How Offers Go Wrong, and How to Avoid It

A failed offer costs two people at once

Putting an offer together sounds like the mechanical part of a sale. In practice it is where most of the value is either protected or lost, because an agreement that collapses costs both sides weeks and leaves each with a slightly worse impression of the other. Having sat on both sides of a great many of these negotiations, we find the failures repeat in five recognizable shapes.

One: the offer was never within reach

Enthusiasm is not an agreement. If the price, the closing date or the conditions sit outside what the other side can accept, no amount of goodwill in the first round will close the gap. The honest step is to say so before anything is signed rather than hope the two sides negotiate their way past it. Acting for a buyer, that means telling you what a property looks worth on the evidence rather than what it is asking. Acting for a seller, it means declining to recommend a price we cannot support with comparable sales.

Two: the two sides were working from different information

This is the most common failure and the most damaging. One side believes the appliances are included and the other has already promised them elsewhere. One side reads the closing date as flexible and the other has arranged a move around it. Both prepared in good faith and both feel misled at the worst possible moment. The discipline that prevents it is unglamorous. Inclusions, exclusions, rental equipment, the closing date and the state of any outstanding work go into the agreement in plain terms before it goes anywhere, and nothing that matters is left to a conversation nobody wrote down.

Three: the offer arrived without support

An offer that is only a number invites a counter that is only a number, and the two sides trade figures until one of them tires. A properly presented offer says what it rests on: the comparable sales, the condition of the property, the deposit, and confirmation that the financing behind it is real. Sellers accept less than they hoped for far more readily when they can see how the figure was reached. Presenting that case is our work rather than yours.

Four: nobody named a deadline or a next step

Every offer in Ontario carries an irrevocable date, the point at which it lapses if it has not been accepted, and every condition carries its own date for being waived or fulfilled. Those dates are the structure of the negotiation. Leave them vague, or agree to a period too short to arrange an inspection or get a real answer from a lender, and an agreement everybody wanted quietly falls apart on the calendar. We set those dates deliberately, we track them, and at each one we tell you what has to happen next and who owns it.

Five: the timing was wrong

Offering before a lender has given you an answer it will stand behind, or going to market before the basics are gathered, produces a negotiation that cannot go anywhere. Both sides then conclude the other was not serious. Preparation before an offer is not a delay, it is what makes the offer worth making.

The checklist we work through before an offer is signed

• You have said, in your own words, what you want from the transaction and what you will not accept.
• The price is supported by comparable sales we can put in front of you.
• Financing is confirmed to the point your lender will actually stand behind.
• Inclusions, exclusions and rental equipment are listed rather than assumed.
• Every condition carries a date that is realistic for the work it covers.
• The deposit, its timing and where it is held are agreed and understood.
• The closing date works for both households, and your lawyer knows it is coming.
• Anything known about the property has been disclosed in advance, not saved for later.

Through to closing

Acceptance is the middle of the process rather than the end of it. Conditions are waived or fulfilled on their dates, the deposit is delivered and held in trust, the paperwork goes to both lawyers, and the file moves toward the closing date through a stretch where little appears to happen and a good agreement can still be lost to a missed deadline. We stay with a transaction through that stretch, chase what is outstanding and keep both sides informed, because a client is not well served by a brokerage that treats a signed agreement as the finish.