OPC Case Summary #2009-002 — sold price + address is personal information; pulling from MLS does NOT qualify for "publicly available" consent exemption (decisive against MLS-sourced republication)

Claim. PIPEDA Case Summary #2009-002 found that the combination of condominium address and purchase price paid by the new owner is sufficient information to identify the complainant; purchase price could reveal personal traits such as the abilities to pay or to bargain. A realtor's "Sold for 99.3pct of asking" ad without consent = well-founded complaint. Critically, even though the price would likely be accessible through public property registries, OPC interprets the "publicly available" exemption to apply only when the info is actually collected from a publicly available source — collecting it from the MLS does NOT qualify for the consent exemption.

Quote.

"The combination of the condominium address and the purchase price paid by the new owner is sufficient information to identify the complainant." "Could reveal personal traits… such as the abilities to pay or to bargain." "Would quite likely be accessible to the public through public property registries."

Source. OPC PIPEDA Case Summary #2009-002, priv.gc.ca, accessed 2026-06-21.

Confidence. Verified.

Caveats. The "actually collected from a publicly available source" rule is OPC's interpretation; a future case could refine it. Until then, MLS-sourced ≠ registry-sourced for consent-exemption purposes.

Implication / use. Decisive for any product: pulling a price from the MLS ≠ pulling it from the land registry, for PIPEDA purposes. Anchors Rule: do not republish sold price + address from MLS without consent. OPC #2009-002 — MLS-sourced ≠ registry-sourced; the "publicly available" exemption fails when the MLS is the source.