The highest offer isn't always the best one: how Ottawa sellers should read what's on the table

Two offers came in on a townhouse I listed in Orleans this spring, $9,000 apart. The higher one carried a $10,000 deposit, a financing condition with nothing but a pre-qualification behind it, and a closing date that would have left my sellers carrying their new build for six extra weeks. The lower one came with a deposit just north of 4%, a real pre-approval from a chartered bank, and a close that landed four days after their occupancy date. My clients wanted the bigger number. We took the smaller one. It firmed in five days and closed without a wrinkle, and I think about the other version of that summer more than they do.

On Monday I published a negotiation playbook for buyers and argued that price is the last lever. Sellers deserve the mirror image, because the 2026 market rarely hands you an auction. OREB's June release counted 1,518 sales, 3.3 months of inventory, and a sales-to-new-listings ratio of 48.8%. Balanced, in plain language, means most sellers will negotiate with one buyer at a time. The skill that makes or costs you real money this summer is not running a bidding war. It is reading the single offer in front of you.

The deposit tells you who you're dealing with

The deposit sits in the listing brokerage's trust account, and it is the buyer's skin in the game. A healthy Ottawa deposit runs around 5% of the price. On June's average sale of $733,648, that is roughly $37,000 a buyer stands to lose by walking away from a firm deal. So read the deposit as a statement of intent. I will take a serious deposit with two reasonable conditions over a token deposit with none, every time. The first buyer is committed and careful. The second is hoping, and hope does not close.

A financing condition isn't the risk. Weak financing is.

I told buyers this week to carry every condition the market allows, so I can hardly call your buyer's financing condition an insult. In a 48.8% market it is standard equipment. What you are actually underwriting is the file behind the condition. Have your agent ask three questions: is there a pre-approval or just a pre-qualification, who is the lender, and what happens if the appraisal comes in light. A five-business-day financing condition backed by a strong file is a formality. A condition-free offer from a stretched buyer is how you end up relisting in August, because the market keeps a long memory for listings that come back, and every showing after a collapsed deal starts with the same question: what happened?

The closing date is money. Price it like money.

For buyers, I wrote that matching a seller's ideal date can buy $5,000 on price. Flip it around. A buyer who hands you your perfect date has given you real value, and it belongs in your math. If you have firmly bought your next home, a close that lines up spares you bridge financing, storage, movers twice, and the special misery of carrying two properties into the fall. That bundle is routinely worth more than the gap between two offers. An offer $5,000 light that hits your date is not automatically the weaker one. Run the carrying cost before you counter on pride.

Multiple offers still happen. Don't fumble them.

Correctly priced single-family homes in the family neighbourhoods remain the busiest corner of this market. Single-family averaged $880,467 in June, up 1.0% year over year, and the well-priced ones still draw week-one competition. If you are lucky enough to hold two offers, resist grinding the strongest buyer for the final $2,000 while your second-best cools off. Since TRESA, you can even direct an open process and disclose what competing offers contain. I rarely recommend it, but it makes the point: the process belongs to you. Run it deliberately, and keep the runner-up warm until the winner is signed, not merely promised.

When to sign back, and when to just sign

Correctly priced Ottawa homes sold at 98.5% of ask in June, on a median of about three weeks. Do that arithmetic on your own listing. On a $750,000 ask, the typical gap between asking and sold is about $11,000. An offer that lands ten or twelve thousand under a well-set ask in week one is not a lowball. It is the market arriving on schedule. If the ask itself is wrong, none of this works, which is why I covered how to set it with the sale-to-list ratio earlier this month. Counter on terms first: date, deposit, condition timelines. Price last. And respect the irrevocable clock in both directions. Do not let a 9 p.m. same-day deadline stampede you into initialling something you have read once, and do not sit on a live offer running scenarios for three days either. Offers die of old age, and the buyer who wrote yours is still touring houses tonight.

The quiet weeks cut both ways

The Bank of Canada held at 2.25% on July 15 and says nothing more until September 2. Sellers live right now get seven weeks of rate stability and a thinner but more serious pool of buyers. Nobody tours houses through an Ottawa heat wave for entertainment. Fewer offers, better intent. If your plan is to wait for fall, that is a defensible call and the July playbook covers who should. Just spend August preparing rather than drifting. Either way, treat the next offer that arrives with care. The one behind it may be three weeks away.

If an offer is sitting on your kitchen table right now with the irrevocable ticking, that is exactly the moment to borrow a second set of eyes. Call or text me at 613-262-6545 or email fil@613realtor.ca and bring the whole document, not just page one. The price is the easy part. I will tell you what the rest of it says.