Sold but not firm. What their inspector will find, how to answer a request to remedy, and when to hold your price.
You have an accepted offer, and it is worth being clear about what that means: the buyer has an exit and you do not. Until their conditions are removed, they can walk away and recover their deposit, while your home sits off the market.
This is the stretch where sellers get anxious, and reasonably so — you have almost certainly started planning around a sale that is not yet certain, and possibly bought something else.
The good news is that most deals do firm up, and the ones that do not usually fail for reasons that were visible earlier: a stretched buyer, a long condition period, no lender contact. The things that are within your control are straightforward: give access freely, respond promptly, and handle whatever the inspection turns up without either panicking or digging in.
What the buyer is doing on their side, and what the inspection will turn up in a Calgary home.
A pre-approval assessed the buyer; final approval assesses your home as well, which usually means an appraisal. If the property appraises below the purchase price, the shortfall becomes cash the buyer has to find — and that is the single most common way a Calgary deal comes back to the table on price.
Expect an inspection within the first few days, typically two to three hours, often with the buyer present. If your home is a condo, the buyer is also reading the corporation’s documents, which you have supplied through us.
Make the home available, leave the lights on, ensure the panel, furnace, attic hatch, crawlspace and hot water tank are physically accessible, and be out. An inspector who cannot reach something notes it as inaccessible, which reads to a nervous buyer as an unknown — and unknowns become requests.
Most of this period is silence from your side. We stay in contact with the buyer’s agent and will tell you what we are hearing.
There is no pass or fail. A competent inspector on a well-maintained twenty-year-old Calgary home still produces pages of findings, most of them minor. If you have never read one, the first sight of it is alarming — and it is alarming for your buyer too, which is worth remembering when their response seems disproportionate.
Grading and drainage against the foundation. Missing GFCI outlets. Furnace age and service history. Roof age, and hail damage you may not have known about. Poly-B if the home is from 1978–1995. Aluminum wiring in 1960s and 1970s homes. Ice damming evidence in the attic. Efflorescence on basement walls. Most of it is normal for the age of the house.
If you dealt with the cheap, obvious items before listing, the report reads as a well-kept home with the usual age-related notes. If you did not, the same report reads as a list of neglect, and buyers price neglect into what they ask for.
Your instinct will be to argue with individual findings. Resist that. What matters is not the report — it is what the buyer asks for as a result of it.
You cannot make the buyer's lender say yes. You can make sure nothing about your home is the reason it says no.
The buyer's income and debts, which are not your business, and your home, which is: an appraisal if the lender orders one, the property type, the condition of the building and, in a condo, the health of the corporation. Any of those can slow or sink an approval.
Allow access promptly, have the home presented as it was for showings, and give the appraiser a sheet of the improvements you have made with dates and approximate costs. Appraisers work from comparable sales, but a clear list of upgrades helps them explain the number they land on.
The lender lends on the lower of price and appraisal. The buyer must cover the gap, renegotiate, or walk. Your options are to hold the price and hope the buyer has the funds, to meet partway, or to ask for a second appraisal with sales the first one missed. Which is right depends on how many other buyers are behind this one.
Buyers often say nothing during the financing condition because there is nothing to say. If the deadline is a day away and nobody has asked for anything, your REALTOR® will check in with the buyer's agent. An unexplained request for an extension is the moment to ask direct questions.
If you are selling a condo, the buyer's condition on the documents is a condition on the whole corporation. The buyer reads the building's finances, minutes and bylaws, and decides whether to live with them.
In Alberta the seller supplies the condominium documents, and the corporation or its manager has a set period to produce them once requested. Order them when you list, not when you have an offer, or the condition period is spent waiting for paper.
The reserve fund study and the balance against it, the budget and the fee history, recent board minutes, the insurance certificate and its deductible, any special assessment proposed or levied, and the bylaws. Read them yourself first. A surprise in the minutes is better found by you than by the buyer's reviewer.
Why is the reserve fund below the study's recommendation, what is the water-leak history, is a special assessment coming, why did fees rise last year. Honest, documented answers settle most of them. A question nobody on the board can answer is the one that costs you the sale.
A special assessment levied before possession is usually the seller's; one levied after is the buyer's. One proposed but not yet levied is negotiated, and it is better to negotiate it in the offer than to argue it in the condition period.
Fair requests versus renegotiation, when to hold firm, and what happens if it falls apart.
A fair request concerns something genuinely significant that was not visible and not reflected in the price: a failed sewer line, a cracked heat exchanger, active water penetration, a safety defect. An opportunistic request is a long list of small maintenance items, or a demand for a discount because the furnace is fifteen years old on a fifteen-year-old house.
Do the repair. Offer a credit or price adjustment instead. Offer part of what was asked. Or decline and hold your price. All four are legitimate, and which is right depends on the finding, on your position, and on how much you need this particular buyer.
Doing work under time pressure while you are moving rarely goes well, and if the buyer dislikes the result you have inherited a second argument. A price adjustment closes the issue completely and lets the buyer arrange their own contractor to their own standard.
If your home attracted several offers and the market is moving, you can hold firm and mean it. If it sat for two months and this is your only buyer, that is a different calculation — and pretending otherwise is expensive. We will tell you honestly which situation you are in.
A buyer who accepted a price on a fifty-year-old home and then asks for a discount because it is a fifty-year-old home is renegotiating, not remedying. Conceding to that often invites a second round, because you have signalled that asking works.
