Occupancy on an Ottawa new build — living in a home you do not own yet, and what happens when the date moves
Condominium buyers can move in months before they own the unit, paying a monthly fee that buys them nothing. Freehold buyers get possession and ownership on the same day — but either way the date can move, twice, by a lot. Here is how occupancy actually works and what you are owed when it slips. What happens if the closing date moved, how delayed occupancy is handled, and why occupancy day and closing day are two different days on a condominium.
By Ottawa Property Guide EditorialPublished July 31, 2026 Last verified July 31, 2026
"Occupancy" sounds like a synonym for moving in, and on a freehold home it more or less is. On a condominium it is a technical term for something stranger: a period, often months long, in which you live in the unit, pay for it monthly, and do not own it.
Which of those two you are signing up for is decided by what you bought, not by anything you negotiate. It is worth understanding before the date arrives, because the condominium version comes with a bill most buyers have not budgeted for.
Freehold: possession and ownership on the same day
If you are buying a freehold home — a detached, semi, or freehold town — there is one date that matters. On closing, title transfers, your mortgage funds, and you get the keys. There is no gap, and no interim occupancy.
What can still happen to you is the date moving, which is the second half of this guide.
Condominium: interim occupancy, and why it exists
A condominium unit cannot be transferred to you until the condominium corporation legally exists — until the declaration and description are registered. Construction routinely finishes on the lower floors long before that registration happens, particularly in a tower.
So the Condominium Act allows an agreement to permit or require interim occupancy, defined as occupancy of a proposed unit before the purchaser receives a deed in registerable form. You move in. You do not own it. Your mortgage has not funded, because there is nothing yet to register it against.
That period can run anywhere from a few weeks to well over a year, and you do not control its length.
The occupancy fee — what it is, and what it is capped at
During interim occupancy you pay the builder a monthly occupancy fee. People call it phantom rent, and the nickname is fair: it is a payment for living somewhere, not a payment toward buying it.
The Act does not leave the amount to the builder. It says the declarant may charge a monthly occupancy fee which shall not be greater than the total of three specific amounts:
Two things follow from that list, and both matter more than the total does.
None of the three is principal. Nothing you pay during interim occupancy reduces what you owe on the unit. A year of occupancy fees leaves your purchase price exactly where it started — which is the single most common surprise in the whole arrangement.
The interest rate is fixed by regulation and set at the start. It is tied to a published Bank of Canada figure as of the first of the month you take occupancy, so it is checkable, and it does not drift month to month while you are in there.
The one lever you have, and it expires early
The Act gives the purchaser a right that is easy to miss: despite anything in the agreement to the contrary, you may elect to pay the balance of the purchase price in full when you assume interim occupancy. The election has to be made before the rescission period on the agreement runs out — so it is a decision for the first ten days, not for the month you move in.
Do that and the interest component of the fee disappears, because there is no unpaid balance to charge interest on. You would still pay the taxes and common-expense portions. Whether it is a good idea depends entirely on where that money would otherwise be and what your lender will do — which is a conversation with your lawyer and your mortgage broker, early, not a default move.
One more provision worth knowing if your occupancy runs long: where a residential occupancy lasts more than six months and the fee includes a projected reserve-fund contribution, the builder must hold that portion in trust from month seven and remit it to the corporation once the declaration is registered.
How the dates move — the Statement of Critical Dates
Every new-build purchase in Ontario carries a Tarion Addendum, and its first page is a Statement of Critical Dates, signed by you and the builder. That page, not the marketing, is where your date lives.
The important distinction is what kind of date you were given. A Firm date is what it sounds like: miss it and the builder owes compensation. A Tentative date is not — in Tarion's words, it "allows your builder to extend the Closing Date twice, by up to 120 days each time, without paying compensation."
Read that arithmetic slowly. Two extensions of up to 120 days is up to eight months of delay with nothing owed to you. That is not a builder behaving badly; it is the agreement you signed, and it is the reason the front page of the Addendum is worth more attention than the brochure.
90 days' written notice is required to change the date — and on a condominium, the deadline for notifying you of a delay beyond the first tentative occupancy date falls 90 days before it.
The Outside Date is the last date the builder committed to. It is the one that actually binds.
If the home is not ready by the Outside Date, you have 30 days to terminate the agreement and get your deposit back.
Missing a Firm date obliges the builder to set a new one — and that is when compensation starts running.
What you are owed when it slips
$7,500 is a real sum and it is also a ceiling — at $150 a day it is reached in 50 days. A long delay and a very long delay compensate identically. Treat the warranty as a floor under the worst case rather than as insurance against the inconvenience.
The claim deadlines are the part that quietly costs people money, because they run from your occupancy date — the moment you are busiest and least likely to be filing paperwork. Diarise them the week you get your date.
What to do about all of this
Find out which kind of date you have — Firm or Tentative — on the Statement of Critical Dates, before you sign.
Ask the builder for a written estimate of the occupancy fee if you are buying a condominium, broken into its three components.
Budget for occupancy fees on top of your deposit schedule, for a period you cannot predict. This is the cost that wrecks otherwise careful new-build budgets.
Ask your lawyer about the pay-in-full election early, while it is still available to you.
Keep receipts from the moment a date slips — accommodation, meals, storage, moving. Compensation is paid against costs.
Diarise both claim deadlines — 180 days to the builder, and the first year of possession for Tarion.
A new-build deposit is bigger than a resale one, paid in stages over months, and handed to a builder long before there is a house. What stands behind that money depends on whether you are buying freehold or condominium — and since April 2026, partly on whether you filed one form. How staged deposits are scheduled, what Tarion deposit protection actually covers, and the deposit vs down payment distinction that catches most first-time buyers.
Buying preconstruction is a different transaction from buying resale: the builder agreement is the builder's own paper, the home doesn't exist yet, and the timeline is measured in seasons. New vs resale, and the whole journey in the buyer's order.
Condo fees get treated like a penalty box on listing sheets, but they're really a bundled bill for things every homeowner pays somehow. Here's what the fee typically buys, what a reserve fund is for, and why a suspiciously low fee deserves more scrutiny, not less. What do condo fees cover, why maintenance fees and condo fees are the same thing under two names, and why the lowest fee is rarely the prize.
July 22, 2026
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