You can’t just study real estate on your own and start selling houses independently in Ontario. The Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) requires completing mandatory pre-registration education, currently delivered exclusively through Humber College, and then registering with RECO while employed by a licensed brokerage; there’s no path to registering as a fully independent salesperson. The whole sector is now governed by TRESA, which officially replaced the older REBBA in 2023.
The mandatory pre-registration education
Per Humber Polytechnic’s Real Estate Salesperson Program page, the pre-registration phase consists of 5 courses, 2 mandatory simulation sessions, and 6 exams, completed sequentially, and you must finish the entire pre-registration phase within 24 months of starting your first course. Admission requires proof of a Canadian or U.S. secondary school diploma, a GED, a Canadian Adult Education Certificate, or an accepted equivalent. The coursework itself covers real estate fundamentals, your obligations under Ontario’s governing real estate legislation and its Code of Ethics, and the practical requirements of listing, selling, and completing residential transactions.
You must join a brokerage; there’s no independent registration path
This is the part that surprises people who assume finishing the coursework is the finish line. Per RECO’s own guide to becoming a real estate agent, to actually become a registered salesperson, you must be employed by a registered real estate brokerage. There is no registration category for someone practicing entirely on their own outside that structure. You have one year from completing pre-registration to submit your registration application to RECO, which means lining up a sponsoring brokerage needs to happen as part of that process, not sometime after.
The law governing all of this changed in 2023
Per RECO’s own updates on the Trust in Real Estate Services Act, 2020, TRESA officially replaced the older Real Estate and Business Brokers Act (REBBA) on December 1, 2023, following a phased rollout. Per the Ontario statute itself and RECO’s list of legislation it administers, TRESA brought in an updated Code of Ethics and new consumer disclosure rules, including allowing brokerages to disclose details of competing offers when a seller directs them to. If your training or understanding of the rules is based on older REBBA-era material, it’s worth confirming it’s actually been updated to reflect TRESA as it currently stands.
What to actually do
- Confirm you meet the education admission requirement: a secondary school diploma, GED, Canadian Adult Education Certificate, or accepted equivalent.
- Complete the Humber pre-registration program within the 24-month window, since courses must be finished sequentially and on a set timeline.
- Start looking for a sponsoring brokerage before you finish pre-registration, since you can’t register with RECO without one.
- Submit your RECO registration application within one year of completing pre-registration.
- Learn TRESA’s current Code of Ethics and disclosure rules directly from RECO rather than relying on older REBBA-era material.