Sluggish Home Sales Prompt Industry Exit by Real Estate Agents
Thousands of Canadian realtors have left the industry or are taking a step back, as home sales dropped across most of the country.
While selling real estate was once viewed as an easy way to make a living, that’s no longer the case after several years of downturn. And it’s not just newcomers who are leaving. Veterans are retiring or have cut staff to deal with the multiyear slowdown.
Debbie Cosic’s Mississauga-based real estate brokerage In2ition used to sell about 3,000 preconstruction condos across the country every year prior to the downturn. Last year, they sold 800 units.
Because activity slowed, she had to downsize and change her business model to focus predominantly on houses and rental-only apartment buildings. She now has about 50 employees compared to a few years ago when she had a staff of 150, including realtors.
“We trimmed staff because builders were not launching,” Ms. Cosic said.
For a typical high-rise condo project, Ms. Cosic would have two to three realtors selling units, along with support staff.
But as developers cancelled projects, her realtors and staff no longer had work.
Some of her former employees have moved onto other types of jobs in the industry. One is working for a bank, and another is working part-time at The Keg.
“People need to make their monthly payments. We understood and kept on good terms,” Ms. Cosic said.
The ones who stayed have taken on multiple responsibilities in her brokerage. Her vice-president of operations is now also working as a leasing and resale realtor. Her social-media manager is now also doing administrative work.
In Ontario, the country’s largest real estate market, there were 84,798 realtors or salespeople at the end of last year, according to provincial regulator, the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO.) That is down 1.3 per cent from 2024 and marked the first decrease in licensed realtors in at least eight years.
Part of the decline comes because there are fewer new people entering the field. The number of realtors in the first two years of their practice is down significantly.
There were 9,656 early-career realtors, also known as provisional salespersons, last year. That was down 24 per cent from 2024 and the third straight year of double-digit decreases.
In contrast, when the market peaked in 2022, there were nearly 20,000 early-career realtors, according to RECO data, more than double last year’s number.
“In boom times, the industry does attract a lot of aspirational new agents,” said Phil Soper, the president of Royal LePage.
“The challenge is that there are still association fees that need to be paid, professional insurance costs. So, the carrying costs of having a licence is high if you are doing zero transactions,” he said.
For Larry Cunliffe, it was a series of factors that led him to take a step back from his job.
He worked at a boutique brokerage in Ottawa, and its leaders were wrapping up their business for personal reasons.
The Ontario Real Estate Association started requiring members to pay for extended health insurance. At 74, Mr. Cunliffe was past retirement age. Sales and revenue were falling and overhead was rising.
Between the mandatory health insurance, his fees to the local, provincial and national real estate boards, liability insurance and his real estate licence, he was paying about $4,000 a year. That did not include other expenses such as his car, which is needed for showings.
“It sort of gelled at the same time, and I said ‘Okay, yes, I’m done.’ It just wasn’t as much fun as it used to be,” Mr. Cunliffe said.
“Being a small realtor in the game, overhead started to become an issue,” he said. “So, it was just time.”
In August, 2025, he put an effective hold on his licence, which in Ontario is known as parking a licence.
That means he is no longer a member of the Ottawa, Ontario and Canadian real estate boards and no longer has to pay them association fees. Without membership, he can’t access the MLS system, which is the country’s most comprehensive database of homes listed for sale and a critical tool for realtors.
Parking his licence allowed him to maintain his real estate credentials, and he paid RECO his licensing fees. RECO continues to count him as a salesperson even though he is not actively selling.
Mr. Cunliffe started in 2003. During the first decade of his career, the typical home price in the Ottawa region was relatively low compared to Toronto and increased about 40 per cent over 10 years.
“I built a small business, basically based on referrals from my network and my family. I’ve had a good run,” he said.
For 49-year-old John Papaloni, the relentless pace of the job led to burnout. He started working as a realtor in the Toronto region in 2016, the beginning of the city’s real estate frenzy. He sold an average of 20 homes a year.
He liked the fact that he got to see properties and help prospective buyers fulfill their dream of homeownership.
“You get to see people get their dream. That was exciting. I got adrenalin from it,” he said. He also loved negotiating a deal and the marketing of a property. He got joy seeing potential homebuyers lined up to get into one of his open houses.
A typical day for Mr. Papaloni would start at 5:30 a.m. He showed homes to the first client between 10 a.m. and noon. His second client showing took place between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. His last would run from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. He could drive between 150 and 200 kilometres in a day, such as if he had to go from Etobicoke to Niagara and back. He would take calls from his clients at all hours including at 2 a.m.
Because he was a member of multiple real estate boards, including Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara, he was paying more in fees than the average realtor. His annual tab including his licence, insurance, continuing education and board associations, came up to about $7,000.
The workload eventually caught up to him and during the pandemic’s real estate boom in 2021, he was exhausted and considering leaving.
In 2024, he had minor surgery and realized he had to do something else. “I just burned out,” he said. When his licence was up for renewal in 2025, he did not renew.
Instead, he started his own media business taking photos and videos of homes for their listing on the MLS.
Across the country, home sales are down 30 per cent from the peak in 2021 to last year, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA.) Every province had lower sales compared to 2021, according to CREA data, with Ontario and British Columbia recording the steepest drops of 40 per cent.
In B.C., the number of realtors has also receded. There were 28,483 realtors in the province as of this April, according to data from the BC Financial Services Authority, which regulates financial services, including real estate services.
That is down 2.8 per cent from April, 2025, and marks the third consecutive year the number of realtors has decreased. In 2023, there were 29,647 realtors in the province.
In comparison, sales in Alberta, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador are down by about 10 per cent over the same period, according to CREA data. New Brunswick is off by 26 per cent and Nova Scotia is down by 30 per cent.
Although the number of realtors has increased in some of the provinces like Alberta, CREA’s national membership is down.
As of the first quarter of this year, there were 155,980 members, according to CREA data. That was down 1.7 per cent from the fourth quarter of last year. Membership fell 3.3 per cent from 2024 to 2025, and, for the previous year, it eased 0.3 per cent.
At its peak in 2023, CREA had 164,598 members. In the 10 years leading to the record number, membership climbed 50 per cent.
The association’s chief executive said the real estate sector has always been somewhat of a bellwether for the Canadian economy. “Over the decades, our membership has increased some years and decreased in others,” Janice Myers said in an e-mailed statement.
Precise membership in the country’s largest real estate board – the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board – is not publicly disclosed but it’s down significantly, according to data viewed by The Globe and Mail. TRREB had just over 66,700 members as of this May. That compares to nearly 75,700 members in late 2023.
“Periods of slower market activity, higher borrowing costs, and changing business conditions may lead some members to retire or leave the industry,” TRREB chief executive John DiMichele said in an e-mailed statement.
Despite the slowdown, Ms. Cosic, Mr. Cunliffe and Mr. Papaloni still think it is a good profession.
Ms. Cosic encourages new realtors to stick it out in their first year, which is the toughest. She said even though she had to downsize her firm and pivot, her business is now improving.
She is getting ready to hire more people as developers get ready to launch low-rise homes and she says she has not seen pricing this low in years. “There’s a silver lining.”
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
