What gets committed to are actions, not an outcome. The preparation that precedes the listing is detailed in the method before going to market.
What you can legitimately ask for
Article 45 of the regulation gives you a right that is rarely exercised: the broker must give you without delay a copy of any document containing the data used to describe the immovable. Ask for it, and read it line by line.
Beyond that document, four reasonable requests:
- The name of the distribution service entered in section 6, and the list of sites where the ad will appear.
- The source of every figure on the sheet: area, year, taxes, condo fees.
- The date of the listing with the distribution service, which must coincide with the start of marketing.
- A commitment to correct the sheet through Modifications as soon as an element changes.
Frequently asked questions
Can my broker advertise my property before I sign? No. Article 111 requires express written authorization before distributing information about an immovable, and the OACIQ explicitly prohibits “coming soon” posts before the contract is signed and the listing completed.
Can I decline a distribution service and still sell with a broker? Yes, the box exists in section 6 of the contract. The broker must then warn you about the reduced visibility, document the warning, and cannot refuse a showing requested by another broker on the pretext that the property is not being distributed. The subject is covered in the piece on off-market properties.
Do other brokers see that I lowered my price? The database reserved for brokers contains the property’s history, including the asking price and previous sales. A buyer’s broker can therefore situate your listing in time. Ask your broker exactly what form that history takes in the system.
Could my sale price end up published? The rule works in your favour: publicizing the amount of the sale, the price originally asked in the contract, or a percentage that lets it be deduced, is a prohibited practice. The OACIQ points out that a disclosure before the deed is signed would put you in a vulnerable position if the transaction fell through.
To round this out, read the listing brokerage contract clause by clause and the honest comparison between selling with or without a broker.
Want to know exactly where your property will be distributed before you sign anything? Write to me. I show you the fiche descriptive and the list of platforms before the listing goes up, not after.
Georges Matar
Residential Real Estate Broker · RE/MAX DU CARTIER INC.
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