Sold data

Sold data is the record of completed transactions: what a property actually sold for, when, and the listing chain behind it. In Canadian real estate it lives inside board MLS systems, and unlike active listings it has never been broadly public — display is licensed, and the licence is the VOW. If active listings are the market’s storefront, sold data is its accounting, and consumers want to read the books.

Who can show sold data in Canada

The rules are board-by-board, and the modern era has a birthday. Ontario’s boards kept solds strictly internal until the Competition Bureau’s case against the Toronto board finished in 2018, opening sold-price display on VOWs behind visitor registration; the working details are on showing sold prices in Ontario. BC’s boards license VOW display under their own regime — a 30-day password cycle and field-level licensing among the tri-board’s conditions — mapped out on BC sold data rules. What no board licenses is open publication: sold prices on a page any anonymous visitor can crawl.

What it means for an agent’s website

Sold data is the strongest registration motive a real estate website has. The compliant pattern is a gate that teases honestly: anonymous visitors see that a sold record exists — a locked card, a blurred preview — and creating a free account opens it. That gate is simultaneously a board requirement and the best lead capture mechanism in the industry, a rare case of compliance and growth pointing the same direction. Blur treatment matters too: the preview must reveal enough to prove the record is real and little enough that registering stays worth it. The full anatomy of the experience lives on the VOW website page.

Common confusions

Assessed value is not sold data — assessment figures estimate value for tax purposes and routinely diverge from what a buyer actually paid. Land-registry records are real transaction records but arrive slowly and cost money per lookup, which is why board data remains the practical source. And a sold price alone is the thin version of the story: the full record includes list-price history and days on market across relists, which is where the negotiating insight actually sits.