Completion, Possession, Adjustment: The Three Dates
Three clauses, three jobs. Completion is clause 4: the sale "will be completed" on that date "at the appropriate Land Title Office", transfer filed, money moved. Possession is clause 5, and carries an hour as well as a date. Adjustment is clause 6, pure accounting: the buyer "will assume and pay all taxes, rates, local improvement assessments, fuel utilities and other charges from and including" that date. The risk clause, separately, puts the buildings on your insurance at 12:01 am on the Completion Date, not the Possession Date. You will insure a house you cannot enter for at least a day. That is normal, and least often explained.
The week before. BCREA's account of the process has you signing two to five business days ahead, and by then the file should be built: a title search naming the registered owner and every charge to be discharged, a municipal tax certificate, and on a strata a Form F Certificate of Payment. The Form F is not a formality, under section 256 of the Strata Property Act the registrar must refuse the transfer without a current one. The strata has seven days to issue it, may charge $15, and may withhold it where the owner owes fees, a levy or a fine. It expires after 60 days.
The statement of adjustments. Property taxes run on the calendar year but fall due in early July, so the arithmetic flips around that date: complete before it and you pay the municipality the full year and take a credit for the seller's share; complete after and you reimburse the seller for yours, the home owner grant netted off first. Utilities and strata fees apportion the same way, to the adjustment date. On a tenanted property rent is apportioned and the tenancy continues unchanged; the Province advises settling the security and pet damage deposits in the contract or at closing, because whoever owns the property when the tenant leaves must return them. On rural files, clause 6's "fuel utilities" carries the oil or propane adjustment: a tank reading near completion, the seller credited for the remainder.
Completion day, in order. Mortgage funds must reach your lawyer's or notary's trust account first, and some lenders will not advance until after registration, which inverts the sequence and is worth confirming weeks ahead. Then a pre-filing title search, same day. Then the electronic filing through myLTSA: transfer, mortgage and property transfer tax return, signed as one package. Then a wait. The Law Society's conveyance checklist requires a post-application search for intervening encumbrances, and notarial best practice puts it at least an hour after filing. Only then are proceeds released, on the seller's lawyer's undertaking to discharge the remaining charges and clear title.
Registration is a queue, and the queue is not the protection. Under the Land Title Act an instrument is deemed registered as of the date and time the application reached the registrar, and competing charges rank by that time, not by when they were signed. Your filing gets a pending application number and an estimated examination date; the LTSA says most applications register within 10 to 15 business days. Money therefore moves on that pending number, days before anyone examines the file, and a defect notice leaves the package sitting until corrected. Your state of title certificate ($16.50) comes only once the discharges register.
When the money is late. The documents clause requires everything lodged for registration by 4 pm on the Completion Date. BCREA has reported a sale that died because the buyers' funds were nineteen minutes past it: the sellers' notary recalled the documents on that undertaking, and the court dismissed the claim for specific performance. Sandhu v Uppal later treated a missed 4 pm registration as a technical breach where funds were available on the day, reassurance, not a plan. The remedy is an amendment extending completion, signed before the day fails. The seller has a mirror problem: a payout statement is good only to a stated date and carries a per diem, so a day's slippage or an unlisted prepayment penalty leaves the payout short.
When the house is the problem. A charge paid out is not a charge gone, the discharge is a separate Form C filed by the lender, often weeks later, so a cleared mortgage can sit on your title long after you own the place. Expected; one that never appears is the one to chase. A seller still in the house on the possession date breaches clause 5's vacant possession default, but there is no self-help: it is your lawyer, a damages claim, and if needed a court application. Damage between subject removal and completion falls under the risk clause, and BCREA's guidance on Buckwheat Enterprises Inc. v Shiu is that the buyer's right is a conveyance at a reasonable abatement, not a walk-away.
Why Friday, and why not. Friday is chosen because possession then lands on Saturday and the weekend is free for the move. It is the worst day available. The land title office is open 9 to 3 on weekdays only, wire windows close in the afternoon, and a lender funding at four leaves no business day to fix anything before Monday. Month end compounds it: mortgage cycles and tenancy notices all point at the last day of the month. So complete Monday to Thursday, set possession a day later, and walk through before the money moves, once you have paid, your leverage is a lawsuit. Do not book movers for the morning of possession, and never give up your existing housing on the day you take the new one.
Verified 25 August 2026 against the clause text of the BCREA/CBABC Contract of Purchase and Sale (form BC2057, rev. November 2021), BCREA's Legally Speaking commentaries on the standard clauses, conveyancing process, completion timing and pre-closing damage, the Law Society of British Columbia's residential conveyance practice checklist, the Society of Notaries Public of BC's best-practice guidance on conveyances, the Land Title and Survey Authority's registration process, package status and practice manual pages, the Land Title Act provisions on the effect and priority of registration, and the Province of B.C.'s pages on the Form F Certificate of Payment and on selling a tenanted rental property. This report describes and informs, it is not legal or financial advice, and specifics deserve specific verification with your lawyer or notary. Which day of the week is your completion set for, and has anyone told your lender what time the money has to be there?