Every portal stops one step before this. The range below is built from the comparable sales already on the estimate page and the listing's own price history, with each step away from the comparable-adjusted value shown as a signed adjustment you can add up and argue with. Where the comparables will not carry a number, this page says so and gives none.
292 Sample Ivyhurst Ave, Ottawa, ON K1S 2Y9
Semi-Detached, built 1917, asking $1,516,000
Sold 53% over our estimate · 97% of asking · 6 days on market
Nothing here is prefilled. A plausible income typed in on your behalf would produce a maximum price, and a maximum price would be printed as a walk-away number you never chose. Every field you leave empty is named in the output as missing rather than assumed.
Sizes the deposit and the financing exposure. Leave it empty to price the open end of the range.
What you decided you would pay, before you saw the house. This is the number the walk-away section holds you to.
Used only to ask the mortgage engine what a lender qualifies you for.
Car loans, lines of credit, the minimum on a card. They come off what you qualify for.
The contract rate you have been quoted. The qualifying rate is derived from it, and it is higher.
Demonstration data. This property, its price history or its comparable sales are demonstration data generated for this app rather than licensed board records. The method below is real and the numbers it produces here are an illustration of the method. Do not carry any figure on this page into an offer.
A number offered on comparables like these is worse than no number, because it looks exactly like a number offered on good ones. Here is what is missing and what would fix it.
No offer range.
2 comparable sales close and recent enough to use, against the 4 this needs. A range computed on 2 looks the same on screen as a range computed on nine.
What would change it: Sales on this street that our corpus does not hold. A buyer's agent can pull them from the board in a few minutes, and they are the input this is missing.
No offer range.
Most of the weight in this comparable set sits on a different property type: 2 of 2 are not the same kind of home, and only 0% of the weight is. The size and bedroom adjustments do not correct for the difference between attached and detached.
What would change it: Sales of the same form of housing, even further away or slightly older. Same-type and further beats nearer and different for this purpose.
This listing is not live, so there is no competition to read. What happened on it is in the price history, which is a record rather than a forecast.
This read suggests $73,300. The middle of the band is enough here, and that band is this app's own scale rather than a figure taken from any market: no deposit on any real offer was measured to produce it. A larger deposit buys nothing from a seller with no other offer in front of them, and it puts more of your money somewhere you cannot reach it.
The deposit is held in the listing brokerage's real estate trust account, not by the seller and not by you. Once it is in, it comes out on closing, on a mutual release signed by both sides, or on a court order, and nothing else. If you fail to close, forfeiting it is the seller's first remedy and not their last: they can sell to someone else and sue you for the difference plus their carrying costs. A larger deposit raises what you lose on a failed deal in exact proportion.
When the deposit is due, and in what form, is a term of the agreement you sign. This app has not read the form yours will be written on, so find that clause before you offer rather than after: ask whether the deposit goes in with the offer or falls due after acceptance, and how long after. On a multiple-offer night the first of those means a certified cheque in your hand before you know whether you have the house, and a deadline that lands on a weekend lands before a bank opens.
Financing condition
Protects: Your right to walk away, with the deposit back, if a lender will not actually fund this purchase on this property at the amount you need.
Applies to any purchase that needs a mortgage. It stops applying only on a cash purchase, and a cash buyer knows who they are.
$73,300 to $73,300 if it goes wrong. An appraisal landing 5% under the purchase price is funded on the appraised value rather than on the contract price, and the difference is due in cash on closing. The other half of this exposure, how far this offer sits above what a lender qualifies you for, is not computed: no income, down payment or existing debt figure was given, and a shortfall of zero on no evidence would read as approval.
A pre-approval is a rate hold and an income review. It is not a commitment to lend against a specific house, and the two things that break between pre-approval and funding are both about the house: the lender's appraisal comes in under the purchase price, so they lend a percentage of the lower number and you owe the difference in cash on closing, or the property itself is one they will not take security on. With no financing condition you owe the full price on closing day whether or not the money arrives, and the deposit is the smallest part of what you lose.
Instead of waiving it: Ask your broker for the lender's appraisal policy on this price band before you offer, and hold cash for the gap between the purchase price and what an appraisal a few percent low would fund. A five-day financing condition and a two-day one are both conditions; the length is negotiable in a way the existence of it should not be.
Inspection condition
Protects: Your right to see the house's actual condition, priced, before the purchase becomes unconditional.
Applies to every freehold purchase. The seller has to disclose known latent defects and nothing more, so everything else is found by looking.
