Conditions, deposit, dates and buyer strength — why the highest number is so often not the best offer on the table.
The first thing every seller looks at is the price, and that is understandable. But the price is a promise that only matters if the deal completes — and whether it completes is decided by the other terms.
An offer $10,000 higher, with a financing condition from a buyer who has not spoken to a lender, a $2,000 deposit, and a possession date that does not work for you, is not a better offer than a clean one at a slightly lower number. It is a more expensive way to end up back on the market in three weeks — only now with days on market against you and buyers wondering what the inspection found.
This guide covers each term, what it tells you about the buyer, and how to weigh them together. We will go through any offer with you line by line, but it helps enormously to already understand what we are looking at.
An offer is five things at once, and the conditions are where the risk lives.
Every offer contains a price, a set of conditions, a deposit, a possession date, and a buyer of a certain financial strength. Change any one of those and the offer changes materially, even if the price stays identical.
A deal that collapses costs you more than the difference between two offers. You lose weeks, you accumulate days on market, and you return to a buyer pool that now assumes something was wrong with your home. Buyers ask why it came back, and no answer sounds good.
If you have bought elsewhere and need a specific possession date, an offer matching it may genuinely be worth more to you than a higher one that does not, once you price the cost of bridge financing or a double move.
Price, conditions, deposit, dates, buyer strength. We lay them side by side so you are comparing complete packages rather than one number against another.
Conditions are written in the buyer’s favour. Until they are removed, the buyer can walk and recover their deposit. Your home is off the market during that window and you are carrying the risk.
A seven-day condition period is materially better than a fourteen-day one, because it is half the time in which something can change — the buyer’s job, their financing, their nerve. Financing and inspection are normal and expected. What deserves attention is anything beyond them.
An offer conditional on the buyer selling their own property is the weakest common condition, because it depends on an entirely separate transaction you cannot see or influence. If their home is not yet listed, this is close to an option on your house. These offers can still be worth taking — but they should be priced accordingly and usually kept on the market with the right protections, which we will explain.
Conditional on a satisfactory review of something vague, on a relative viewing the home, on an appraisal at a specified value, or on financing with an unusually long window. Each is a legitimate request in some circumstances and a soft exit in others, and the difference is worth talking through.
The deposit is held in the listing brokerage’s trust account and credited to the purchase at closing. Its real function before then is as a signal: a buyer who puts down a substantial deposit is demonstrating both their financial capacity and their seriousness.
A token deposit on a substantial purchase is worth noticing. It can indicate a buyer stretched thin, or one who is keeping their options open. A strong deposit indicates available funds and genuine commitment — and a buyer with real money at stake behaves differently through the condition period.
If a buyer terminates properly under a condition, the deposit is returned to them — that is what conditions are for. The deposit only becomes contested if a buyer walks away from a firm deal, and that is a legal process, not a payout. Do not treat it as insurance.
When is the deposit due? Immediately on acceptance, or within several days? A deposit due promptly and paid promptly is a good early sign about how the rest of the transaction will run.
Almost every offer you receive will be conditional on financing. The words look the same from one offer to the next. What sits behind them does not.
A pre-approval letter says a lender looked at the buyer's income and credit at some point and was willing in principle. It does not mean the lender has looked at your home, and it is the home the lender actually has to approve: the appraisal, the property type, and in a condo the building's documents. A buyer with a pre-approval can still fail the condition.
A short condition period, a lender the buyer has already been working with, a broker's or banker's name you can call, and a deposit that says the buyer has cash behind the application. The best offers include a letter or an email from the lender, dated recently, that names the buyer and a figure at or above the price.
A long condition period with no explanation, financing "to the buyer's satisfaction" with no lender named, or a buyer who has not yet spoken to anyone. None of these makes the offer worthless. They make it less certain, and certainty is what you are being paid for when you choose one offer over another.
Who is the lender, has the file been submitted, and what is outstanding. The answer tells you more about the offer than the price does.
An inspection condition gives the buyer a window to look closely and decide. For you it is a window in which the deal is not yet a deal, and in which the home's small flaws become negotiating points.
Enough time to book a qualified inspector and read the report, and no longer. In Calgary that is usually a matter of days. An inspection condition that runs for weeks is either a buyer who is not organised or a buyer keeping an option open on your home while looking at others.
Walk away for almost any reason, with the deposit returned, if they are not satisfied. Alberta's standard contract makes the condition subjective. That is why the report that comes back often arrives with a request: fix this, credit that, or reduce the price.
Separate what is genuinely unknown to you from what was visible at every showing. A furnace at the end of its life that was never disclosed is a fair conversation. A twenty-year-old roof on a twenty-year-old home that the buyer walked under three times is not news, and it was priced in.
Sellers who inspect before listing hand the report to every buyer. The inspection condition then confirms what the buyer already knew, and the request to remedy is usually short or absent.
Some offers are conditional on the buyer selling their own home first. It is the most common condition that collapses, because it depends on a transaction you cannot see.
To take your home off the market, or to keep it on with a warning to other buyers, while a stranger tries to sell a house you have never seen, in a community whose market you may not know, at a price you did not set.
Is their home listed yet, and for how long? Is it priced to sell or priced to hope? Have they had showings and offers? Do they have a firm sale that simply has not closed, which is a very different thing from a hope?
A sale-of-buyer's-home condition in Alberta usually comes with a clause letting you keep marketing your home. If another acceptable offer arrives, you give the first buyer a short period to remove their condition or step aside. Insist on it, keep the period short, and keep showing the home.
When their home is already under contract with conditions removed, or in a slow market where your alternative is no offer at all. Even then, the price should reflect the risk you are carrying for them.
