Anonymised, illustrative composite. The wire went out inside the 24-hour window the offer required — it just did not arrive there, and the agreement never asked when it was sent.
At a glance
A buyer's accepted offer on a $612,000 Kitchener-area resale home required a 5% deposit — $30,600 — within 24 hours of acceptance, held in trust by the listing brokerage. The buyer's lawyer initiated a wire transfer to the brokerage's trust account within that 24-hour window.
The wire did not land where or when it was supposed to. Due to a mismatched routing detail at the buyer's bank, the funds did not actually reach the brokerage's trust account until roughly 65 hours after acceptance — well past the 24-hour clause. The seller's agent, noting the deposit was late, raised the possibility that the buyer was in breach and that the seller could treat the agreement as at an end.
There is no statutory minimum deposit in Ontario and no fixed legal deadline independent of the contract — deposit timing is a term of the specific Agreement of Purchase and Sale, negotiated or simply accepted as part of the offer, not a rule imposed from outside it. Here, that term was unambiguous: 24 hours, full stop.
The distinction that decided the dispute was exactly the one the source states in plain terms: meeting the deadline means the funds are actually received by the specified time, not simply that you’ve initiated a transfer. The buyer's lawyer had sent the wire on time; the clause did not care when it was sent, only when the brokerage's trust account actually held it. On the plain wording of the clause, the deposit was late.
That did not automatically end the deal, and the source is clear about why: the deposit is often seen as evidence of a buyer’s good-faith commitment, and missing the deadline the agreement actually specifies can be treated as a breach entitling the seller to terminate — but outcomes turn on the specific wording and facts. A wire delayed by a bank routing error, sent in good faith inside the window, sits differently than a deposit that simply never showed up at all — but the clause itself does not make that distinction; only the parties, or a court, can.
Purchase price $612,000. Deposit: $30,600 (5%). Clause deadline: 24 hours from acceptance. Actual receipt: roughly 65 hours from acceptance — 41 hours late against the clause as written.
Because deposit forfeiture is never automatic — the brokerage will not release funds to the seller without the buyer’s written consent or a court order, the seller could not simply keep or claim the deposit unilaterally over a 41-hour delay, however clearly the clause's wording favoured that position. If the seller had pushed to terminate and the buyer had disagreed, the practical route would have been the brokerage filing an interpleader application, paying the disputed funds into the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and stepping out of the dispute — a process that can tie up a contested deposit for many months. See the trust account and your deposit glossary entry and time is of the essence, defined for the underlying terms.
Facing a months-long interpleader fight over a deposit that had, after all, actually arrived — just late, and for a reason unrelated to the buyer's willingness or ability to pay — the seller's lawyer proposed a short written amendment confirming the late deposit was accepted and the transaction would proceed on its original terms. The buyer's lawyer countersigned it the same day, and the deal closed on schedule.
Had the seller instead pushed to terminate and re-list, the buyer's lawyer was prepared to argue the delay was a bank error rather than a failure of good faith, that the wire had genuinely been initiated on time, and that the deposit had in fact been received before the seller took any concrete step (like re-listing) in reliance on the breach — an argument this file never had to test, because a signed amendment resolved it in a single day instead.
The file is a useful contrast to what happens when a deal firms up and then genuinely falls apart: see a buyer who walked after the deal firmed for how the same deposit-forfeiture and interpleader mechanics play out when the parties cannot resolve things with a same-day amendment.
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