That week is the most valuable thing you are given in a pre-sale purchase, and most buyers spend it doing nothing. This page is about using it properly.
The short version
- The 7 days start from the later of the signing date or the date you gave written acknowledgement of the disclosure statement, so check both dates on your own paperwork.
- You do not have to give a reason to cancel inside the window.
- A material change after you sign can lead to a new or amended disclosure statement under section 16, which is worth watching for.
- Use the week for the two things that cannot be undone later: a lawyer reading the contract, and a lender confirming what you can borrow.
- After the window closes, your rights come from your contract rather than from the Act.
When the clock actually starts
The wording matters here because there are two possible start dates and the law takes the later one. The first is the date the purchase agreement was made. The second is the date the seller obtained a written statement from you acknowledging that you had an opportunity to read the disclosure statement.
In practice both usually happen in the same appointment, so the two dates are the same. They are not always. If you signed the agreement first and were given the disclosure statement afterwards, your week runs from the later event, which gives you more time than you might think.
Check the dates written on your own documents rather than relying on what you were told at the table. If they disagree, that is a question for your lawyer on day one, not on day six.
What to do with the seven days
Two things are worth paying for in that week, and both cost less than the deposit you have already handed over.
The first is a lawyer who reads the purchase agreement and the disclosure statement and tells you plainly what you have agreed to. The clauses that matter are rarely the ones you notice: what the seller may change without your consent, the outside completion date, whether you may assign the contract, and what happens if your financing falls through.
The second is a real conversation with a lender, not a rate quote. You want to understand what happens to your file if rates are higher at completion, what documents they will want then, and how a pre-sale purchase changes their assessment. A lender who has never handled a pre-sale purchase is a reason to find another lender while you still have a way out.
- Get the purchase agreement and the disclosure statement to a lawyer on day one, not day five.
- Ask the lawyer specifically about the outside completion date and the assignment clause.
- Ask your lender what would happen to your approval if rates were two points higher at completion.
- Confirm in writing who holds the deposit and on what terms.
- Walk the actual street at two different times of day. The one thing a floor plan cannot show you is the neighbourhood.
What a material change does to your rights
The disclosure statement is not a one time document. Section 16 of the Act requires the seller, on becoming aware that the statement does not comply or contains a misrepresentation, to immediately file either a new disclosure statement or an amendment that clearly identifies and corrects the problem, and then to distribute it.
This is the mechanism that deals with changes after you sign. If something material about the home or the building changes, you should receive paperwork about it. Read it when it arrives rather than filing it, and take it to your lawyer if it touches anything you relied on.
Section 22 sits behind this. If a disclosure statement contains a misrepresentation, a buyer has a right to damages against the developer and others who signed or authorised it, unless the buyer already knew about the misstatement.
After the window closes
Once your 7 days are up, the Act stops being the source of your exit rights and your contract takes over. That is the honest summary, and it is why the week is worth so much.
The options that remain are the ones written into your agreement: cancelling if the outside completion date passes, assigning the purchase to another buyer if the seller consents, or negotiating an exit and accepting whatever that costs. None of them are as clean as a cancellation inside the window.
We have seen buyers treat the 7 days as a formality because they had already decided. The decision is not the problem. The problem is that a decision made without reading the contract is a decision made without knowing what you agreed to.
The clauses your lawyer should look at first
If your lawyer only has time to read part of the agreement before the window closes, these are the parts worth the hour. We list them in the order they tend to cause trouble later.
The outside completion date, and the circumstances in which the seller may push it back. The assignment clause, which decides whether you could ever sell the contract before completion. The clause describing what the seller may change without your consent, which on new homes often covers finishes, appliance brands, and sometimes the dimensions of a room within a stated tolerance. And the clause setting out what happens if you cannot complete, which is where you learn whether losing the deposit is the worst case or only the first consequence.
Then two smaller ones that buyers rarely think about. Whether the parking space and the storage locker are part of what you are buying or are allocated later, because a space allocated later is a space you have not bought. And whether the unit number in your contract is final, since numbering sometimes changes before the strata plan is registered and you want to be sure which home is yours.
- The outside completion date, and the seller's power to extend it
- Assignment: forbidden, allowed, or allowed with consent and a fee
- What the seller may change without asking you
- What happens if your financing fails at completion
- Whether parking and storage are included or merely allocated
- How deposit instalments are scheduled, and what a missed date triggers
A week is enough time, if you start on day one
Seven days sounds short. It is enough, and the reason buyers run out of it is that they spend the first three days deciding whether to bother.
A workable version looks like this. On day one you send the purchase agreement and the disclosure statement to a lawyer, and you book a call with your lender. On day two or three you get the lender's view on what happens to your file if rates are higher at completion. By day four or five you have the lawyer's read of the contract and a list of things you did not know you had agreed to. That leaves a day or two to put questions to the seller, get the answers in writing, and decide.
If a seller will not answer a reasonable question in writing inside that week, treat the silence as information. You are about to commit a large amount of money to something that does not exist yet, and how a company behaves now is the best evidence you will get about how it will behave when there is a problem two years from now.
One more thing about the week: use it to be honest with yourself about the home rather than only about the paperwork. Look at the floor plan again without the sales material next to it. Work out where a growing child sleeps, where the second car goes, and whether the room you were told was a den is a room anybody would want to sit in. Those questions get harder to ask once the deposit is paid.
Questions buyers ask
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Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page comes from the body that issues it. Rules and rates change, so each entry says when we checked it.
- Real Estate Development Marketing Act, SBC 2004, c. 41. BC Laws, Queen's Printer for British Columbia. Accessed 29 August 2026.
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