How does an Ontario offer work, and which conditions should it contain?

What the agreement of purchase and sale contains

The agreement names the parties and the property, the price, the deposit and when it is paid, the irrevocable date and time, the completion date, the chattels included and fixtures excluded, any rental items such as a hot water tank, and a requisition date by which your lawyer must raise title objections. It also contains the seller's Planning Act and title covenants, an HST clause and, in Schedule A, the conditions.

Under the Statute of Frauds a contract for land must be in writing and signed. The Ontario Real Estate Association form is the usual vehicle but nothing requires it; builders and private sellers use their own, which is when a lawyer review condition earns its place.

The irrevocable date and counter-offers

Your offer stays open until the irrevocable time you set. If the seller accepts before then and acceptance is communicated, there is a contract. If the seller changes anything and signs it back, that is a counter-offer: your original offer is dead and you are now the party who can accept or not.

There is no cooling-off period for a resale home in Ontario. The only statutory rescission right in a home purchase is the ten-day period for a new condominium bought from the declarant under section 73 of the Condominium Act. Once a resale agreement is firm, walking away is a breach.

Conditions that protect you, and how they end

The usual buyer conditions are financing, home inspection, a status certificate for a condominium, lawyer review, insurance and, where relevant, sale of your own home, well and septic, or survey. Each has a deadline. By that deadline you deliver a written notice that the condition is fulfilled or waived; if you do nothing the agreement ends and the deposit is returned without deduction.

Wording matters. A condition for your sole benefit, satisfactory in your sole discretion, gives you the decision. Deadlines can only be extended by a signed amendment before they pass. In competition buyers are pressed to drop conditions; our offer-conditions checklist shows what each one is protecting before you decide.

The deposit: when, where and what happens to it

The deposit is paid on acceptance, commonly within twenty-four hours, to the listing brokerage, which must hold it in its real estate trust account under the Trust in Real Estate Services Act. Interest is paid only if the agreement says so.

If the deal ends because a condition was not met, the deposit comes back. If you refuse to close a firm agreement, Ontario courts generally let the seller keep the deposit without proving a loss, and the seller can also sue for any shortfall on resale. A deposit cheque that bounces is itself a breach. Treat the deposit date as seriously as the closing date.

What we do at the offer stage

Send us the draft before it is submitted. We read the schedules, check that the conditions do what you think they do, confirm the legal description against the parcel register, and flag anything on title, such as easements, restrictive covenants or a Planning Act issue, that should be dealt with before you are bound. For a builder or private-sale agreement we review the whole document. The price is a flat fee published on this page.