Self-Represented Party Clauses in Ontario: Remuneration and Mere Postings

Last updated 11 September 2026. Written by Jatin Dua, Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway, Etobicoke · For Ontario registrants · 9 min read

The question that ends your involvement

You are standing in the kitchen of a mere posting with your buyer’s offer in hand. The seller has read it, is thinking out loud, and asks you the question every unrepresented seller asks: should I counter at one nineteen, or hold?

That is the moment. Not a grey area, not a judgement call about how helpful you are being. You must not advise a self-represented party on price, terms or contract clauses. Answering that question, even with a shrug and a number, is advising on price. Telling them the irrevocable is too short is advising on terms. Explaining which condition they should push back on is advising on clauses.

What you can say is that you represent your buyer and not them, that they are entitled to obtain their own professional advice, and that you cannot answer the question. Then you stop. It feels unhelpful. It is the rule, and the alternative is a breach of your obligations under TRESA with your name on the file.

Before you assist an unrepresented person at all

TRESA’s second phase came into force on 1 December 2023 and replaced the customer category with a self-represented party regime. There is now a defined sequence before you assist one, and RECO’s guidance sets it out.

• Confirm the intention first. Establish that the person actually intends to proceed without representation before you assist them. Do not assume it from the fact that they answered their own door.
• Deliver and explain the RECO Information Guide. Delivery alone is not the obligation. It must be given and explained, and that applies before providing services to a client or assistance to a self-represented party.
• Deliver and explain the Information and Disclosure to Self-Represented Party form. Same standard, and this is the document that sets out what you will and will not do.
• Say plainly whose side you are on. Not implied by conduct, not buried in a form. Stated, in words, that you represent your client and not them.
• Make reasonable efforts to obtain written acknowledgement. For the self-represented party form, written acknowledgement is required and you must make reasonable efforts to get it.

Here is a correction worth carrying around. Agents routinely believe they need a signed acknowledgement for the RECO Information Guide. There is no statutory requirement to obtain an acknowledgement for the Guide. The acknowledgement requirement attaches to the self-represented party form, not to the Guide. Both have to be given and explained. Only one has to come back signed. Knowing the difference stops you chasing the wrong piece of paper and forgetting the right one.

The prohibition that catches the brokerage, not just you

RECO’s guidance on remuneration clauses, issued 17 January 2024, contains a sentence that reorganises how a lot of transactions have to be structured: brokerages must not enter into an agreement with a self-represented seller to provide assistance or to charge or collect remuneration.

Read it slowly, because it does two things. It rules out an agreement to provide assistance to that seller, and it separately rules out an agreement to charge or collect remuneration from them. So the familiar workaround — have the unrepresented seller sign something that says the brokerage will be paid a percentage on closing — is not available. Neither is the softer version where the brokerage agrees to help the seller through the paperwork for a fee.

That is a brokerage-level prohibition, which means it is not something you can resolve at the kitchen table by getting a signature. If you cannot see how your brokerage is being paid on a file with an unrepresented seller, that is a conversation with your Broker of Record before you write the offer. Not after it is accepted, and certainly not on the drive home from the presentation.

One honest limit on what I can tell you. The guidance I can point to speaks about self-represented sellers. Leases raise the same structure with a self-represented landlord, and I am not going to extend a prohibition by analogy and present it to you as settled. Take that scenario to your Broker of Record and, if necessary, to RECO.

The five components of a remuneration clause in an agreement

Where a remuneration clause does belong in an agreement of purchase and sale, RECO’s guidance identifies five components it needs. Miss one and the clause is ambiguous about something that decides who gets paid what, by whom and when.

Work through your own last three agreements against that list. In my experience most agents get amount and timing right and are vague on purpose and on taxes. The taxes point is not academic. The applicable sales tax on a five-figure remuneration is a four-figure argument, and it gets had on the morning of closing between two lawyers who were not in the room when the clause was written.

What SRP/MERE-1 and SRP/MERE-2 actually do

SRP/MERE-1 (Commission/Remuneration – Seller) and SRP/MERE-2 (Commission/Remuneration – Landlord) are the sale and lease versions of the same mechanism. Pull the wording from your own OREA member copy; here is the function.

