Can I use testimonials? (Ontario)

Yes — Ontario registrants can use client testimonials in advertising, including on their websites, provided two conditions hold: the testimonial is genuine and not misleading, and you have the client’s consent before publishing anything that identifies them as a party to your transaction. Both conditions come straight from the advertising obligations RECO enforces under TRESA, and both are easy to satisfy on purpose and easy to fail by accident. (General information, not legal advice — run anything borderline past your broker of record.)

The two rules doing all the work

The first rule is accuracy: nothing false, misleading, or deceptive, which for testimonials means the words are real, said by a real client, and presented the way they were meant. The second is consent: identifying a party to an agreement in your advertising requires that party’s consent, and getting it in writing is the practice standard because you may one day need to produce it. A glowing quote with a full name under it satisfies neither rule automatically — it satisfies them when the quote is verbatim and the named client agreed to appear. These sit inside the same four-obligation framework as the rest of your site, covered in RECO advertising rules for websites.

Google reviews are not automatically website testimonials

A review a client posts on your Google profile is their speech on Google’s platform; the moment you republish it on your website or in an ad, it becomes your advertising and your compliance problem. That shift matters in two ways. Selectively excerpting a mixed review into pure praise risks the misleading-advertising rule. And a review that identifies the reviewer and their transaction — most do — brings the consent rule with it. Collecting reviews at the source is still worth doing well, which is its own discipline covered in Google Business Profile for realtors; just treat “republish on my site” as a separate step with its own consent ask.

Fabricated and edited reviews are the serious end

Inventing a testimonial, publishing one from someone who was never a client, or editing a real one until it says something new is not a gray area — it is misleading advertising under the code of ethics, and fake reviews are also the kind of deceptive marketing the Competition Act pursues, with penalties that dwarf anything a homepage quote could earn. The same logic reaches incentives: a review bought with a reward, undisclosed, misleads the people reading it. If a testimonial would need its backstory hidden to work, it does not belong on the site.

A consent workflow that holds up

The clean pattern takes five minutes per client. Ask at the natural moment — closing day or shortly after, when goodwill is highest. Show them the exact words and the exact placement: the quote, the attribution you plan (first name and neighbourhood is a common, lower-friction choice than full names), and where it will appear. Capture a written yes — email is fine — and store it with the contact record in your CRM so the consent survives staff changes and website rebuilds. If they decline the name, run the quote anonymously; an unattributed testimonial still needs to be genuine, but it no longer identifies a party.

What testimonials cannot carry: transaction details

A testimonial that pairs a client’s identity with their sold price, address, and outcome is advertising the transaction, not just the relationship — and specific transaction details in advertising carry their own consent requirements. The practical line: let the client’s words speak to the experience, and let your results speak through aggregate market statistics that identify no one. A wall of genuine, consented testimonials plus honest numbers is more persuasive than either alone, and it is the combination an Ontario realtor website can run indefinitely without a compliance review finding anything to pull.