Your Ottawa listing expired. The holdover clause didn't.

About half of what gets listed in Ottawa does not sell

OREB's July release has 2,530 new listings against 1,325 sales, a sales-to-new-listings ratio of 52.4 per cent. Roughly 1,500 listings left the Ottawa market in July without selling, more than actually sold in it.

That is the group I want to talk to today. What happens next is not a marketing problem. It is a contract problem.

When a listing expires or gets cancelled, most sellers assume the relationship ends. The calls stop, the sign comes off the lawn, the file closes. The agreement does not read that way. There is a blank on the form with a number of days in it, and that number keeps running after everything else stops.

Two sentences on page one do most of the damage

The clause sits in section 2 of OREA Form 200, the standard Ontario listing agreement, revised in 2025. It says you owe the commission if you accept an offer within a set number of days after your listing expires, so long as the buyer was "introduced to the Property from any source whatsoever" during the listing period, or was shown it. That window is the holdover period.

Sixty to ninety days is the common range in Ontario, and ninety gets typed in a lot. Nobody reads it out loud at the signing table. It is a small number in a small box on a page you initial six times.

Read the word "introduced" the way RECO reads it

This is where sellers get caught, so take it from the regulator rather than from me. RECO's Registrar has answered it publicly.

If the buyer viewed, enquired, or was otherwise introduced to your property by or through the brokerage at any point during the listing, commission may be owed. Not only through your own agent. Any salesperson at that brokerage. It may also apply if they attended an open house, or followed up because of promotional material the brokerage produced.

So the person who wandered through your open house in May, said nothing, and comes back in October with an offer is inside the clause.

In fairness, the Registrar also says holdover would not likely apply to a buyer who never expressed interest and never attended an open house. It is not unlimited. But the test is introduction, not effort, and that is a much lower bar.

The protection against paying twice has a hole in it

Form 200 does shield you from double commission, and most agents will say so if you raise it. The shape of the shield is what matters. If the sale happens under a new agreement in writing to pay commission to another registered brokerage, your liability to the first one is reduced by what you pay under the new one. Relist elsewhere at the same commission and the first brokerage collects nothing.

Now read what is not in there. Only a written agreement with another registered brokerage triggers it. Nothing else does.

Sell it yourself. Sell it to a neighbour. Sell it to the buyer who walked through in June and phoned you in October because the sign was gone and they figured the coast was clear. No new brokerage, no written agreement, no reduction. You owe the first brokerage the full amount.

Put a number on it. On July's median price of $635,000, every single percentage point of commission is $6,350, or $7,175 once HST is added. Run that against the percentage written on your agreement. Whatever comes out is what a private handshake inside a holdover window can cost, and it arrives as a demand letter after you have agreed to a price.

The obvious workaround is already closed

Sellers reach this one on their own. Have the spouse buy it. Put it in a numbered company.

Section 1 handles that. Anyone introduced to or shown the property is deemed to include their spouse, heirs, executors, administrators, successors, assigns, and related or affiliated corporations. The form even defines what makes a corporation related: half or a majority of the shareholders, directors or officers being the same people as the one that saw the house.

Somebody drafted that paragraph because people tried it.

Section 5 turns every enquiry into a record

Section 5 requires you, during the listing, to tell the brokerage immediately about every enquiry from any source, and to hand them every offer before you accept or reject it.

Then it closes the loop. If an enquiry made during the listing leads to an accepted offer, inside the listing period or the holdover window afterward, commission is payable within five days of written demand.

So the neighbour who knocked on your door in June while the sign was up is a file at the brokerage, not a memory of yours.

What to negotiate, and when

Before you sign. Once it is initialled it is a contract and you are bound by it.

The holdover number is a blank, it is negotiable, and you are allowed to ask for thirty. The listing period is negotiable too, and TRESA requires the brokerage to obtain your initials specifically on that length. The legislation expected a conversation, not a default.

Ask for the carve-out in writing. Either a named list of excluded people, or a narrower test, something like only buyers who physically attended a showing. A brokerage that genuinely made an introduction will not usually fight it.

While you are in there, find the Does and Does Not box in section 11. It decides whether every other brokerage in the city may contact you after expiry. Initial it on purpose rather than by momentum.

And have a lawyer read the agreement before you sign. That is not me being careful. RECO's Registrar recommends it, on RECO's own site.

If you are already inside a window

Ask the former brokerage, in writing, for the list of everyone they consider introduced during the listing. Get it while nobody is negotiating, not after you have accepted an offer and the letter arrives.

If you relist, do it with a registered brokerage under a written agreement. That is the only version where the reduction clause helps you.

If somebody approaches you privately, check them against that list before you talk price. A buyer on the list is not a cheaper deal because no agent is involved. The commission is still owed, just owed by you, out of the proceeds, and it was never built into the price you agreed to.

Know your expiry date and your holdover date the way you know a closing date. I have written about why September does not rescue an unsold listing and why a stale listing is usually a price problem. This one runs underneath both, and it is the only one that costs you money after the sign is off the lawn.

If you want someone to read a listing agreement out loud with you before you sign, or you are inside a holdover window right now, call me at 613-262-6545 or write to fil@613realtor.ca. Bring the form. Fifteen minutes with the actual document beats anything general I can write here.