256 Fairfield Avenue, Hamilton, ON is yours on closing day. The conditions are gone, which means the deposit is committed and the deadlines from here are the kind that cost money rather than the kind that let you walk away. This is everything between now and a settled house, dated backwards from your closing rather than forwards from today.
256 Fairfield Avenue, Hamilton, ON · Detached · $299.9K
0 of 53 complete, 0% weighted
Weighted, not counted: a task that can stop your closing is worth 5 of the optional ones, so ticking off the doormat does not fill the bar.
53 outstanding, of which 0 are past a start date that has gone by and 19 are waiting on an earlier task. A date that has passed is usually a telephone call this afternoon. A task waiting on another one is not yours to start tonight.
Every date below is computed from this one. It is the only fixed point in a purchase, which is why the plan is scheduled backwards from it rather than forwards from today.
Not inconvenience. If any of these is not done, the transfer does not register, the lender does not advance, and your deposit is exposed.
33 steps between now and Nov 11, 2026, by date rather than by category.
The sections further down carry the same steps with what each one costs and why this house calls for it.
Next outstanding: Retain a real estate lawyer and send them the agreement, yours to do, by Oct 12, 2026.
If it slips: Nobody else can register the transfer, and a firm taking the file two weeks out has to search title, raise requisitions and get lender instructions inside whatever days are left.
If it slips: A hold that expires before closing means the rate is whatever is current on the day funds are advanced. On a long closing that is the difference between the payment you qualified on and one you have not seen, and a large enough move fails the lender's own ratios and reopens the approval.
If it slips: An unsigned commitment or one outstanding condition means no instructions reach your lawyer, and no instructions means no money on closing day.
If it slips: An insurer that discovers knob-and-tube or a 60 amp panel after binding can cancel mid-term, and a cancelled policy is a mortgage default clause.
If it slips: No lender advances mortgage funds without a binder on file, so the closing does not complete on the day and you are in breach of your own agreement.
If it slips: An enclosure the insurer will not accept stops the binder, and a gate that does not latch is a liability claim the day a neighbour's child walks in.
If it slips: The last business day of the month is the busiest moving day in Ontario, and what is left when the good companies are full is a truck with no insurance and a cash price.
If it slips: A lawyer cannot register a transfer for someone they have not identified. The file stops until you are in the office, whatever day that is.
If it slips: A house with the gas shut off in February is a frozen pipe claim on day one, and the reconnection is not a same day appointment.
If it slips: The seller closes their account on the closing date. With nothing behind it the power goes off, and reconnection is a fee and a visit.
If it slips: Instructions that arrive the afternoon before closing are the most common reason a closing moves, and the cost of moving it is yours.
If it slips: Most lenders require it. Leaving the decision to closing day means it is made for you, at whatever the premium is that morning.
If it slips: Redirected closing funds are the largest single fraud loss in Ontario real estate and they are almost never recovered.
If it slips: Funds in trust are what your lawyer registers against. Without them there is nothing to close with, and a late closing carries interest and the seller's costs.
If it slips: After the keys change hands a missing fridge or a flooded basement is your repair. Before them it is a holdback your lawyer can negotiate.
If it slips: Registration queues on the last business day of the month. A mover booked for the morning is a mover charging waiting time on the driveway.
If it slips: The first time you need the water main is at 2am with water coming through a ceiling, which is the worst possible time to be learning the basement.
If it slips: A supply line that freezes in an unheated empty house floods every storey below it, and it is the claim a vacancy exclusion is written to refuse.
If it slips: Every day the old keys work is a day your insurer would call unforced entry, which is the category that gets a contents claim reduced.
Everything above is counted back from the closing date. These are not, because the agreement of purchase and sale sets them and every deal sets them differently. They are here without dates rather than with guessed ones. Your lawyer has all three on file, and the agreement is where the days are written.
Certified funds or a wire to the listing brokerage's real estate trust account, not to a person. It is held there until closing and then credited to you on the statement of adjustments, so it is part of your down payment rather than on top of it.
Where the date is: The deposit clause of your agreement. Commonly within 24 hours of acceptance, sometimes on waiver of conditions, occasionally in two instalments.
If it slips: Late delivery is a breach of the agreement on its own terms, and the seller can treat it as one while the market is still moving.
The lender lends against the lower of the purchase price and the appraised value. An appraisal below the price does not cancel the deal, it reduces the mortgage, and the difference becomes cash you owe on closing day.
Where the date is: Inside your financing condition period, or immediately after firm on a deal financed without one.
If it slips: An appraisal that comes back late is the most common reason a mortgage commitment arrives days before closing, and a shortfall found that late has to be funded from savings or a second loan.
Your lawyer searches title and raises anything found: an open building permit, a work order, an easement across the driveway, an unregistered survey line, a lien from a renovation. After the requisition date, objections to title are out of time and become yours to deal with as the owner.
Where the date is: The requisition date is a stated date in the agreement, usually a set number of days before closing.
If it slips: A defect found after that date is not a reason to refuse to close. It is a title insurance claim if the policy covers it, and an owner's problem if it does not.
$7,140 to $48,620 across the whole plan
These are not closing costs. They are the deposits, retainers, first-month charges and immediate repairs that land in the same few weeks, after the closing funds have already gone. Every figure is a range for the work, never a quote.
The heaviest week starts Nov 9, 2026 at $3,860 to $20,350.
0 of 15 complete (0% weighted)
Closing depends on these. Dates are computed from your closing date.
0 of 17 complete (0% weighted)
Cheaper and easier before the furniture arrives. Some of it only then.
0 of 9 complete (0% weighted)
Seasonal work and service contracts, which have their own lead times.
0 of 12 complete (0% weighted)
Utilities, address changes and the first month of actually living there.
A directory is only worth having if it answers three things: whether this person is allowed to do the work, whether they are insured if they wreck your house, and what the job costs. Ours answers all three per business, and says plainly that nothing on it was checked against a register.
What a credential state means here, exactly.
Reading this over a homeowner's shoulder because you are the one doing the work? Join the provider network. A request for licensed work reaches at most 3 businesses whose records list the certificate that trade requires, you read the whole job before you commit to it, and what a lead costs is printed on that page rather than quoted on a call.
This plan stops a few weeks after closing, which is where a house's ordinary maintenance starts. What it needs from then on, by season and by system, is on one page.
What a house needs after possession