Estate Agencies
Yes to both: Voice Assistant answers your number with a greeting you write, takes down who rang and why, and texts or emails you a summary, and RECO's guidance says agents remain accountable for communications generated or assisted by AI. So keep its job small: it does not transfer calls or book showings, and it knows only your hours and one box of writing, so leave offers and your sellers' affairs out of it.
It is Saturday afternoon, you are twenty minutes into a showing, and the buyers have just started opening the kitchen cupboards when your phone buzzes against your hip. You let it ring out, the way you always do, because a call taken in front of clients tells them they are not the only thing on your mind. Back in the car there are three missed calls and a voicemail that is mostly wind. On Tuesday evening, while you are making dinner, the sign on the lawn rings your phone twice more. You have every number. What you do not have is what any of them wanted, so each callback is cold, squeezed between appointments, and you are guessing which one is the neighbour wondering what her house would fetch and which is somebody who only wants to know whether there is a garage.
Your greeting, word for word. After that it is a normal back-and-forth, and callers can cut in or change their minds the way people do on a phone. It answers at two on a Saturday and at nine on a Tuesday night; outside the hours you set, callers hear the out-of-hours message you wrote instead, and it can still take a message. The goodbye is yours to write too. Once the caller hangs up, you get a summary of what they wanted, by text or email, at whichever numbers and addresses you list, so the car, parked between appointments, is where you decide who to ring first. It never puts anyone through to you, even on the rare afternoon you are free to take the call.
It works from what you have written, so write that questions about offers are for you. The rules turn on facts the assistant cannot know. In Ontario, under O. Reg. 567/05, s. 22.7, the number of competing written offers is communicated to every person making one, and RECO's Bulletin 4.1 adds that without the seller's written direction the seller's agent is prohibited from sharing the content of offers, and that a seller can change that direction at any time. A box you wrote on Monday does not know what your seller decided on Wednesday. The caller from the sign should hear from someone who does.
No, and it should not be set up as though it could. O. Reg. 567/05, s. 22.10, says a registrant conveys any written offer to the client as soon as possible, and that a broker or salesperson establishes a method for when they are not available at the time a written offer is submitted: a person receives the offer on their behalf, and it reaches the client as soon as possible after that. Our reading, not RECO's, is that a phone line taking spoken messages is not the person that section has in mind. What it can do is text you the summary when a caller says an offer is on its way, so you hear about it between showings rather than at the end of the day.
Anything you would not tell a stranger who rang your sign, because that box is what the assistant draws on with every caller. That rules out a seller's reasons for moving, the lowest figure they would accept, the week they are away, and every lockbox code. Ontario's Code of Ethics under TRESA, O. Reg. 365/22, s. 12, bars disclosing a client's confidential information to a third party without the client's written consent, except where the law authorizes or requires it, and RECO's AI guidance says agents must obtain explicit, written consent from clients before entering any personal details or contract terms into an AI platform. Access is its own rule: under O. Reg. 567/05, s. 22.5, a registrant gives nobody access to a property unless a registrant is present or the owner has consented in writing. Instructions for getting in do not belong anywhere a caller could hear them.
Sparingly, if at all. It knows only what you have written, and either way the words are yours: RECO's AI guidance says brokerages and agents remain accountable for all data, representations and communications generated or assisted by AI tools, and s. 5 of the Code requires best efforts to ensure that any representation is accurate and not misleading. A listing detail that was true on Monday and wrong by Thursday is still your representation. The shorter the box, the less there is to go stale: who you are, how to reach you, and that you will call back.
Some may be what TRESA calls a self-represented party: under O. Reg. 567/05, s. 1 (5), a party to a trade who is not a client, which RECO's Bulletin 2.4 puts as a person who is not a client of a brokerage. Section 10 of the Code bars a registrant from providing services, opinions or advice to a self-represented party in respect of a trade, or encouraging them to rely on the registrant's knowledge, skill or judgement. The same bulletin says a prospective client, or a consumer asking general questions about the real estate market, is not a self-represented party, and warns that implied representation can arise when agents provide services, opinions or advice to any person without a written agreement. A caller from the sign could be any of these, and the assistant cannot tell which. In British Columbia, BCFSA's guideline for unlicensed assistants draws a line worth borrowing: answering the telephone, taking messages and forwarding calls are on its list of what an assistant can do, while responding to questions from outside the brokerage about listings, and presenting or negotiating an offer, are on its list of what one cannot. That guideline was written for people rather than software, and it is BCFSA's interpretation of BC's real estate legislation. It is still a sensible shape for a phone assistant: take the message, and leave the judgement to you. Agents in other provinces answer to their own regulator, whose rules are the ones to read.