A flat refusal can push a nervous buyer out. A response that acknowledges the finding, explains the context — the age was known, the price reflects it, here are the service records — and offers something small and specific usually holds the deal while holding the price.
If you hold and they walk, you return to market with days accumulated and a story to explain. Weigh the amount in dispute against that cost honestly. Sometimes $2,000 is worth conceding to protect a sale. Sometimes $2,000 is the opening bid of a buyer who will keep asking.
If the inspection uncovered something you knew about and did not disclose, that is a different situation with real legal implications, and it needs to be addressed properly rather than negotiated around. Tell us immediately if that is where you are.
If the buyer terminates properly under a condition, their deposit is returned and the contract ends. You are back on the market. It is disappointing, and it is not a disaster.
You have information you did not have before. If the inspection revealed something significant, you generally need to disclose it going forward — and you should address it. Fixing it properly and having the paperwork is a stronger position than hoping the next buyer’s inspector misses it. They will not.
Going straight back up unchanged invites the question of what went wrong. Better to fix what was found, refresh the photography if the season has moved, and re-enter with a clear answer — “the previous buyer’s financing fell through, the inspection items have been repaired, here are the receipts.” Buyers accept a good answer; they punish an evasive one.
The great majority of accepted offers complete. Preparation before listing, an offer chosen for strength rather than headline price, and a measured response to the inspection are what tilt the odds — and all three are things we work on with you.
Chapter three showed how to answer a request to remedy. This chapter is about which form the answer should take, because the same dollar value can land very differently.
Best for small, defined items where you control the trade and the cost: the dripping valve, the missing handrail, the furnace service. You keep the buyer's list short and the price intact. Keep receipts; the buyer will want to see them at the walkthrough.
Best when the buyer wants to choose their own contractor, or the repair is not something you want to manage while packing. A credit appears on the statement of adjustments and comes out of your proceeds. Lenders have limits on credits, so the buyer's agent should confirm the amount is acceptable to the lender first.
The simplest on paper and the most visible. It lowers the sale price that appears in the MLS® history, which matters if the deal later collapses and you relist. It also lowers the buyer's mortgage and deposit base, which is why some buyers prefer it.
For work that cannot be finished before possession, the lawyers can hold part of your proceeds in trust until it is done and inspected. It keeps the deal on schedule without asking the buyer to trust you blindly.
Financing and inspection get the attention. Three quieter conditions derail more Calgary deals than sellers expect, and all three can be prepared for before the offer.
A buyer's lender requires insurance from possession day, and some homes are hard to insure: older wiring, a wood stove, a history of claims, or a past water loss that shows on the home's claims record. If you know something that affected your own policy, say so early. A buyer who discovers it at the deadline walks.
The buyer's lawyer searches the title at Land Titles. Registered interests that are not yours to grant, an old mortgage that was paid out but never discharged, a caveat from a builder years ago. Most are cleared with paperwork, but paperwork takes days, and days are what the condition period is short of.
In Alberta the standard contract has the seller provide an RPR with evidence of municipal compliance. A missing report, a fence on the neighbour's land, a deck built without a permit or a garage over the setback all surface here. Order the RPR when you list; an issue found before the offer is a plan, an issue found at the deadline is a crisis.
Compliance applications, encroachment agreements, title insurance in place of compliance, or a holdback at closing. Each solves a different problem, and your lawyer and REALTOR® will tell you which fits yours.
Conditions end at a time written in the contract. What happens at that moment is governed by the contract too, and it is worth knowing before the day arrives.
The buyer delivers a written notice that the conditions are satisfied or waived, before the deadline. Until that notice arrives, the home is not sold. An email from the buyer's agent saying "all good" is not the notice; the signed document is.
Under Alberta's standard contract, if the buyer does nothing by the deadline, the contract ends and the deposit goes back to the buyer. Silence is not acceptance. Your REALTOR® will be watching the clock and in touch with the buyer's side through the afternoon.
A buyer who asks for more time usually has a lender running late. Grant a short extension when the reason is specific and the buyer is otherwise strong; a second request with no new information is a buyer who is not going to get there. Every extension you grant is time off the market for you.
If your sale was conditional on something of yours, buying another home or probate, the same rules apply to you. Mark your own deadlines as carefully as the buyer's.
A conditional sale is not a sale. The weeks between acceptance and a firm deal are the weeks to keep the rest of the market interested.
In Calgary a conditionally sold home stays visible on the MLS® with its status changed, and buyers still book showings. We recommend continuing to show, especially in the first week after acceptance, when the market still remembers the home.
A second buyer willing to sign a backup offer gives you leverage you can feel. The first buyer's request to remedy becomes more reasonable when they know someone is behind them, and if they walk, you are firm with the next buyer the same day.
It is tempting to start packing in earnest the day the offer is accepted. Pack the closets and the garage; keep the rooms that photograph and show well as they were until the deal is firm.
Answer questions quickly, provide documents the same day, and let the buyer's agent know the home is still being shown. Buyers who feel the clock ticking remove conditions; buyers who feel they are the only option take their time.
When the inspection report lands, we will go through it with you and give you an honest read on what is a genuine remedy, what is a renegotiation attempt, and exactly how strong your position is before you answer.
We will go through the report with you and give you an honest read on what is a genuine remedy, what is a renegotiation attempt, and exactly how strong your position is.
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 — steady hands through the nervous weeks.
