Can realtors cold-call FSBO/expired? (Canada)

Yes, cold calling is legal in Canada — inside the CRTC’s telemarketing rules, which is where most US-imported FSBO and expired scripts fall apart. Unsolicited calls promoting your services are telemarketing: that means respecting the National Do Not Call List, registering your calling activity as the rules require, honouring every individual do-not-call request, and using the exemptions narrowly. The assumption that a for-sale-by-owner “published their number, so it’s fair game” is not the safe harbour agents want it to be. (General information, not legal advice; the CRTC’s Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules are the primary source.)

Phone calls have their own rulebook — it isn’t CASL

CASL governs commercial electronic messages — email, SMS, DMs — while live voice calls run under the CRTC’s telemarketing framework and the National DNCL. That split decides your channel strategy for owner prospecting: a cold call is a DNCL question, a cold text is a CASL question, and a cold email is the same statute again with the consent mechanics covered here. Agents who blend the three channels into one “outreach” habit inherit all three rulebooks at once, usually without records for any of them.

What the DNCL framework expects of you

Before a prospecting call, the practical obligations look like this: know whether the number is on the National DNCL, because consumers who registered are off-limits to unsolicited solicitation; be properly registered and subscribed for the calling you do, because telemarketers are required to be; keep your own internal do-not-call list, because an individual’s “stop calling me” binds you specifically and immediately regardless of any list status; and call only in permitted hours, identifying yourself honestly. Exemptions exist — an existing business relationship being the one that matters most to agents — but each has boundaries and timing conditions, so verify the current rules against the CRTC’s own material before building a prospecting practice on one. As of mid-2026 the framework’s shape is stable, but the compliance details are exactly the kind of thing to confirm at the source rather than from a coach’s script.

The FSBO assumption, examined

A FSBO ad with a phone number is an invitation to call about buying that property. A call pitching your listing services is a solicitation — a different purpose than the one the number was published for. That gap is the whole problem: the published number does not tell you the owner consented to telemarketing, or that the number is absent from the DNCL. Some prospecting calls to FSBOs are defensible; the blanket theory that all of them are is what gets imported from US scripts, where a different regulator and different exemptions apply. The channel-neutral truth about FSBO and expired prospecting is that the owners are identifiable and motivated — which is precisely why the rules police how you may reach them.

Expireds add a data question on top

An expired listing’s phone number usually traces back to MLS data, and boards have rules about using MLS information to solicit business — rules that exist independently of the CRTC’s. Before an expired campaign, the checklist is three layers: where the data came from and whether your board permits that use, whether the number can be called under the DNCL framework, and whether the listing is actually expired rather than conditionally sold or relisted elsewhere. A vendor list that answers none of those questions is a liability with a monthly fee.

The compliant practice, and the better one

If prospecting calls are part of your business, run them like a regulated activity: current registration, DNCL checks before dialing, an internal do-not-call list that everyone on the team respects instantly, and notes that would survive a complaint. Then weigh the economics honestly — every hour of compliant cold calling competes with building seller lead generation that makes motivated owners call you, with consent attached at the moment of capture. The phone still closes; inbound just means the person on the other end asked for the call.