Each one is an irrevocable direction to the seller’s or landlord’s lawyer to pay the named brokerage out of the proceeds of the transaction, ahead of any payment to the seller or landlord, together with the applicable sales tax, and to treat the direction as sufficient authority for doing so. Payment follows promptly after completion. The parties can redirect it only by a further written direction.

Understand what that is and what it is not. It is a payment mechanic. It routes money at closing and it gives the lawyer cover for acting on it. It is not the source of the entitlement. The entitlement comes from whatever agreement actually creates it, and if that agreement is one the brokerage was not permitted to enter into, a direction in the schedule does not repair the problem. The clause also depends on the brokerage being identified properly in the agreement, which is a blank people leave empty more often than you would believe.

Disclosure is a separate obligation, and it cannot live in a schedule

This is the part agents merge together and should not. A remuneration clause in the agreement is not a disclosure. RECO’s guidance on disclosure requires that disclosures be distinct and separate from the representation agreement and from the agreement facilitating the transaction. In plain terms: not buried in a schedule to the agreement of purchase and sale.

There is also a timing rule with teeth. Remuneration terms that affect the acceptance of an offer must be disclosed as soon as possible after the offer is made and before any offer is accepted. Before acceptance. Not at the signing table, not when the lawyer asks.

So on a file where remuneration is unusual, you have two separate jobs: get the clause right inside the agreement, and get the disclosure out separately and in time. Doing one well does not excuse the other.

Mere postings: nobody on the other side is representing anyone

On a mere posting the property is on the board but the listing brokerage is not representing the seller in the transaction. That single fact reshapes your file in three ways.

First, there is no agent on the other side to talk to. The person receiving your offer is the seller, and to you they are a self-represented party, which means the whole sequence above applies before you assist them with anything. Second, they will ask you for advice, repeatedly, because they have nobody else to ask and you are standing in their kitchen. Third, the remuneration structure is not the one you are used to, because your brokerage cannot enter into an agreement with that seller to provide assistance or to charge or collect remuneration.

There is a fourth risk that is subtler and more dangerous. An agent who starts answering the seller’s questions has not become a dual agent. Multiple representation requires written disclosure, best efforts to confirm receipt, and each client’s written consent after receiving it, and the disclosure must advise clients to get independent professional advice first. None of that has happened in the kitchen. What you have instead is an unrepresented person taking advice from the buyer’s agent with no agreement, no consent and no protection — which is worse for everyone than saying nothing, including for you.

Your exposure, and how I want this handled

The exposure here is not exotic. It is a seller who later says the buyer’s agent told them what to accept. There will be no agreement, no consent, and no record, and the conversation will be reconstructed from memory by someone who lost money. Your defence is the file: the confirmed intention, the Guide and the form delivered and explained, the written acknowledgement, and a contemporaneous note of what you declined to answer.

Write that note the same day. Not a summary at the end of the month. The day.

1. Before you engage with an unrepresented person, confirm that they intend to proceed without representation.
2. Deliver and explain the RECO Information Guide and the Information and Disclosure to Self-Represented Party form. Make reasonable efforts to get the self-represented party form acknowledged in writing.
3. Say out loud, and then in writing, that you represent your client and not them, and that they may obtain their own professional advice.
4. Decline every question about price, terms and clauses, and record that you declined it.
5. Sort out the remuneration structure with your Broker of Record before the offer is written, not after acceptance.
6. Build the remuneration clause against all five components, including whether taxes are included, and confirm the brokerage is identified in the agreement.
7. Deliver the required disclosure separately, before any offer is accepted, and keep proof of delivery.

Questions agents actually ask

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This is professional commentary from a Broker of Record on obligations and drafting practice involving self-represented parties and remuneration clauses in Ontario transactions. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace your own brokerage’s policy or direct guidance from RECO on a specific file. This is general professional commentary from a Broker of Record on drafting practice. It is not legal advice, it is not a substitute for your own brokerage’s policies, and it does not create any professional relationship. Clause codes refer to OREA’s Guidelines for Residential and Commercial Clauses, an OREA member resource — the clause wording itself is OREA’s and is not reproduced here. Always work from your brokerage’s approved forms, and send your client to a lawyer for anything turning on interpretation, enforceability or remedy. Legislation, regulator guidance and case law all change; verify anything you are relying on.