Interim occupancy is the period on a new-construction condo when the buyer moves in and starts paying an occupancy fee, but does not yet legally own the unit because the building has not been registered as a condominium.
As treadstonelaw.ca explains it, “The building isn’t yet registered as a condominium with the land registry, so the developer can’t transfer title yet — but your unit is ready, so they let you occupy it”. This stage is called interim occupancy, and it exists purely because condominium registration — the legal step that turns “a unit in a building” into “a titled property” — takes time after construction finishes.
There’s no fixed length. “Interim occupancy can last months — sometimes much longer — depending on how quickly the developer registers the building”, and registration delays are common enough that a buyer’s mortgage pre-approval or bridge-financing plans should build in slack rather than assume a tight window.
Final closing — when title actually transfers and the buyer becomes the registered owner — happens “after the building is registered as a condominium”, not on move-in day. Everything between move-in and registration is interim occupancy, and the buyer is a licensee occupying the developer’s unit, not yet an owner.
A buyer’s agreement sets an estimated occupancy date of June and an estimated final closing roughly eighteen months later. Occupancy actually starts in June as scheduled, but the building doesn’t register until fourteen months after that — twenty months of interim occupancy in total, during which the client pays a monthly occupancy fee instead of a mortgage payment and builds no equity. Because the agent flagged the gap between “move-in” and “you own it” at the offer stage, the client wasn’t surprised by nearly two years of fees before their first mortgage payment ever starts.
See also: occupancy fees, assignment sales and the new home HST rebate.
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