# CREA (REALTOR.ca)

> The Canadian Real Estate Association is the national industry body for Canadian residential
> real estate — roughly 160,000 REALTORS through some 60 member boards — and it owns the MLS
> and REALTOR trademarks in Canada and operates REALTOR.ca, the country's single national
> consumer listing portal. Where the United States fragments into roughly 500 independently
> governed MLSs, Canada consolidates: CREA runs the REALTOR.ca Data Distribution Facility
> (DDF), one national syndication seam that collects listing content from member boards' MLS
> Systems and redistributes it to member websites, franchisor pools and Real Estate Advertising
> Websites. Three machine-readable contracts are downloadable anonymously; every runtime
> surface behind them is gated by CREA-issued credentials.

Generated 2026-07-26 by the API Evangelist enrichment pipeline. CREA publishes no llms.txt of
its own (`/llms.txt` returned HTTP 404 on both documentation hosts), so this file is generated
from apis.yml and the artifacts in this repository.

Access model in one paragraph: nothing is self-serve. There is no signup, no sandbox and no
free tier. `client_id` and `client_secret` are, in CREA's words, provided by CREA. A REALTOR
opts a data feed in through the DDF Dashboard; a third-party developer must enter a data access
agreement with CREA as a Technology Provider operating a National Pool Website or Member
Website on behalf of that opted-in member. The OData `$metadata` document — the actual
RESO-shaped contract — returns HTTP 401 to anonymous callers. No open, unlicensed Canadian
listing dataset exists behind any of it.

## APIs

- [REALTOR.ca DDF Web API](https://ddfapi-docs.realtor.ca/): OData v4 listing syndication API
  normalized to the RESO Data Dictionary. Base URL `https://ddfapi.realtor.ca/odata/v1`.
  Collections: Property, Member, Office, OpenHouse, Destination, plus PropertyReplication,
  MemberReplication and OfficeReplication for incremental sync. 17 operations.
- [REALTOR.ca DDF Lead API](https://ddfapi-docs.realtor.ca/): a single POST endpoint,
  `/v1/Lead/CreateLead`, on the same host. Required because REALTOR email addresses are
  deliberately excluded from the DDF Web API payload. The only write operation in the estate.
- [REALTOR.ca Board API](https://boardapi-docs.realtor.ca/): roster distribution for CREA's
  member boards. Base URL `https://boardapi.realtor.ca/`. Plain JSON, four operations, keyed on
  the national identifier space. Every request must send `Accept: application/json` or the host
  returns HTTP 406.

## Specs

- [DDF Web API OpenAPI 3.0.4 (Redoc copy)](openapi/crea-realtor-ca-ddf-web-api-openapi.json) — 17 operations, 157 schemas, 35KB narrative description
- [DDF Web API OpenAPI 3.0.4 (API host copy)](openapi/crea-realtor-ca-ddf-web-api-swagger-endpoint-openapi.json) — served live at https://ddfapi.realtor.ca/swagger/v1/swagger.json
- [Board API OpenAPI 3.0.1](openapi/crea-realtor-ca-board-api-openapi.json) — 4 operations
- [OpenID Connect discovery](well-known/crea-openid-configuration.json) — https://identity.crea.ca/.well-known/openid-configuration
- OData CSDL `$metadata`: https://ddfapi.realtor.ca/odata/v1/$metadata — **HTTP 401 anonymously**; the authoritative field/lookup contract cannot be read without credentials

## Auth

- [Authentication profile](authentication/crea-authentication.yml) — OAuth 2.0 client credentials against `https://identity.crea.ca/connect/token`; Bearer token, 3600s, non-sliding
- [OAuth scopes](scopes/crea-scopes.yml) — `DDFApi_Read`, `BoardDataApi.read`, `OfferManagementApi.read.write` (undocumented), `openid`, `offline_access`
- [Well-known surface](well-known/crea-well-known.yml)

## Artifacts

- [API conventions](conventions/crea-conventions.yml) — OData query surface, two different pagination models, UTC timestamps, replication pattern, no idempotency, no published rate limits
- [Error catalog](errors/crea-problem-types.yml) — both error tables and both envelopes
- [Data model](data-model/crea-data-model.yml) — Property / Member / Office / OpenHouse / Destination and the polymorphic Media, PropertyRoom and SocialMedia children
- [Lifecycle](lifecycle/crea-lifecycle.yml) — v1 forever, no status page, no SLA, no deprecation policy
- [Changelog](changelog/crea-changelog.yml) — 24 dated releases, 2022-06-08 to 2026-05-07
- [Conformance](conformance/crea-conformance.yml) — OData v4 yes, RESO aligned but **not certified**, RFC 9457 no
- [Agent skills](skills/_index.yml) — five packaged flows
- [MCP](mcp/crea-mcp.yml) and [tool crosswalk](mcp/crea-tool-crosswalk.yml) — no CREA-operated server; one community server
- [Agentic access](agentic-access/crea-agentic-access.yml) — 38 operations classified, 36 read / 2 write
- [Packages](packages/crea-packages.yml) — no first-party SDKs anywhere
- [Components](components/crea-components.yml) — the mandatory "Powered by REALTOR.ca" badge embeds
- [Domain security](security/crea-domain-security.yml), [vulnerability disclosure](security/crea-vulnerability-disclosure.yml)
- [Overlays](overlays/) — production servers, undeclared securitySchemes and stable operationIds added non-destructively

## Docs

- [DDF Web API documentation](https://ddfapi-docs.realtor.ca/)
- [DDF Web API release notes](https://ddfapi-docs.realtor.ca/releasenotes)
- [Board API documentation](https://boardapi-docs.realtor.ca/)
- [CREA product page for REALTOR.ca DDF](https://www.crea.ca/technology/realtor-ca-for-realtors/realtor-ca-tools/realtor-ca-ddf/)
- [DDF Policy and Rules (PDF)](https://www.crea.ca/files/technology/english/DDFR-Policy-and-Rules-February-2024-ENG.pdf)
- [DDF support forum](https://support.crea.ca/DDF)
- Support: support@realtor.ca (English only)

## Things an agent should know before calling anything

- Every runtime call needs credentials CREA issues after a contractual process. Do not attempt
  to sign up; there is no signup.
- 20 of 21 documented operations are reads. The one write, `POST /v1/Lead/CreateLead`, sends an
  email to a real REALTOR, has **no idempotency key**, and must be tested with
  `?SuppressEmail=true`.
- No rate limits, quotas or `429` responses are documented anywhere. Be conservative.
- No webhooks, no events, no AsyncAPI. Change detection is polling the replication endpoints.
- Displaying DDF content obliges you to render the "Powered by REALTOR.ca" badge and to beacon
  View / Click / email_realtor events to `https://analytics.crea.ca/LogEvents.svc/LogEvents`.