Dates, included items, and the three ways to respond.
This is the term most likely to matter to you personally. If you are buying as well, the two dates need to work together — and if they cannot, you need to know what bridge financing or interim accommodation will cost before you accept, not after.
Appliances, window coverings, the shed, the hot tub, mounted televisions, the garage shelving, the playground set. Read this list properly. Disputes over what was meant to stay are among the most common possession-day arguments, and they are entirely avoidable at this stage. If something is precious to you, exclude it explicitly — and ideally remove it before the first showing.
Note the specific dates and times. These govern your certainty and dictate how long your home is effectively off the market.
Additional terms written into an offer deserve careful reading. They can be entirely reasonable — a request for the RPR, a specific rent-back arrangement — or they can shift obligations onto you in ways that are easy to miss.
The offer works as written. It becomes a binding contract subject to the buyer’s conditions, and you are now in their condition period.
You change one or more terms and send it back. Remember that a counter-offer legally rejects the original — the buyer is free to walk, and occasionally does. Counter on what genuinely matters: price, yes, but often the more valuable counters are shortening a condition period, increasing a deposit, or moving a possession date. Every counter carries some risk of losing the buyer, so counter deliberately rather than reflexively.
You are under no obligation to respond at all. Occasionally the right answer to an unserious offer is no answer, though we usually prefer a counter that leaves a door open — low openers sometimes become real buyers.
If more than one offer arrives, the process must be handled properly and fairly under Alberta rules. There are several legitimate ways to run it, and the choice affects the outcome. We have a separate guide covering this and we will walk you through it in the moment.
The possession date decides when the money arrives, when you have to be out, and whether you need a bridge, a rental, or a favour from family. It is a term with a dollar value.
A possession date that leaves you without a home for ten days has a price: a short rental, storage and a second move. A date that leaves you owning two homes for a month has a price too: mortgage interest, utilities and insurance on both. Write the number down beside each offer.
Keys change hands once the buyer's lawyer confirms funds have arrived, typically around noon on the possession date, and you are expected to be out, with the home clean and empty, before that. Plan the move for the day before if you can.
Buyers who need a specific date will often pay for it. If a date suits you anyway, let it count in the buyer's favour. If it costs you, ask for it in the price or counter with the date you need.
Staying on for a short period after possession, or letting a buyer in early, is done with a written agreement drafted by the lawyers. Both carry insurance and liability questions, so neither should be a verbal favour on possession day.
When more than one offer arrives, the process matters as much as the choice. Done well, it brings out the best terms from every buyer. Done badly, it drives buyers away.
A clear deadline for offers, communicated to every agent who has shown the home, lets buyers prepare their best offer rather than rush a poor one. We present all offers to you at the same sitting so you compare complete packages.
In Alberta your REALTOR® can tell buyers that there are competing offers. What is in those offers stays confidential unless you instruct otherwise, and we will advise you carefully before you do, because disclosure changes how buyers behave.
You can go back to every buyer and ask for their best terms, or counter the one you prefer. Asking everyone keeps the competition alive; countering one risks losing the others while the first decides. The right call depends on how close the offers are.
A buyer pushed to the edge of their budget is a buyer whose financing is now fragile. The best outcome of a multiple offer is a firm deal at a strong price, not the highest number that later falls apart.
Chapter three covered what a deposit signals. This chapter covers what actually happens to it: where it goes, when, and what you can and cannot do with it if the buyer defaults.
The deposit is paid to the brokerage named in the contract and held in a trust account. It is not your money until closing, when it forms part of the purchase price on the statement of adjustments. Neither you nor the buyer can spend it in the meantime.
The contract says when: on acceptance, within a set number of days, or in stages, with a second deposit when conditions are removed. A buyer who misses the deposit deadline is in breach before the deal has really started, which tells you something.
A buyer who fails to complete a firm contract has broken it. The deposit is the usual starting point for your damages, but releasing it from trust needs both parties' agreement or a court order, and your actual loss may be more or less than the deposit. This is where your lawyer takes over.
Not because you expect to keep it, but because a buyer with real money in trust behaves like a buyer who intends to close.
A counter-offer is a new offer. The moment you sign it, the buyer's original offer is gone and the buyer is free to walk. That is the risk; here is how to use it well.
Every term you alter gives the buyer a reason to re-think. If the price is right and only the possession date is wrong, counter the date and nothing else. A counter that rewrites half the contract reads as a seller who is not sure they want to sell.
A counter-offer should carry a short expiry. Buyers who are given days to think will use them to look at other homes. Hours are normal in Calgary, and a buyer who is serious can answer within them.
Decide, before the first counter, the price and terms you would accept and the point at which you would rather stay on the market. Negotiations that go several rounds are usually lost by the side that did not know its own number.
Expect it. A second counter is normal and is often where the deal is actually struck. A third round starts to erode goodwill on both sides, and that goodwill is needed later, at the inspection and on possession day.
Before you respond to anything, we will lay the terms out with you — price, conditions, deposit, dates and the strength of the buyer behind it — so you are comparing complete packages rather than numbers.
Before you respond to anything, we will lay out price, conditions, deposit, dates and the strength of the buyer behind it, so you know which offer is most likely to actually complete.
Book a CallThis guide is for general information only and is not legal, financial, insurance, inspection, tax, or condo document review advice.
Buyers and homeowners should seek advice from appropriate professionals — including their lawyer, mortgage professional, home inspector, insurance provider, qualified condo document reviewer, accountant where applicable, and REALTOR® — before making decisions or removing conditions.
Calgary Listings Group — 1,380 homes bought and sold.
