An approval or commitment that's “subject to conditions” is an approval in principle — the lender has agreed to fund the mortgage once a specific, listed set of items is satisfied. It's worth distinguishing two layers on an insured file: conditions of approval are the lender's own requirements that must clear before it will fund, while conditions of insurance are requirements the mortgage insurer attaches on its side, which the lender in turn has to satisfy before the insurance certificate is issued. Treating both layers as one undifferentiated list risks missing an insurer-side requirement that the lender's own checklist doesn't surface clearly.
Conditions tend to fall into three broad buckets: property (a satisfactory appraisal, a homeowner's insurance binder naming the lender, a condo status certificate where applicable), borrower (an updated pay stub closer to closing, void cheque, confirmation of identification), and legal (the current lender's payout statement on a switch or refinance, and instructions to the solicitor handling registration). The payout statement in particular connects directly to the mechanics covered in Treadstone's transfers, switches and renewals course — it's as much a condition-management item as it is a switch-math item.
A simple running list per file — what's still outstanding, who's responsible for getting it (the broker, the client, the lawyer, the property manager), and the date it's actually needed by — outperforms relying on memory or a lender's own portal alone, especially once a broker is juggling several files with overlapping closing dates. The list doesn't need to be sophisticated; it needs to exist somewhere it's actually checked regularly, and it needs an owner and a real date attached to every open item, not just a description of what's missing.
Many conditions have to clear several business days before the actual funding date, not on the day itself, because legal work and land registry steps take real time once every condition is satisfied. A condo status certificate that arrives the morning of closing is effectively too late, even though it technically arrived “before” funding — the lawyer still needs time to review it and complete registration. Working backward from the funding date, the same way a payout statement gets worked backward from in the sister course, is the discipline that keeps a condition-heavy file from running into exactly this kind of last-minute wall.
A condition that can't realistically be satisfied exactly as written — a document that's delayed through no one's fault, a requirement that doesn't quite fit an unusual property — is best raised with the underwriter or the BDM as early as possible, with a proposed alternative already in hand, rather than left until the deadline in the hope it resolves itself. Most conditions have a reasonable substitute or an acceptable workaround if there's still time to discuss it; very few have one if the first the lender hears of the problem is on the day it was due.
A condo status certificate, required as a condition of approval, is delayed by the property manager and will arrive only two days before funding. What's the right move?
Raising a realistic delay early gives the lender and the file's other moving parts time to adjust — most conditions have some workaround if there's genuinely still time to discuss one, which is exactly why silence is the wrong instinct here. Substituting an unrelated document without disclosure is a form of the same honesty problem covered in Module 03, and pushing the closing date back unilaterally, without first confirming whether it's actually needed, skips the step of finding out if a workaround exists at all.
The intro and first module are free to read. Add your name and email once and the rest of this course opens — along with every other course on the site. No card, no trial.
Already unlocked on another device?
