How many cars can you sell in Ontario without a licence?

Ontario has no number. Nothing in the Motor Vehicle Dealers Act, 2002 or its general regulation lets a person sell a set count of cars a year before registration is needed, whatever figure gets passed around. Section 4(1) says no person shall act as a motor vehicle dealer unless registered as one, and the Act’s definitions in section 1 make a motor vehicle dealer “a person who trades in motor vehicles, whether for the person’s own account or the account of any other person, or who holds himself, herself or itself out as trading in motor vehicles”. “Trade” includes buying, selling, leasing, advertising or exchanging an interest in a motor vehicle, and negotiating or trying to induce any of those. A single listing is advertising. Whether a sale needs registration turns on whose car it is and what it was used for.

Is there a limit on how many cars I can sell without a licence?

No. The Act never counts sales. It defines the dealer by the activity, and then exempts particular people and particular trades. If a sale falls inside an exemption, it needs no registration however often it happens. If it falls outside every exemption, the Act sets no allowance of sales before registration applies. OMVIC’s own curbsiders page does list “Seller has multiple vehicles for sale” among the signs a buyer may be dealing with a curbsider, but that is a warning sign for shoppers and sets no legal threshold.

Who can sell a car without being registered?

The main exemption is section 5. An individual who trades in a motor vehicle on their own account, or on the account of a member of their family, is exempt from registration “if the motor vehicle is used primarily for the personal use of the individual or a member of his or her family”. Section 2(2) of O. Reg. 333/08 extends that to the rest of the Act and the regulations for that trade, and to a person who runs an auction for one such individual and no one else at the same time.

Section 2(1) then lists 22 classes of person exempt in connection with the activity each paragraph describes. Ten of them, in plain terms:

Who	The condition
An executor or estate trustee	trading in the course of their duties (paragraph 5)
A person acting under a court order	trading in the course of those duties (paragraph 3)
A trustee in bankruptcy, receiver, liquidator or similar	trading in the course of duties under the named insolvency and corporate statutes (paragraph 4)
A lawyer	trading while acting in a professional capacity (paragraph 6)
A sole proprietor	a vehicle used for the business or for personal or family use, but not if the business is trading in or repairing motor vehicles (paragraph 7)
A business selling a director’s, officer’s or employee’s vehicle	the same use test and the same carve-out for trading and repair businesses (paragraph 8)
A registered charity	acting as a charity (paragraph 13)
A creditor, other than a registrant, that lawfully repossessed a vehicle or holds a lawful lien on it	sells it to or through a registered dealer (paragraph 14)
An insurer paying out on a stolen or wrecked vehicle	the vehicle is classified irreparable or salvage, or registered in the insurer’s name, and the insurer sells it to or through a registered dealer (paragraph 20)
A person who buys vehicles to wreck or dismantle	wrecks or dismantles them under the Highway Traffic Act and does not trade in them (paragraph 2)

Two exemptions turn on the vehicle rather than the seller: vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating over 21 tonnes (paragraph 18), and buses and commercial motor vehicles as the Highway Traffic Act defines them, except when sold to an individual covered by section 5 (paragraph 19). Power-assisted bicycles are exempt too (paragraph 9).

What falls outside the personal-use exemption?

The wording of section 5 sets the limits.

• Buying to resell. A car bought to fix and sell on was not “used primarily for the personal use” of the seller. Paragraph 7 of section 2(1) closes the same door for a business: it stops applying to a person in the business of trading in motor vehicles or repairing them.
• Selling for a friend. Section 5 covers the seller’s own account and a family member’s. A dealer, by the section 1 definition, trades for their own account “or the account of any other person”.
• Keeping someone else’s name on the ownership. The exemption follows how the vehicle was used. OMVIC’s curbsiders page lists a vehicle “not registered in seller’s name or has only been registered in their name for a short period” as a warning sign.
• Borrowing a dealer’s registration. Section 6(3) says a registration is not transferable, and section 4(3) bars a dealer from retaining an unregistered salesperson. The Licence Appeal Tribunal directed the Registrar to revoke a Hamilton dealer’s registrations after finding he let an unregistered individual sell vehicles on his lot, in the Car Import Export decision.
• Selling after a registration lapses. An expired registration leaves the seller unregistered. The tribunal upheld the refusal of All Gear Auto’s registration after finding it kept advertising and selling after its registration expired on August 30, 2025.

What does OMVIC prosecute?

The discipline committee under section 17(1) hears whether registrants have failed to comply with the code of ethics, and an unregistered seller is not a registrant. Unregistered selling is prosecuted as an offence instead. OMVIC’s enforcement article of May 20, 2026 says its efforts in 2025 contributed to 895 charges against 174 alleged curbsiders.

The unregistered-selling charges on OMVIC’s court table fall under three lines of section 4: acting as a dealer without registration under section 4(1)(a), acting as a salesperson without registration under section 4(1)(b), as in the August 18 to 21 batch, and a registered dealer retaining an unregistered salesperson under section 4(3). Each count is a separate conviction with its own fine, as the September 1 to 15 rows show. On July 7, 2026, the table recorded 21 convictions at the Brampton court against three parties, all guilty pleas under section 4(1)(a), for $82,500 in fines. A reading note on those numbers: several of the counts carry fines below $5,000, which points to offences that predate the $5,000 floor described below; the table does not give offence dates.

The penalties are in section 32:

• An individual faces a fine of up to $50,000, up to two years less a day in jail, or both, and a corporation a fine of up to $250,000, under section 32(3).
• A conviction under section 4(1) carries a minimum fine of $5,000 under section 32(4), in force since December 4, 2023. That figure comes from a 2023 amendment (S.O. 2023, c. 20, Sched. 10). OMVIC’s own legislation overview, stamped current to July 1, 2024, still gives the minimum as $2,500; the Act is what a court applies.
• A court may add compensation or restitution under section 33. Zsolt Notar, convicted at trial in Toronto on July 29, 2026 on two section 4(1)(a) counts and one Consumer Protection Act count, was ordered to pay $31,000 in fines and $17,000 in restitution ($8,000 of it on an MVDA count), with 24 months of probation, as the July and August court batch records.

Money can be frozen before any conviction. Under s. 22.1 of the MVDA, the director may order the money or assets of a non-registrant held where the person is alleged to have done business that required registration. The allegation has to come with proceedings started or about to start, or a search warrant. The director must also find reasonable grounds to believe the person took money or assets from customers whose interests need protecting.

What does a buyer lose when the seller should have been registered?

The protections a sale by a registered dealer carries. OMVIC’s curbsiders page states that buyers who purchase privately and fall victim to a curbsider “are not protected by OMVIC, its compensation fund, or the MVDA”. The Compensation Fund guide covers who the fund does pay.

Where do curbsiders fit in studying for the certification test?

This site sorts its practice questions into seventeen sections, and curbsiders is one of them. The curbsiders practice page takes the prohibition, the exemption and the enforcement tools in turn.

The offence section also sets a time limit. Under section 32(5), a prosecution must start within two years after the facts first came to the director’s knowledge. A sale made three years ago can still be charged if the facts reached the director only last year.