CASL Compliance for Realtors: How to Email and Text Clients Legally in Canada

Yes, real estate agents can send marketing emails and texts under CASL, but only if three conditions are met: you have the recipient's consent (express or implied), you clearly identify yourself in every message, and you include a working unsubscribe mechanism. Miss any one of the three and every message you send is a potential violation.

That sounds simple enough, but the details trip up a lot of agents: implied consent quietly expires, a "can I add you to my list?" email is itself illegal without consent, and the burden of proving consent always sits with you. This guide walks through what Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation actually requires, in plain language, with official sources linked. It is not legal advice, but it will show you where the lines are.

Does CASL apply to real estate agents?

Completely. CASL applies to anyone sending commercial electronic messages (CEMs), and almost everything a realtor sends to a prospect qualifies: a new-listing alert, a market update newsletter, an open house invitation, a "still thinking of selling?" note. If one purpose of a message is to encourage the recipient to participate in a commercial activity, it is a CEM.

The law is channel-neutral, too. The CRTC's CASL FAQ confirms that commercial messages sent over text messaging services are subject to CASL, exactly like email. So the follow-up text you send an open house visitor lives under the same rules as your monthly newsletter. (Which channel you should use for what is a separate question - see texting vs emailing real estate clients - but the consent rules are the same for both.)

What counts as consent under CASL?

Under Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, you need consent before sending any commercial electronic message, and consent comes in two forms. Express consent means the person actively agreed to receive your messages, verbally or in writing - for example, by checking an empty box on your open house sign-in sheet. Express consent does not expire unless the person withdraws it. Implied consent arises from an existing relationship: someone who bought or leased through you gives you implied consent for two years, while someone who only made an inquiry gives you six months. If you are ever challenged, the onus of proving consent rests entirely on you as the sender, so record how, when, and where every contact said yes.

Express consent: the gold standard

Express consent is an opt-in, full stop. The CRTC is explicit that a pre-checked box does not count, because it assumes consent; the person must take a positive action, like ticking an empty box or signing a form. Silence or inaction is never consent.

When you ask for consent, CRTC guidance requires the request itself to identify who is asking and include a statement that the person can withdraw their consent at any time. Once you have it, express consent lasts until the person unsubscribes, which is why it is the foundation of any long-term nurture plan. If you intend to stay in touch with leads for six to twelve months, you want express consent, not a six-month implied window.

Implied consent: useful, but it expires

Implied consent comes from an existing relationship, and each type has a clock attached. Here is how the CRTC's implied consent guidance maps onto a realtor's world:

Two of these deserve extra care. First, the six-month inquiry window is shorter than most real estate buying cycles, so a portal lead who asked one question in January is off-limits by August unless you converted them to express consent in between. Second, the conspicuously published address rule is narrower than it sounds: the address must be published without any statement declining commercial messages, and your message must be relevant to the person's business, role, functions, or duties. It is meant for business-to-business contact, not for emailing homeowners whose addresses you found online.

The consent trap: you cannot email your way to permission

Here is the part that surprises almost everyone. An electronic message asking someone for consent is itself a commercial electronic message, so you already need consent (express or implied) just to send it, as legal guides like Gowling WLG's CASL overview point out. In practice, that means you cannot blast an old contact list with "Can I add you to my newsletter?" and call it compliance.

Build consent collection into moments where you are already talking to people instead: open house sign-in sheets, buyer consultations, listing appointments, website forms, community events. A verbal yes counts as express consent too, though you should immediately note the date, place, and what was agreed, because you may have to prove it later.

The referral exemption every realtor should know

Referrals get special treatment, which matters in a business that runs on them. Under the Electronic Commerce Protection Regulations, the first commercial message you send to a referred person is exempt from the consent requirement if two conditions are met: the person who made the referral has an existing business, non-business, family, or personal relationship with both you and the recipient, and your message discloses the full name of the referrer and states that the message is being sent as a result of the referral.

So "Hi Priya, your colleague Mark Chen suggested I reach out - he thought you might want a sense of what homes in your area are selling for" is a legal first email. But it only covers that first message. If Priya does not reply or opt in, you cannot keep messaging her. And even that first message still needs your full identification block and an unsubscribe link, because the exemption waives consent only.

What must every marketing email or text include?

Consent gets you permission to send; the message itself still has formal requirements. Per the Government of Canada's CASL guidance, every CEM must include:

• Your name and your brokerage's name (and anyone on whose behalf the message is sent)
• A current mailing address, plus at least one of a phone number, email address, or website
• A working unsubscribe mechanism

The CRTC FAQ adds the operational details. Your contact information must remain valid for at least 60 days after the message is sent. The unsubscribe must be "readily performed" - simple, quick, and easy, like a one-click link or replying STOP to a text. The unsubscribe link must keep working for at least 60 days, and you must honour requests without delay and no later than 10 business days. For a text message, where cramming a full identification block is impractical, the CRTC allows a link to a readily accessible web page that contains the required information.

If you are writing your own messages from scratch, it is easiest to build the identification block and unsubscribe line into a reusable footer once, then never think about it again. The same goes for your follow-up email templates: bake compliance into the template, not into your memory.

What are the penalties for getting CASL wrong?

CASL has real teeth. According to the Government of Canada, penalties for the most serious violations can reach 1 million dollars for individuals and 10 million dollars for businesses, as of July 2026. In practice the CRTC scales its response, weighing the nature of the violation, any history, financial benefit, and ability to pay, and it also uses warning letters and negotiated agreements rather than jumping straight to maximum penalties.

For a solo agent, the realistic risk is not a ten-million-dollar fine. It is a complaint from an annoyed recipient (Canada runs a Spam Reporting Centre for exactly this), followed by an investigation you cannot answer because you kept no consent records. The fix is cheap: keep records.

How do you prove consent? Keep records like it matters

Because the burden of proof sits with the sender, your consent records are your defence. The CRTC's guidance recommends keeping evidence of express consent, logs of when and how each address was collected, and records of every unsubscribe request and the action taken. If someone hands you their email verbally, the CRTC even suggests sending a note referencing the conversation and the date, so there is a contemporaneous record.

For a working agent, that translates into a simple habit: every contact in your database should carry a consent status (express, implied, or none), the date it was obtained, and the source (open house sheet, website form, signed agreement, referral). Spreadsheets can do this, but they rot fast. This is one of the places where the right software quietly earns its keep - CloseFlow, for instance, logs CASL consent per contact and handles the compliant unsubscribe automatically across both email and text, so opt-outs are recorded and honoured without you tracking them by hand.

A practical CASL checklist for solo agents

1. Audit your current list. Tag every contact as express, implied, or no consent, with a date and source for each.
2. Stop messaging anyone in the "no consent" bucket. If they were referred, you may get one properly worded first message; otherwise reach them by non-electronic means.
3. Watch the implied-consent clocks. Two years for past clients and contracts, six months for inquiries. Set reminders before windows close.
4. Convert implied to express while you can. A genuine "want to keep getting my monthly market update?" ask, made within the window, upgrades a temporary permission into a permanent one.
5. Fix your footers. Name, brokerage, mailing address, one more contact method, unsubscribe link. Every email, every time. Texts get a STOP option or a link to the full details.
6. Test your unsubscribe quarterly. It must work for 60 days after each send and take effect within 10 business days.
7. Log everything. Consent records, unsubscribe requests, and what you did about them.

None of this should scare you off email and text marketing. Done properly, CASL compliance is mostly a one-time setup plus good record hygiene, and it has a happy side effect: a list of people who actually agreed to hear from you responds far better than a scraped one ever would. Permission is not just the law here. It is better marketing.