Every deposit on a date
Each instalment with its calendar date, amount and running total, so the cheques and the dates go straight into your planning.
Free tool
Know every cheque before you sign.
A dated deposit calendar for your pre-construction purchase — plus the closing costs the sticker price leaves out, and the clauses worth arguing about while you still can.
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The price is not the price.
Development charges, Tarion enrolment, utility connections, occupancy fees and HST treatment all arrive later — most of them at final closing, two years after you committed.
The purchase
Purchase price$
Signing date
Estimated occupancy or closingBuilder dates move. Use their current estimate and rebuild this when it changes.
The structure
Deposit structureMatch it to your agreement — builders vary, and the schedule is sometimes negotiable.
What are you buying?Only new condominiums get Ontario's ten-day cooling-off period. Freehold gets none.
How will you use it?This changes the HST rebate treatment, and the numbers involved are large.
Enter a price and signing date and your schedule appears here.
What the schedule covers
Four things to settle before the pen moves.
The cap that saves you five figures
Development charges and levies are the biggest and most negotiable item in a builder agreement. Uncapped they are open-ended. This tells you to fix that before signing.
Cooling-off, correctly explained
New condominiums get ten days in Ontario. Freehold gets none at all — a difference most buyers discover far too late.
Interim occupancy, in plain terms
On a condo you move in before you own it, paying a fee that builds no equity. Knowing how long that lasts changes the whole calculation.
What a floor plan does not tell you
I read these as a builder, not a brochure.
Ceiling heights that only apply to part of the floor. Bulkheads that are not drawn. A kitchen island the plan shows but the plumbing rough-in does not support. Square footage measured to the outside of the exterior wall. Standard finishes that are a long way below what the model home displays.
More than 25 years of building and renovating means I read builder drawings and specification sheets differently than a sales centre presents them — and I will tell you which upgrades are worth paying for at signing and which you can do better and cheaper afterwards.
No cost, no obligation
Send me the project and I will go through it with you.
The deposit structure, the levy caps, the assignment terms and the floor plans — read by someone who has built houses, before you commit to one.
- How this builder’s terms compare to others in Halton right now
- Which upgrades to buy at signing and which to do yourself later
- A referral to a lawyer who actually does new construction
Prefer to talk? Call or text 416-953-9545
Straight answers
Questions people ask about this.
Do I get ten days to change my mind?
Only on a new condominium. Ontario's Condominium Act gives you a ten-day statutory rescission period, running from the later of receiving the disclosure statement or the signed agreement, and it is calendar days rather than business days. On a freehold town or detached home there is no cooling-off period whatsoever — whatever review window you get is what you negotiated into the agreement before signing. This surprises people every single week, and by then it is too late.
What are development charges and why does everyone warn me about them?
They are municipal levies the builder passes through to you at final closing. If the agreement caps them, you know your maximum exposure. If it does not, you find out what you owe weeks before closing, on a purchase you committed to two years earlier, with no ability to walk away. Asking for a cap in writing before you sign is the single highest-value thing you can do in a pre-construction negotiation, and builders will often agree because buyers so rarely ask.
Why does buying as an investment change the price?
Because the builder's price almost always assumes you qualify for the HST new housing rebate as a principal resident, and it is baked into the number you were quoted. If the property is a rental, that rebate is clawed back and you pay it at final closing — commonly tens of thousands of dollars. Investors usually recover it afterwards through the New Residential Rental Property rebate, but only after closing, only with a signed one-year lease, and only if they file for it. The cash gap in between catches a lot of people.
Can you review a builder agreement for me?
I can walk through the deposit structure, the levy caps, the assignment terms and what the builder can change unilaterally, and tell you how it compares to the other projects in Halton right now. What I cannot do is give you legal advice — a lawyer who does new construction specifically should read the agreement, and it is a few hundred dollars very well spent. I am happy to recommend one.