Last week there was a
that most mortgage shoppers didn’t see or pay much attention to.
It was an announcement by
Royal Bank of Canada
that it was joining forces with
.
For most who saw it, the reflex response was probably, “Who cares?”
As I dug deeper into the partnership, however, it became clear that this under-the-radar announcement could be meaningful on multiple mortgage fronts.
Let’s start with influence
RBC is objectively one of the most respected companies in the world, let alone Canada. That’s likely a key reason why the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), which owns Realtor.ca, chose it and not a competitor.
What this deal does is give the bank the opportunity to be seen by every single Canadian home shopper the moment they click on a listing.
And there are a lot of them! The site logged 2,055,914,578 page views in 2025, according to CREA spokesperson Pierre Leduc.
Realtor.ca is by far the dominant player in Canadian real estate search, and even massively capitalized foreign rivals like U.S.-based Zillow haven’t managed to knock it loose.
“The realtor role is not diminishing,” says senior-vice president, Home Equity Finance, Janet Boyle, who helped negotiate the deal.
In fact, Leduc says Realtor.ca captured almost 61 per cent of all traffic to Canadian real estate websites in 2025, up more than five percentage points over CREA’s 2024 numbers.
But even if realtor share slips due to AI or some other trend, RBC still has a formidable new lead-generation machine.
How it works
When you view a Realtor.ca listing, there will be a link that lets you click through to the bank to talk directly to a mortgage adviser. RBC pays a lead fee for this privilege.
Selling leads is nothing new. Realtor.ca already does that
through Pinch Financial
, a partner that funnels mortgage inquiries to the likes of Dominion Lending Centres, Nesto, Citadel Mortgage and others.
But this deal is different. RBC is the first bank to partner with Realtor.ca in a way that puts its name directly on listings instead of routing things through a middleman like Pinch, so millions of home shoppers immediately see its brand and link.
What this means is that Canadians will increasingly contact RBC about mortgages — great for it, not so great for competitors. (By the way, whoever negotiated the deal should get a raise.)
What I suspect is that many people will use the convenience to grab an initial quote from RBC as they start their mortgage shopping. “It will take just 10-12 minutes to speak with a home adviser,” and those advisers have over a decade of mortgage experience on average, Boyle says.
Of course, consumers will — and absolutely should — march that RBC quote straight over to competing mortgage brokers, lenders and rate comparison websites.
After all, RBC advisers — like all bank advisers — sell exactly one flavour of ice cream. There are plenty of other mortgage products that may suit a borrower’s situation far better.
That’s particularly true if you’re after a fixed mortgage with low prepayment penalties or flexible lump-sum prepayment options. RBC still permits only one lump-sum prepayment of up to ten per cent of the principal per year, if that detail matters to you.
In terms of pricing, while RBC has pretty much the lowest funding costs of any Canadian mortgage lender, that doesn’t always mean it offers the lowest borrowing costs.
Nonetheless, since it’s paying Realtor.ca for the leads, it’ll likely try hard to nurture and convert them into live mortgages. That means it should usually price materially better than the advertised “special offer” rates on its website, assuming the borrower is well qualified.
On the advice piece, RBC will want to keep CREA happy, so it’ll likely put great effort into its mortgage advice, leveraging AI in the process. In fact, we could eventually see automated, personalized recommendations for mortgage shoppers who would rather not speak to a salesperson.
“Yes, I could see that time when someone will talk two ways with a computer for their entire mortgage experience,” Boyle says. “Canadian consumers are not there yet, but I think they will be there.”
Robert McLister
is a mortgage strategist, interest rate analyst and editor of MortgageLogic.news. You can follow him on X at @RobMcLister.
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