$8,000 to $25,000 if it goes wrong. Priced from the underwriting findings this property's own record produces: Knob and tube wiring. 1 of them can stop a lender advancing funds rather than merely raise a premium. A further 2 findings carries no remediation band, so the total below is a floor rather than a worst case. These are the same figures the insurance page shows, from the same engine.
You own the findings. A seller in Ontario has to disclose known latent defects and nothing else, so the sewer lateral, the knob and tube behind the plaster, the buried oil tank and the failed septic bed are all yours the moment the deal goes firm. None of them appears on a listing record, and several of them are refused by insurers, which turns a repair bill into a funding problem.
Instead of waiving it: Inspect before you offer. On a listing with an offer date the seller usually permits it, and a pre-offer inspection lets you submit without the condition and without the blindness, which is the version of this that actually wins houses. Where that is not possible, a condition of two days beats no condition, and a holdback your lawyer keeps on closing beats a waiver.
Insurability condition
Protects: Your right to withdraw if no insurer will write a policy on this house, or will only write one after work you cannot get done before closing.
Applies to every purchase, because no lender advances funds without a policy bound on closing day. Whether this particular house is straightforward to insure is a separate question, and the findings below answer it as far as the record can.
1 finding on this record can stop a policy being bound: Knob and tube wiring. A decline has no price attached, which is the problem with it: there is no cheque that fixes an unfundable purchase on closing day.
No lender advances funds without a binder in place on closing day. Knob and tube wiring, aluminum branch wiring, an oil tank, a wood stove with no WETT certificate, a roof past its life and a former grow operation are each enough for a decline rather than a surcharge. If the policy cannot be bound, the mortgage cannot fund, and a deal that fails for that reason fails on your side of the agreement.
Instead of waiving it: This is rarely a separate condition and it does not need to be: get a binder quoted during the inspection condition, on the facts the inspection turns up. A broker will tell you in one phone call whether the wiring or the tank is a decline.
Survey or boundary condition
Protects: Your right to know where the boundary actually is, and whether the garage, the fence or the neighbour's shed is on it.
Lot dimensions are on the record but a plan is not. On a registered subdivision an existing survey usually exists and your lawyer can read it against title.
Title insurance covers the loss, not the outcome: it will compensate you and it will not move a structure or resolve an encroachment with the neighbour you now live beside. On an older or irregular parcel the fence line and the surveyed line are routinely different, and the difference is only discovered when someone builds.
Instead of waiving it: Ask whether an existing survey exists, which on anything registered under a plan of subdivision it usually does, and have your lawyer read it against the title. A fresh survey on a large or irregular lot is a few days and a few hundred dollars, ordered before the offer rather than inside the condition period.
Condition on selling your own home
Protects: You from owning two houses, and two mortgages, if your own sale does not complete.
Whether you own a home you have to sell is not something this app knows. If you do not, this condition is not yours to consider.
Bridge financing covers a gap of days or weeks between two closings, at a rate and a fee, and it is arranged against a firm sale. It does not cover a sale that has not happened. With this condition waived and your own house unsold, you are carrying both properties on the strength of whatever a lender will advance, and lenders qualify you on both payments at the stress-tested rate.
Instead of waiving it: Sell first, or offer with an escape clause: the seller keeps their listing on the market and you get a fixed number of hours to firm up or release if another offer arrives. It is a real term with a name and it is far more often accepted than a straight condition on a sale, because it costs the seller almost nothing.
Closing date
Match the date the seller asked for
The most underused term in an offer. A seller who has already bought their next house has a date they must close on, and matching it is worth real money to them at no cost to you. It is also the one term a competing buyer usually gets wrong, because they never asked what the seller wanted.
Nothing, if the date works for your own financing and your own move. Ask what date the seller wants before drafting, since it is in the broker remarks or one phone call away.
Irrevocable period
24 hours
The default on a straightforward offer. Long enough that a seller can take advice and short enough that they cannot run a quiet auction with your number as the floor.
No walk-away number yet
You have not given a ceiling and we have not been given enough to compute one, so there is no walk-away number on this page. That is the first thing to fix, and it is fixed before the offer is drafted rather than at the table: decide the number, and tell it to one person who is not in the room with you.
An escalation clause, the term that says you will pay a set amount above the best competing offer, is not the tool it looks like here. Ontario's process is run by the seller's brokerage and it is blind by default: since December 2023 a seller may choose to disclose the contents of competing offers, but only with the written consent of every buyer who made one, so consenting is a decision you make without knowing what it buys. An escalation clause hands your maximum to the one party whose job is to raise it, and many brokerages will not present one at all. The discipline that works instead is a number decided before the offer is drafted and a person other than you who knows what it is.