The Pre-Delivery Inspection List That Held Up in Etobicoke

The situation

Marek, a surgeon, and Niloufar, a specialist physician, had agreed years earlier that when the right property came along, they would buy it together rather than each chase separate homes in a market that kept moving faster than their schedules allowed. A new-construction freehold house in Etobicoke, priced at roughly $1,900,000, became that property. They signed the agreement of purchase and sale with the builder well before the home was finished, paid their deposits in stages as the agreement required, and spent the better part of two years watching the build progress from a distance between hospital shifts.

As closing approached, the builder scheduled what is formally called a pre-delivery inspection, usually shortened to a PDI. This is the walkthrough that happens shortly before a new home closes, where the buyer and a builder representative go through the house together, room by room, and note anything incomplete, damaged, or not built to the standard the agreement promised. In Ontario, new homes are covered by a mandatory warranty program, and the PDI form the buyer signs at the end of that walkthrough becomes the primary written record of what the home looked like on the day it changed hands. It carries far more weight later than most buyers realize at the time.

Marek and Niloufar had heard from friends who had been through new-home closings before that builder representatives sometimes move quickly through the inspection, eager to get a signature on the form and move to the next closing on their schedule that day. They came to us before the PDI, not after a problem had already surfaced, wanting to understand what the walkthrough was actually for and how to make sure it worked for them rather than against them.

Why the inspection mattered so much

The warranty program that covers new homes in Ontario is built around a sequence of forms, each with its own window. The PDI form, completed at or before closing, is the buyer's first opportunity to put deficiencies on the record. After that comes a further list that can be submitted in the weeks after moving in, and later forms at the end of the first and second years of ownership, each covering different categories of defect as the home settles and gets used. The categories are not identical across every form, and some kinds of problems are only ever covered if they were noted on the very first list. A scuff on a countertop, a door that will not close properly, a window with a visible flaw in the glass, missing trim — these are the kinds of items that need to be caught and written down at the PDI stage, because a builder can reasonably argue later that everyday use, not construction, caused them if they were not flagged when the buyer first walked through.

The practical risk for Marek and Niloufar was less about any single item and more about the pace of the walkthrough itself. A PDI for a house of that size can run to dozens of individual notes — flooring, cabinetry, plumbing fixtures, paint, grading around the foundation, the function of every door and window — and a rushed thirty- or forty-minute walkthrough with a builder representative eager to finish is not enough time to look closely at all of it. Anything missed on the form is, in practical terms, much harder to have fixed later, because the builder's obligation runs primarily from what the buyer actually wrote down and both parties signed.

There was a second layer specific to their situation. Because Marek and Niloufar were buying together as co-owners, each with a full-time medical practice and unpredictable call schedules, neither of them could guarantee they would both be free on the date the builder proposed for the walkthrough, and builders in a busy pre-closing period are not always flexible about rescheduling. Losing the inspection date entirely, or attending without enough time to look properly, both carried the same underlying risk: a home that closed with problems nobody had put in writing.

What we did

1. Explained what the PDI form legally does before the walkthrough happened. We walked Marek and Niloufar through how the warranty program's list of forms works, which categories of deficiency belong on the PDI specifically, and why a deficiency not noted there is far harder to pursue later even if it is real and visible.
2. Insisted on a full walkthrough, not a rushed one. We contacted Parisa, the builder's site representative, in advance to confirm both siblings would attend together and to request the time needed to inspect properly, rather than accepting whatever slot was offered as fixed. Builders generally prefer a documented, orderly closing over a disputed one, and a reasonable request for adequate inspection time is rarely refused outright.
3. Prepared a room-by-room checklist tailored to a new freehold home. Rather than relying only on the builder's own form, we gave Marek and Niloufar a structured list to work through themselves during the walkthrough — doors and windows opened and closed, taps and drains tested, flooring checked in raking light, grading and exterior finishes examined — so nothing depended on memory or on catching everything in the moment.
4. Documented every item with photographs, in addition to the written form. The PDI form itself has limited space, and a short written note like "scratch on cabinet" can be hard to match to the right cabinet months later. Photographs, dated and tied to each written item, gave a second, harder-to-dispute record of exactly what condition the home was in at handover.
5. Arranged for a portion of the purchase price to be held back in trust at closing. Where deficiencies noted on the PDI list were not going to be finished before the closing date, we negotiated with the builder's lawyer to hold back an agreed sum — roughly $28,000, reflecting a reasonable estimate of the cost to complete the outstanding items — rather than closing on the builder's promise alone that the work would get done.
6. Followed up in writing once the deficiency list was resisted. When the builder's repair crew initially treated several items on the list as cosmetic or not their responsibility, we responded in writing, referring back to the signed PDI form and photographs for each disputed item, and made clear the held-back funds would not be released until the agreed work was verified complete.

The outcome

The pre-delivery inspection turned up thirty-one separate items across the house, ranging from minor paint and trim issues to a shower valve that had not been properly connected and a section of exterior grading that sloped toward the foundation instead of away from it — the kind of defect that looks minor on a walkthrough form but can cause real water damage if left alone. All thirty-one were documented in writing and in photographs before closing, and closing proceeded on schedule with the roughly $28,000 held back in trust against the unfinished work.

The builder's repair crew resisted a handful of the items in the weeks that followed, treating four of them as either not covered or as normal wear rather than construction deficiencies. Because each of those four items had been written down at the PDI stage with a photograph attached, there was no real room to argue they had appeared after closing or fallen outside the builder's responsibility. Faced with a clear written record and funds still held back, the builder completed all thirty-one repairs, including the grading correction, within a few months of closing. The held-back funds were released once Marek and Niloufar confirmed the work was done to their satisfaction.

Nothing about this outcome depended on a dispute escalating to a formal warranty claim or a hearing before the warranty program's tribunal. It depended entirely on the record created at the PDI being thorough enough that the builder had little practical choice but to complete the list once closing had happened and the leverage of a pending sale was gone. Marek and Niloufar moved into a home with no lingering construction issues and no repair bills of their own to cover — the roughly $28,000 in cost was, in effect, absorbed by the builder rather than the buyers, exactly because it had been secured before the money changed hands rather than chased afterward.

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