How many realtors are in Ontario?

If you have ever sat in a listing presentation and wondered how many other agents the seller already talked to, you are not alone. Ontario is a crowded market. But "crowded" is a feeling, so let's look at the actual numbers.

The short answer

At the end of 2025, the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) had 111,332 registrants. That breaks down like this:

Source: RECO Annual Report 2025.

So if you only count the people who can actually trade in real estate (salespersons plus brokers), that is roughly 105,000 individuals. The 111,332 figure also includes brokerages, which are businesses, not people. RECO's own fee proposal page lists 2025 as 111,335, so you may see a tiny difference depending on which RECO document you read. We use the annual report figure here.

What the RECO number actually counts

RECO is the regulator. Under the Trust in Real Estate Services Act (TRESA), anyone who trades in real estate in Ontario has to be registered with RECO. That makes RECO the most complete count you will find. It includes:

• Salespersons, which is most licensed agents
• Brokers, who have taken extra education and can manage or own a brokerage
• Brokerages, the registered companies agents work under

What it does not tell you is how many of those people are active. Someone can be registered and close one deal a year, or zero. A lot of agents keep their licence as a side thing. So the real number of people you compete against every week is lower than 105,000. Nobody publishes that number as far as we can tell, so take any quoted number with a grain of salt.

RECO vs OREA vs TRREB vs CREA: why the numbers don't match

You will see different numbers floating around, and they are all "right". They just count different things.

• RECO (regulator): 111,332 registrants at year-end 2025. Everyone who is licensed, members of a board or not.
• OREA (Ontario Real Estate Association): says it represents "nearly 100,000 brokers and salespeople" across 29 real estate boards in the province. These are REALTOR® members, so it's a membership count, not a licence count.
• TRREB (Toronto Regional Real Estate Board): calls itself Canada's largest real estate board and says it serves "almost 70,000" licensed brokers and salespersons in and around the Greater Toronto Area.
• CREA (Canadian Real Estate Association): the national body. It publishes membership by board and province on its stats site.

The quick way to remember it: RECO counts licences, OREA and the local boards count members, CREA rolls everything up nationally. If you are writing about Ontario specifically, RECO is the cleanest number to cite.

One thing that jumps out: TRREB alone serves almost 70,000 of them. That means a big share of Ontario's agents are working in and around the GTA. If you're in Barrie, Wasaga, Kingston or Sudbury, your local pool is a lot smaller, but so is the buyer pool.

Is the number going up or down?

Slightly down. RECO's numbers for the last three years:

• 2023: 112,014
• 2024: 112,865
• 2025: 111,332

That is a 1.36% drop from 2024 to 2025, according to RECO. A few other details from the same report are worth knowing:

• RECO received 4,671 new registration applications in 2025, down from 6,329 in 2024 and 7,556 in 2023.
• There were 6,457 terminations in 2025, which RECO says were mostly voluntary non-renewals and terminations for not paying insurance premiums. That is about 5.8% of year-end registrants.
• Transfers between brokerages hit 17,474, the highest in three years.

So fewer people are coming in, a few more are leaving, and a lot of people are moving brokerages. That last one is interesting. When agents switch brokerages, they often find out their contacts and notes were living in the brokerage's system, not their own. More on that below.

What 85,000 salespeople means for a solo agent

Honestly, the headcount matters less than what it does to your clients. A buyer or seller in Ontario probably knows several agents already. Their cousin is licensed. Their neighbour is licensed. Their old coworker got licensed in 2021.

That means:

1. Being remembered is the job. Most people don't pick the best agent. They pick the one who was there when they were ready.
2. Slow follow up loses deals. If a lead fills out a form and you reply the next afternoon, there's a good chance another agent already called.
3. Your database is your business. With this many agents, the ones who last are usually the ones with a past client list they actually stay in touch with.

How solo agents stand out in a crowded market

None of this is complicated. It's just hard to do consistently when you're also the marketer, the admin and the person driving to showings.

• Know who to call today. Keep every lead in a pipeline with clear stages. In CloseFlow those stages are New, Contacted, Qualified, Viewing, Offer, Under Contract, Closed and Lost. Overdue follow ups go to the top so they don't slip.
• Keep every conversation in one place. Email, text and call history in one thread means you aren't scrolling three apps to remember what you promised someone.
• Track consent. In Canada, CASL rules apply to commercial email and texts. Knowing who agreed to hear from you, and when, protects you and keeps your list clean.
• Own your contacts. If you're one of those 17,474 transfers next year, you want your list to come with you. Keep it in a tool you control and that can import a CSV without making duplicates.

That's basically why CloseFlow exists. It's a Canadian CRM built for solo Ontario agents (here is what to check when choosing a CRM in Canada), and it drafts follow ups for you to approve rather than sending things on its own. You can try it free for 14 days without a card. Plans start at CA$49 a month plus HST for Starter, with Professional at CA$99 plus HST and Scale at CA$179 plus HST.

Start your 14 day trial, no card needed.