Before You Buy
An accepted offer is a binding contract, and most of what decides whether it goes well is settled before you sign it. Whether to make a conditional offer or a firm one, what an irrevocable date commits you to, where your deposit goes and the honest answer to can I get my deposit back, and exactly what you are entitled to be told when there are competing offers.
An offer is not an expression of interest. Once it is accepted it is a binding agreement of purchase and sale, and almost everything that decides whether the next two months go smoothly was settled in the hour before you signed it.
This guide is about that hour: what the moving parts are, what each one commits you to, and where the real risk sits. The document itself is a standard form your agent brings, published by the industry association and protected by copyright — so what follows explains what the parts do rather than reproducing any of it. Your lawyer, not this page, is the person to read the actual wording with.
Every offer carries an irrevocable date and time — the deadline until which your offer stands and cannot be withdrawn. Until it expires, you are committed: the seller can accept at any point up to that moment and you are bound.
Two consequences people underestimate. A long irrevocable period gives the seller time to shop your offer against others, which is exactly why sellers like them and buyers in competition are pushed to keep them short. And an offer you have changed your mind about does not simply lapse the moment you regret it — you wait for the clock.
If a seller signs back a change, however small, that is a counter-offer: your original is dead and the new document carries its own irrevocable date, now running against them. Each pass resets the clock, which is why negotiations that look leisurely can suddenly become urgent.
This is the single most consequential choice in the document.
A conditional offer is binding but escapable on defined terms: it includes conditions — most commonly financing, a home inspection, and for a condominium a review of the status certificate — each with its own deadline. If a condition is not satisfied and you do not waive it, the agreement ends and, in the normal case, the deposit is returned.
A firm offer has no conditions. On acceptance you are buying the property, whatever the inspection would have found and whatever your lender decides. There is no route out that does not involve losing your deposit and, potentially, being sued for the seller's losses.
In a competitive market, buyers are routinely advised that waiving conditions wins deals, because sellers prefer a firm offer. That advice is not wrong, it is incomplete: going firm is a decision to accept specific risks, and the honest version names them.
The deposit is money you hand over on acceptance to show the seller you are serious. Two things about it surprise nearly every first-time buyer, and both matter more than the amount.
It does not go to the seller. It goes to the listing brokerage and is held in a real estate statutory trust account — not in the seller's bank account, and not in your agent's. While it sits there, RECO's consumer deposit insurance protects it against brokerage theft, fraud, insolvency or misappropriation, up to $200,000 per claim and $4 million for all claims arising from a single event.
It does not come back on its own if the deal collapses. This is the one to understand before you write a large cheque:
A brokerage can only disburse the deposit in accordance with the terms of a mutual consent and or release form signed by both the buyer and seller or by following instructions in a court order.
Real Estate Council of Ontario, on consumer deposit insurance
So the answer to can I get my deposit back is: not by yourself. If a deal falls apart and the two sides disagree about who should get the deposit, nobody gets it. It stays in trust until both sign a release or a court decides — and the deposit insurance does not cover that dispute, because nothing has been stolen. A large deposit is therefore not only a signal of good faith; it is the amount you may be arguing about for months if anything goes wrong.
The terms get used interchangeably and they are different things at different times.
The deposit is paid at the offer stage, to the brokerage, and is held in trust. The down payment is the total cash equity you are putting into the purchase, paid through your lawyer at closing, with the rest covered by the mortgage. Your deposit is not additional to the down payment — it is credited towards it at closing, along with everything else you bring.
So a larger deposit does not increase what the house costs you. What it changes is how much of your cash is committed early, and how much is exposed if the transaction fails. New builds work differently again — deposits there are structured in instalments and protected by a different regime entirely, which is new build deposits in Ottawa.
Ontario's rules changed here and the change is widely misunderstood, so it is worth being precise. Two different things are often confused: how many offers there are, and what is in them.
In Ontario, the seller's real estate agent is required to disclose the number of competing offers to all buyers who have submitted a written offer.
Real Estate Council of Ontario, on competing offers
The number, then, is not optional — you are entitled to it once you have a written offer in. The contents are a different matter entirely. Sellers choose how much else to share, if anything; agents working for a seller are not permitted to share any of the content of the offers unless the seller directs them to; and personal or identifying information in an offer cannot be shared at all.
Which means: an "open offer" process, where a seller elects to share terms, is something a seller may choose and not something you can demand. RECO's own advice to buyers is not to expect the price, closing date or other specifics of competing offers to be disclosed. Bid on what the property is worth to you, not on a guess about what the other envelope says.
One more thing worth asking about before you are in this situation: what happens if a competing offer comes from inside the same brokerage. That is multiple representation, it has its own disclosure and consent requirements, and who works for you when you buy sets out how the incentives run.
None of this makes a competitive purchase comfortable. It does make it a decision you took rather than one that happened to you, which is the only part of it you actually control.
Between an accepted offer and the keys, a real estate lawyer does work you will never watch: searching the title, finding liens nobody mentioned, and arranging title insurance. What title insurance covers for its one-time premium, the exclusions that matter — including renovations done without permits — and why it is not a substitute for a survey.
Does the realtor work for me? Every person in a purchase is paid by someone, and it is rarely the person they are standing next to. How real estate commission flows, what buyer representation and multiple representation actually mean, who the open house agent works for, how a mortgage broker is paid, and why the appraisal is for the lender.
What does an inspection cover? A few hundred dollars of clarity on a several-hundred-thousand-dollar decision. What Ottawa inspectors typically look at, what they don't, what the inspection cost buys, and how the deficiencies they find fit a conditional-on-inspection offer.
What do I pay on closing? The purchase price is only the headline number. Between the accepted offer and closing day, a cluster of hidden costs comes due — land transfer tax, lawyer fees and disbursements, title insurance, adjustments and the repair buffer nobody budgets for.
