Selling a home in Calgary

Alberta requires it in writing, and it runs with the brokerage rather than one person. It names the term, the services, how the brokerage is paid and how the agreement ends.

An exclusive agreement gives one brokerage the sole right to offer the property for sale. Read the fee clause, because it ordinarily earns the brokerage its fee even on a sale you found yourself.

It lets the brokerage claim its fee after the term ends, where the buyer was introduced to the property during it. The length is agreed when you sign rather than fixed by anyone.

The agreement states the amount or the method of calculating it and when it becomes payable. At closing it is ordinarily paid out of trust before the balance reaches your lawyer.

Your agent has a regulatory obligation to present it and go through it with you. It sets out which relationship you are choosing, from full agency down to none at all.

A client has entered a service agreement, so the brokerage advises you and acts in your interests. A customer has contacted a brokerage without engaging it and is not represented.

Every written service agreement in Alberta carries its own termination provisions, so the exit is already in the document you signed. An unconditional cancellation ends the holdover claim with it.

An Alberta land surveyor draws the lot and everything built on it against the legal boundaries. No statute requires one. The standard purchase contract does, and it puts the cost on you.

The City confirms the structures on the survey comply with the Land Use Bylaw. No law requires it. The purchase contract and the buyer's lender do.

Alberta runs a Torrens register, so the province holds the original title and a certificate of title is conclusive proof of ownership in court. There is no chain of deeds to assemble.

Alberta has no mandatory property disclosure form. What you owe is disclosure of material latent defects, meaning problems a reasonable inspection would not find, with or without a form.

A death in the house, or a reported haunting. Neither carries a disclosure duty in Alberta. If a buyer asks you about one, you answer truthfully.

On a written request the corporation has ten days. The estoppel certificate is capped at $200 by regulation, or $300 where you need it inside three days.

Alberta requires one every five years, with a plan built from it and an annual report on what was spent. It is the first thing a serious buyer reads.

Light, paint, hardware and what is in the frame carry further than a renovation does. The walk-through happens before anything is bought.

The contract names a trustee, ordinarily a brokerage, and the deposit lands in a trust account within three business days of receipt. It forms part of the purchase price, and neither side earns interest on it.

If the buyer misses a deposit date you may void the contract on written notice. That option disappears the moment you accept the deposit, even a late one.

Each condition belongs to the side it protects, and each one carries its own Condition Day. Without an agreed date a condition has no effect.

The buyer gives written notice by that date that the condition is waived or satisfied. If no notice arrives the contract ends by itself. You cannot waive a buyer's condition for them.

The legal obligations begin when the accepted contract is delivered or sent. From that moment it binds you, and it binds your executors and successors with you.

An offer or counter-offer is open for written acceptance only until the time and date printed on it. After that there is nothing left to accept.

Your agent has to bring you every offer and counter-offer in a timely way, even once the property is already under contract.

Deposit size, the completion date, the length of the condition period and what stays with the house all change what an offer is actually paying you.

Alberta closes through lawyers rather than an escrow or title company, under a protocol shared across the four western provinces. Yours sends the closing documents and returns your balance.

Your lawyer uses the purchase price to pay out your mortgage and anything else registered against the property, then proves the discharges to the buyer's lawyer.

Taxes, utilities, condominium fees and mortgage interest are yours for the whole of the completion day and the buyer's after it. The lawyers settle the difference on the statement of adjustments.

Cancel it yourself before the 22nd of the month or the next payment still comes out. The City sends no confirmation email, so print the screen.

You pay to prepare the closing documents, including the Real Property Report. The buyer pays to register the transfer at Land Titles, which runs $50 plus $5 for every $5,000 of the value of the land.

On the standard contract the price includes any GST that applies rather than adding it on top. A resale by an owner who is not a builder is ordinarily exempt.

A non-resident seller notifies the Canada Revenue Agency within ten days of the sale and secures an amount against the gain. Until the certificate issues the buyer holds funds back.

The Alberta residential contract uses one date rather than two. The price is paid in full, the transfer completes and vacant possession passes at 12 noon on the completion day.

Delivery of the accepted contract is the line. Before it you are deciding. After it you are selling, and the conditions are the buyer's exit rather than yours.

The contract has both sides agree the property is unique, which opens the buyer to a claim for specific performance. A seller who will not complete can be ordered by a court to convey it anyway.

Risk of loss stays with you until the purchase price is paid. A fire the week before closing does not release you from the contract.

A written amendment signed by both sides supersedes the printed clauses. Neither of you can move a date or a price alone.

The last reversible moment in the file belongs to the buyer. Once every condition is waived or satisfied the sale completes unless you both agree otherwise in writing.

The listing comes down and the representation agreement does not, unless you end it on the terms it already carries. That conversation is with the brokerage rather than with the sign.

You can change it any day and as often as you like. It is the one term in the whole file that was never fixed.