Completion vs possession date

In BC, a residential sale doesn’t close in a single moment. The Contract of Purchase and Sale carries three separate blanks — completion, possession and adjustment — and each does a different job. Completion is the legal event: title transfers at the Land Title Office and the money moves. Possession is the physical one: the buyer gets the keys. Adjustment is the accounting: the day as of which taxes, utilities and strata fees are prorated between the parties. Buyers from other provinces routinely book movers for the wrong day because they assume one date does all three jobs.

The three dates, in order

Completion belongs to the lawyers and notaries. The buyer’s conveyancer registers the transfer and any new mortgage, the seller’s receives and disburses the funds, and ownership changes while both principals are somewhere else entirely. Possession follows — typically a day or three later, at a stated hour — once the seller has been paid and has moved out. Adjustment is usually set to the same day as possession, on the logic that whoever holds the keys should be paying the bills; the conveyancers reconcile it all in a statement of adjustments so nobody writes cheques to each other afterwards.

Why the gap exists

The sequence is deliberate. A seller shouldn’t hand over a house before being paid, and a buyer shouldn’t pay for a house still full of someone else’s furniture. The gap between completion and possession gives the seller a paid, unpressured window to vacate — and gives the transaction slack if registration hits a delay. Agents drafting offers use it strategically too: a seller buying onward may need possession of their next home before giving up this one, and the dates in two linked contracts have to interlock like gears.

The Ontario contrast

Ontario’s Agreement of Purchase and Sale runs on a single completion date: registration, funds and keys all land the same day, usually by late afternoon. Neither model is better — the single date is simpler, the split dates are calmer — but the muscle memory doesn’t transfer. An Ontario-trained agent working a BC deal who promises “keys on completion” has promised something the standard contract doesn’t say, which is exactly the kind of detail worth checking against local practice when you work the BC market.