Sold-off clauses
A sold-off clause can become relevant when a buyer wants to purchase a property before their existing home has sold.
It can provide a path forward while allowing the seller to continue protecting their own position.
They exist to solve a standoff.
The buyer wants the home but cannot yet make a firm, unconditional offer. The seller wants to sell but is unwilling to take the property off the market indefinitely for a buyer whose own sale hasn't happened.
A sold-off arrangement lets both sides move: the buyer secures a position on the property, and the seller keeps marketing it rather than gambling entirely on one uncertain transaction.
Exact contractual wording matters, and it varies. CalgaryListings Group does not provide legal advice. What any particular clause obliges you to do, and by when, is a question for your lawyer.
Broadly, this is the mechanism the clause exists to handle.
If the seller receives another acceptable offer, the original buyer is generally notified and then faces a decision — typically whether to remove their outstanding condition and proceed, or to step aside and allow the seller to deal with the new offer.
How much time the original buyer gets, what form the notice takes and exactly what must happen for the condition to be satisfied are determined by the specific wording that was negotiated. There is no universal timeline, and you should be sceptical of any source that quotes one as if there were.
Being notified is not a comfortable moment, and it arrives on someone else's schedule. The realistic options are usually:
This is exactly why the financing question has to be settled before the clause is agreed, not when the notice arrives. A buyer who has not confirmed what they could carry is being asked to make a very large decision in a very short window.
None of this makes a sold-off clause a bad idea. It makes it a structure you enter with your eyes open and your financing already understood.
Two things determine whether this structure works for you.
Financing. If you may have to proceed on short notice, you need to know in advance what you could actually complete — including whether bridge financing is available to you and on what basis. Find that out before you sign, not after. Bridge financing →
Timing. The clock on your own sale starts the moment the clause is agreed. Preparation, pricing and launch all need to be ready to move — which is precisely what happened in the story below.
Our clients found an inner-city home while still owning on Calgary's west side. There was already other interest in the property, and a traditional offer conditional on selling their existing home would not have put them in a strong enough negotiating position.
We negotiated a sold-off clause on the home they wanted, then immediately began preparing their existing luxury home for market — pricing strategy, staging, and completely market-ready in approximately two weeks.
It sold in six days at an excellent price, which allowed them to proceed with the inner-city home.
Read the Full Story →There are two versions of this, and they end differently.
The notice arrives before you sell. The seller has another acceptable offer, you are notified, and you face the decision described above — proceed, step aside, or negotiate. Your home being unsold does not stop the clock; it simply means proceeding would mean carrying two properties until it sells.
No notice arrives and the deadline passes. The condition has not been satisfied, and what happens next is determined by the wording that was negotiated — whether the contract ends automatically or on notice, what happens to the deposit, and whether anything can be extended. That is a question for your lawyer with your contract in front of them, not a question with a general answer. We do not provide legal advice, and you should be wary of any source that tells you what your deposit does without having read your agreement.
The prevention is unglamorous. Do not agree to a deadline your sale cannot realistically meet. Have the pricing, the preparation and the photography ready to launch the week the clause is signed rather than the month after. And settle the bridge financing question in advance, so that if the notice comes you already know what you could complete.
If the wider problem is that the home is not selling at all rather than not selling by a date, that is a different diagnosis: what happens if your home does not sell, and whether to reduce the price.
Let's make sure your own sale is ready to move before you agree to one — and that you know what you could complete if the notice comes.
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