They should, before your number goes live. RECO's AI guidance lists brokerage approval among the checks to make before using any AI tool, meaning that it aligns with company policy and has Broker of Record approval, and says brokerages should establish clear internal policies, training and an approved tool list. Under s. 16 of the Code, a brokerage ensures that every salesperson and broker it employs complies, and the broker of record ensures that the brokerage does. The wording they would read is short: your hours, a greeting, a goodbye, an out-of-hours message and one box of writing. We set the number up with you and go through the wording together, and your broker can read every word of it in one sitting.
No, and you should hear that from us first. RECO's checklist for choosing a tool includes real estate fit: use tools built specifically for real estate, as general AI carries higher risks. Digital Front Desk is a front desk for many kinds of small business, not a real estate product. What it has instead is how little it does: two inputs you can read in full, no booking, no transfers, no legal advice. The same checklist asks where data is stored, whether it trains the AI and how to opt out. The call itself is processed in the United States; what is kept, for how long and where is set out on our privacy page, and anything that page leaves unanswered is a question to put to us in writing before the line goes live. Whether that narrowness answers RECO's concern is a judgement for you and your broker, not for us.
An illustration, with an invented agent, invented listings and an invented brokerage; no real person or property is described. Dana is a sales representative who works on her own, with one listing on a crescent near a school and two buyer clients. Before the line goes live she writes the greeting, the out-of-hours message and the box, and her broker of record reads all three. The greeting: "You've reached Dana's line. I'm an automated assistant that takes messages while Dana is with clients. Tell me your name, the best number for you, what you're calling about and whether you're working with an agent, and Dana will call you back." The box: the neighbourhoods she works in; that she meets sellers at their homes to talk about listing; that questions about offers, price, showings or getting into a property are always answered by Dana herself; and that nobody is given a lockbox code by phone. Nothing about her sellers goes in it. On Saturday she hosts the open house from two until four. At 2:40 a woman from two streets over asks whether Dana does valuations and leaves her number. At 3:05 a man who saw the sign asks whether there is already an offer; the assistant tells him that is a question for Dana and takes his number. At 3:30 a home inspector's office asks how to get in on Monday; the assistant takes the message and gives no code. Each summary reaches Dana by text. She reads them in the car after locking up and rings the inspector's office first, because that one has a deadline, then the neighbour. Her hours are set to nine until eight, so a sign call at ten to nine on Tuesday gets her out-of-hours message, which says she returns evening calls the next morning, and the assistant takes the details. The caller speaks French, and the assistant carries on in French. Across the weekend nobody was booked in, no call was put through to her, and no offer was taken over the phone; the assistant does none of those things.
No to both. It does not book, move or cancel anything, does not open your calendar or offer times, and does not transfer calls. Each caller lands in the same client list as visitors and form senders, with the call summary on their record, and the showing is booked from there by you or your office.
You write the greeting, so it is your call; our suggestion is to say so in its first sentence. Section 5 of the Code of Ethics requires best efforts to ensure that any representations are accurate and not misleading. Nothing in the Code or the General regulation mentions automated phone assistants, but a caller who comes away thinking they spoke to you, or to a person in your office, is a misunderstanding you would have to undo on the callback.
Then what you tell them about the property may have to go through that agent. Section 14 of the Code says a registrant who knows or ought to know that a person is another registrant's client communicates information to them for the purpose of a trade only through that registrant, unless the other registrant has consented in writing. The assistant has no way of knowing who is represented unless the caller says so. Your greeting can ask, and then the answer is in the summary before you pick up the phone.
It can send the caller a short text after the call, if you switch that on. There is a blocked numbers list for spam, and voicemail and call recording are switches you set.
Yes. Unless you change it, the assistant follows the caller into English or French, and your line can instead be set to speak French on every call.
Setting this up is our work, not a form you fill in. We go through your wording with you, and you can change any of it afterwards.
Digital Front Desk