Making an offer on a house in Ontario is a formal legal process. The document you sign is the Agreement of Purchase and Sale (APS) — a binding contract that, once signed by both parties, commits you to the transaction. Here's how it works.
The Agreement of Purchase and Sale
The APS is OREA's standard form, used province-wide. Your buyer's agent drafts it, and it includes:
Purchase price: The amount you're offering to pay. Your agent will advise based on recent comparable sales (comps) in the area — properties that are similar in size, type, condition, and location that have sold in the past 60–90 days.
Deposit: The amount you'll deliver within 24 hours of the offer being accepted. Standard deposit in the GTA is 5% of the purchase price. The deposit is held in trust by the listing brokerage and applied to your down payment on closing. It's not the same as the down payment — it's a component of it.
Closing date: The date you take legal ownership. In the GTA, typical closing periods are 30–90 days from the acceptance date, though this is negotiable. Aligning with what the seller wants in terms of timing can make your offer more competitive.
Conditions: Clauses that give you the right to exit the deal under specified circumstances within a set timeframe. Common conditions include financing (you have X business days to confirm your mortgage) and home inspection (you have X business days to conduct an inspection and either proceed or walk away).
Included items (chattels and fixtures): What stays with the property. Appliances, light fixtures, window coverings, garage door openers, and any rental equipment should be explicitly listed. If it's not in the agreement, it doesn't legally come with the house.
Excluded items: Anything the seller is taking that you might expect to stay. A dining room chandelier the sellers want to keep, for example, should be listed as excluded.
Submitting the offer
Your agent presents the offer to the listing agent, either electronically (standard now) or in person. If there's a scheduled offer date — a common strategy in Toronto where the seller sets a specific time to review all offers — your offer must be submitted by that deadline. If the property is accepting offers as they come, your agent submits as soon as you're ready.
Once submitted, the seller has until your irrevocable date and time to accept, reject, or counter. The irrevocable clause is typically 24–48 hours but can be set to whatever both parties agree.
What happens next
The seller has three options: accept your offer as written, reject it outright, or sign it back with changes (a counter-offer). A sign-back is itself an offer — it has its own irrevocable deadline, and you can accept, reject, or counter again. This back-and-forth continues until either both parties reach agreement or one party walks away.
Once both parties have signed the agreement, it's "accepted." If your offer includes conditions, the conditional period begins immediately. You have until the expiry of each condition to either fulfill and waive it, or exercise the condition and walk away with your deposit returned.
When all conditions are waived, the deal is "firm" — both parties are legally committed to close on the agreed date.
The deposit
The deposit is typically due within 24 hours of the seller signing back or accepting your offer, delivered by bank draft, certified cheque, or wire transfer to the listing brokerage's trust account. Missing the deposit deadline can put you in breach of the agreement. Ensure you have the funds accessible before submitting — not in a GIC or investment account with a withdrawal timeline.
Do you need a buyer's agent?
In Ontario, buyer representation is effectively free to you — the seller pays total commission, which is split between the listing agent and your buyer's agent. An experienced buyer's agent advises on pricing, negotiation strategy, conditions and terms, and coordinates all parties through to closing. There is no meaningful financial reason to navigate the process unrepresented.