Open bidding

Open bidding is Ontario’s alternative to the blind auction. Since TRESA came into force in December 2023, a seller may direct their brokerage to run an open offer process — disclosing the substance of competing offers, such as price, deposit, conditions and closing dates, to the other buyers at the table. The default remains the traditional closed process, where competing buyers know how many offers exist but nothing about what’s in them. The law’s quiet radicalism is where it put the switch: transparency is the seller’s choice, offer by offer, not a market-wide rule.

What the seller controls

Nearly everything. The seller decides whether to open the process, which details to share, and with whom — and the decision isn’t one-way: a seller can start closed and open up when offers cluster, or start open and go quiet. Two hard limits survive every configuration. Nothing that identifies a competing buyer may ever be disclosed, and the brokerage carries the seller’s instructions, so the direction needs to be documented in writing — the kind of instruction a designated representative confirms before offer night, not during it.

What stays mandatory either way

One disclosure doesn’t belong to the seller: a brokerage must tell every buyer who has submitted a written offer how many competing written offers exist. That rule predates TRESA and continues under it, which is why “we had seven offers” is knowable and “the top offer was $1.4M” is not — unless the seller opened the process. Offer mechanics otherwise run as they always have: each offer carries its own irrevocable clock, and an open process doesn’t extend anyone’s deadline.

Does it actually help?

Honestly: it depends what the seller is optimizing for. A blind process can produce a runaway number from a buyer bidding against their own fear; an open one tends to produce a market-clearing price — buyers top the known best offer by an increment rather than guessing. That’s the trade. Open bidding suits sellers who value certainty and clean terms over the chance of an outlier, and it changes agent work more than agent obligations: advising a seller on which process serves them, and documenting the choice, is now part of listing a home in Ontario. Uptake since 2023 has been modest, but the option reshapes the conversation even when it’s declined.