Your offer was accepted. Here’s what happens before you get the keys.

Your offer was accepted. Great. Now what?

If this is your first home, this is often where the process can be a little overwhelming. You’ve agreed on a price, but you don’t own the home yet. There may still be subjects to remove, financing to finalize, documents to sign and money to move before anyone hands you the keys.

The short version:

You don’t need to manage every part yourself. Your realtor, lender or mortgage broker, and lawyer or notary each have a job to do.

Your job is to know your deadlines, respond when someone needs something from you, understand what you’re signing, and make sure your money is ready when it needs to be.

Here’s how it works.

Your offer is accepted. But the deal may not be firm yet.

If you’ve included subjects with your offer, there are still conditions to work through before you’re obligated to complete the purchase.

A subject is simply something you need to deal with first. Common examples include confirming your financing, getting a home inspection or reviewing strata documents.

This stage is usually fairly short. Think several days to roughly a week, although your contract sets the actual deadline.

This is your time to do your homework.

Read the documents, get the inspection (if applicable) and confirm your mortgage. Now’s the time to ask all the questions you need answered.

To be clear: subjects aren’t just a general escape hatch if you change your mind. If your offer includes a financing subject, for example, you’re expected to make a reasonable effort to get that financing.

Once you’ve done what your subjects require and you’re ready to go ahead, you let the seller know in writing that you’re removing them.

At that point, the purchase is generally contractually binding.

Get your financing locked down

Once you know which mortgage lender you’re going with, tell them which notary or lawyer is handling your purchase. Your lender needs to send that office its mortgage instructions before the legal documents can be prepared.

And that can take time. 

BC notary Rimpy Sadhra recommends giving your lender plenty of runway (roughly two weeks). She’s seen buyers still deciding between banks just days before completion, and mortgage instructions arrive as late as closing day. 

Her advice: don’t leave your lender decision until the last minute.

If the mortgage instructions arrive late, your legal representative has less time to prepare the paperwork, which can create delays and cost you more.

Next, get your legal rep involved

Tell your realtor which notary or lawyer you’re using so they can send over the purchase documents.

If you’re getting a mortgage, tell your lender or mortgage broker too. They need to send their instructions directly to your notary or lawyer.

From there, a lot happens without you seeing much of it.

Your notary or lawyer reviews the purchase documents and the title to the property, prepares the documents needed to put the home into your name, handles the mortgage paperwork if you have one, works with the seller’s legal representative and gets everything ready for completion.

Sadhra says those two handoffs are important early on: your legal professional needs the purchase documents from your realtor and the mortgage instructions from your lender before they can properly prepare the file.

Simply put, the question has changed from “Are we buying this home?” to “How does it become legally ours?”

Most of the closing process isn’t complicated once you know who’s doing what. Here’s a breakdown:

Expect to hand over a fair bit of information

Your legal rep will usually send you an intake form.

They may ask for things like:

• your full legal name
• date of birth
• government issued ID, like a driver’s licence or passport
• your social insurance number
• occupation and employer
• mortgage information
• details about anyone buying the home with you

If more than one person is buying, they may also ask how you want the ownership registered.

It can feel like a lot of information to hand over at once, but your legal professional needs it to prepare the transfer and mortgage documents and make sure everything gets registered correctly.

The easiest thing you can do at this point is simple:

Answer the questions as they come to you.

A lot of last-minute closing stress comes from fairly ordinary things happening too late. A missing document. Mortgage instructions that haven’t arrived. Money you need that you can’t access for several days.

If you need property insurance, deal with that early too. Your lender may want proof of insurance before releasing the mortgage funds.

The less you leave for the final few days, the easier those final few days tend to be.

So what’s happening while you wait?

Your notary or lawyer may be:

• reviewing the title
• checking what is registered against the property
• preparing the transfer documents
• preparing your mortgage documents
• working with your developer’s sales rep
• making sure the lender has what it needs
• calculating the final amount you need to provide

One important piece is the title.

In simple terms, the title shows who legally owns the property and what is registered against it.

That might include things like rights of way or other legal agreements tied to the property.

You do not need to understand every line of the title yourself. That’s part of what your notary or lawyer is there for.

