Everything between deciding to buy and getting the keys, in the order it happens. Read the part you need and close the tab.
Two numbers matter before anything else: the down payment, and the roughly two percent on top that nobody mentions.
Five percent on the first $500,000, ten percent on anything above that, up to $1,499,999. At $1.5 million and over it's twenty percent, because mortgage insurance isn't available that high.
Most people multiply the whole price by five and budget $32,500 for a $650,000 house. The real minimum there is $40,000.
With less than twenty percent down, this is required. The thing almost everyone gets wrong: it protects the lender if you stop paying, and it does nothing for you. What it buys you is permission to borrow with a smaller down payment.
The premium gets added onto your mortgage rather than paid up front, so it doesn't change what you need saved. It does raise the monthly payment.
Closing is the day the house legally becomes yours and the money moves. The bills that land that day come to about two percent of the price: land transfer tax, legal fees, title insurance, the inspection, and adjustments.
Ottawa has no municipal land transfer tax, so you pay the provincial one only, and as a first-time buyer you get up to $4,000 of it back.
An FHSA lets you put away $8,000 a year up to a lifetime $40,000, deductible going in and tax-free coming out. The Home Buyers' Plan lets you pull $60,000 out of an RRSP, or $120,000 for a couple, repaid over fifteen years starting the second year after you take it.
The two can be used together on the same purchase. A gift from family works as well, and your lender will want a letter confirming it isn't a loan.
Most people do this backwards. They ask a lender what they can borrow, take the number, and start shopping at the top of it. Then they find out what the top of it feels like on a Tuesday in February.
Decide what you're comfortable paying every month, then work back to the price that produces it.
Add your rent and your utilities together. That's a number you already know you can live with, because you're living with it. The real question is how much more than that you're willing to hand over every month, and what you'd give up to do it.
A payment that works on a spreadsheet can still mean no vacation, nothing going into savings, and a car you can't afford to replace when it dies. Write down what you put away each month right now, then decide how much of that you're prepared to stop putting away.
Put in the monthly number you landed on. This works backwards to the purchase price that produces it, and shows you where the money goes.
Estimates, not a pre-approval. Property tax and heating vary by house, so adjust them above once you know the actual place. Your lender does the binding version of this math.
They'll approve you for more. Their limits are 39% of your gross income on housing, and 44% once every other debt payment is counted in. Those are ceilings on a bank's risk. They were never meant as advice about your life, and the gap between their number and yours is the reason to do this part first.
Pre-qualification is a rough number a lender gives you after a few questions, and it's worth about what it costs. Pre-approval means someone read your actual documents and held a rate for you. Sellers can tell the difference immediately.
When a lender pre-approves you they lock in a rate, usually for 90 to 120 days. That rate is a ceiling rather than a quote. Lenders hold roughly a point above the best rate on offer that day, so the figure in your letter is deliberately pessimistic.
If rates hold steady or fall, you close at something better. If they climb, you're covered.
Then set your own ceiling underneath the one you were approved for.
A lender's number describes what you can carry on paper. It knows nothing about what the rest of your life costs.
Karim Ali · Ottawa Realtor®
In Ottawa this is mostly a budget decision, and the words on the listing don't always mean what you'd assume.
You own the house and the land under it. Nothing monthly beyond property taxes and utilities.
You own your unit. A monthly fee covers the building, the shared spaces, and the reserve fund, which is the corporation's savings account for big repairs like a roof or an elevator.
Parcel of Tied Land. You own the house and the land the way a freehold owner does, and you still pay a monthly fee toward shared roads, visitor parking or snow clearing. This is the one that surprises people, because the listing says freehold and a fee turns up anyway.
A builder's agreement is nothing like a resale one. Deposits, closing adjustments, HST and the Tarion warranty all work differently, and most builders require your agent to register you on the first visit.
Commute, schools, groceries, and what the street sounds like on a Tuesday night. Listings and maps will only take you so far, so go stand on the street at the hour you'd be there.
An offer is the price plus everything else, and the everything else is often what wins it.
A condition is something that has to be satisfied before the deal becomes binding. Financing, inspection, and for a condo the status certificate. Each one is a door you can still walk out of if what you find isn't what you expected.
Once the conditions are met and removed, the deal is firm, which means neither side can back out without serious consequences.
Money you hand over within a day or two of an accepted offer. It shows the seller you're serious, it's held in trust, and it forms part of your down payment rather than being an extra cost.
Your deadline for the seller to answer. Until it expires your offer stands and you can't take it back. After it expires, the offer is dead.
Closing date, deposit size, and which conditions you carry all move an offer. On a house with several offers, the highest number doesn't automatically win.
The window between an accepted offer and a firm deal, where you find out what you bought.
A few hundred dollars against a purchase in the hundreds of thousands. An inspector won't open walls, and won't tell you whether to buy. They tell you the condition of what they can see, and what it's likely to cost you.
Condos only. A package from the condo corporation showing its finances, its rules, the health of the reserve fund, and any lawsuit or special assessment on the horizon. A special assessment is a one-time bill sent to every owner when the reserve fund can't cover a repair, and it can run into thousands.
Your lawyer reads this line by line, and that is what they are for. Read it yourself too. It is your money and your house, and you should know what you are signing.
The day it becomes yours. Mostly your lawyer's day rather than yours.
They search the title to confirm the seller is entitled to sell it, register the transfer, and move the money between the lender, the seller and you.
The provincial tax is due here, less your first-time buyer rebate of up to $4,000. Adjustments settle anything the seller prepaid past the closing date, usually property taxes and sometimes utilities, so you reimburse them for the part of the year you'll own it.
Between the accepted offer and closing day, don't buy a car, open a card, or change jobs. Lenders re-check before they release the money, and deals have collapsed at this stage over exactly that.
Sometimes it's the right call. It's never a call worth making without understanding exactly what you're giving up on that specific house.
The number a lender approves has nothing to do with what your life costs. This is the whole reason to work out your own monthly number first.
Paint, counters and light fixtures are cheap to change. Location, layout and how much light the place gets are not.
Covered further up, and still the most common one on this list.
Twenty-six of them answered in full, including the ones people feel silly asking. Ask them anyway. Four times if you need to.
Five of them, one for each stage. Before you start looking, making an offer, closing week, buying a new build, and one for selling if you're doing both at once.
When you want someone in your corner for the actual thing, that's a different conversation, and it starts with half an hour on the phone.