Their job is to review it, flag anything you need to know and explain what it means.

Don’t be surprised if it feels like nothing’s happening during this period. It can get a little quiet while things are in motion behind the scenes.

Then you find out exactly how much money you need

Before completion, your notary will give you a number:

This is how much you need to provide to complete the purchase. 

The number isn’t necessarily just the purchase price minus your mortgage and deposit.

Your statement of adjustments is essentially the closing math. It shows the money going into and out of the transaction and calculates what you need to provide to complete the purchase.

Depending on the home, you might see:

• the purchase price
• the deposit you already paid
• property tax adjustments
• strata fee adjustments
• utility adjustments
• applicable taxes
• other costs or credits specific to the purchase

Why are there adjustments?

Because some costs don’t line up neatly with the day you take ownership.

Take property taxes. If the seller has already paid taxes for a period when you’ll own the home, you may owe them your share. If money is still owing for a period when they owned it, the adjustment can work the other way. Strata fees and some other costs can be handled the same way.

Sadhra says this is often where she spends the most time with buyers, walking through how the final number was calculated. She also emphasizes that having enough money and being able to access that money on time are two different things.

If some of your closing money is sitting in an investment account or at another financial institution, find out early how long it takes to move.

This isn’t the week to discover that transferring your money takes five business days.

Then you sit down and sign. A lot.

Before completion, you’ll meet with your lawyer or notary to go through the legal documents and sign them.

You can generally allow at least an hour, and often longer for first-time buyers because there are naturally more questions.

The exact documents you’ll sign depend on your purchase and financing, but most fall into a few broad categories.

You should understand what you’re signing, why you’re signing it and what responsibilities you’re taking on. So, ask questions. If you don’t know what something means, there’s no shame in saying so.

The difference between completion and possession

People often use “closing day,” “completion day,” “possession day” and “moving day” as if they all mean the same thing. They don’t.

Completion is when legal ownership of the home transfers to you.

Your purchase contract sets the completion date.

By then, you’ve signed the required documents, your lawyer or notary has the money they need, and your lender has provided the mortgage funds if you’re financing the purchase.

Behind the scenes, your legal professional registers the transfer, deals with the money and confirms that the purchase has completed.

Congratulations. You own the home.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean you can move in yet.

Possession is when you’re entitled to take control of the home.

When purchasing an Anthem home, possession day is the day following completion. Once you’re entitled to possession, our Homeowner Care team gets you your keys.

So, if you remember one thing:

Completion = the home legally becomes yours
Possession = you get to take it over

Then you get the keys.

The biggest favour you can do yourself is respond quickly, ask when you don’t understand something and don’t leave your financing or your money until the last minute.

A few more questions first-time buyers ask

How long does it take to close after an offer is accepted in BC?

There’s no standard timeline. Your purchase contract sets the important dates, including your subject-removal deadline, completion date and possession date. The subject period itself is often only several days to roughly a week. The time between removing subjects and completion can be longer depending on what you and the developer agreed to.

Do I need a lawyer or notary to buy a home in BC?

Buyers in BC normally use a lawyer or notary to handle the legal work required to transfer ownership. They prepare the documents, review the title, deal with the funds and help get the purchase through completion. Which one you use depends on your transaction and your preference. If the purchase involves unusual or more complicated legal issues, ask whether a lawyer is the better fit.

Sources: This guide draws on BC Financial Services Authority guidance on subject clauses, the Home Buyer Rescission Period and completing a home purchase in BC, with expert input from BC Notary Public Rimpy Sadhra.

DISCLAIMER

This post is for general educational purposes and is not legal, financial, tax, mortgage or real estate advice. Rules, rates and eligibility criteria change and depend on your circumstances, so confirm the details with a qualified professional before making decisions. Sources relied upon in creating this post are subject to change at any time and may be out of date. Dollar figures and timelines are examples or estimates only. Guests’ quotes and opinions are their own and are not statements, representations or guarantees of Anthem, and Anthem does not endorse any guest or their services. If you are buying an Anthem home, your purchase agreement and warranty documents govern, not any of the information in this post. Nothing here is an offer to sell.